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Discourse Studies
A Multidisciplinary Introduction

Second Edition
Edited by:
  • Teun A Van Dijk - Pompeu Fabra University, Spain; Centre of Discourse Studies, Spain, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain


March 2011 | 432 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

Discourse Studies is the largest, most complete, most diverse and only multidisciplinary introduction to the field. Now combined into a single volume, this essential handbook:

  • is fully updated from start to finish to cover contemporary debates and research literature
  • covers everything from grammar, narrative, argumentation, cognition and pragmatics to social, political and critical approaches
  • adds two new chapters on ideology and identity
  • puts the student at the center, offering brand new features such as worked examples, sample analyses and recommended further reading

Written and edited by world-class scholars in their fields, it is the essential, one-stop companion for any student of discourse analysis and discourse studies.


Teun A Van Dijk
Introduction: The Study of Discourse
Susanna Cumming, Tsuyoshi Ono and Ritva Laury
Discourse, Grammar and Interaction
Russell S. Tomlin, Linda Forrest, Ming Ming Pu and Myung Hee Kim
Discourse Semantics
Elinor Ochs
Narrative in Everyday Life
Frans H. van Eemeren, Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs
Argumentation
Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress
Discourse Semiotics
Arthur C. Graesser and Keith Millis
Discourse and Cognition
Shoshana Blum-Kulka and Michal Hamo
Discourse Pragmatics
Anita Pomerantz and B.J. Fehr
Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Analysis of Social Interaction
Paul Drew and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
Dialogue in Institutional Interactions
Michelle M. Lazar and Cheris Kramarae
Gender and Power in Discourse
Yasmin Jiwani and John E. Richardson
Discourse, Ethnicity and Racism
Anna De Fina
Discourse and Identity
Dennis K. Mumby and Jennifer Mease
Organizational Discourse
Paul Chilton and Christina Schäffner
Discourse and Politics
Elizabeth Keating and Alessandro Duranti
Discourse and Culture
Norman Fairclough, Jane Mulderrig and Ruth Wodak
Critical Discourse Analysis
Teun A. Van Dijk
Discourse and Ideology

This very welcome updated second edition will allow Teun van Dijk's very popular Discourse Studies to consolidate its already strong and central position in the area. Featuring chapters written by so many of the leading scholars it will continue to be a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to the discipline of discourse studies for new generations of students
Malcolm Coulthard
University of Birmingham


This collection is a landmark in the oeuvre of one of the founding fathers of Discourse Analysis. Van Dijk has managed to edit a volume of lasting significance, and some of the chapters in this book belong to the most widely read in the field. In its totality, 'Discourse Studies' offers us a 360 degree tour of the field, bringing a wealth of insights to each of its aspects, and building a vocabulary for studying them that has in the meantime become the discourse of discourse analysis. Nothing in this volume is dated, everything remains mandatory reading for every student and advanced practicioner
Jan Blommaert
Tilburg University


The multidisciplinary approach of the book is very effective in drawing in students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, while the chapters applying discourse analysis to specific areas like race and gender are useful too, for a range of students, depending on their interests. The two new chapters are essential reading for all my students of discourse analysis, especially the undergrads, who often find whole book treatments of the theory a bit heavy going.

Sally Hunt
Rhodes University

Students stated that it was too technical for them. It's more for a doctoral class than for a master's level class.

Dr Byung-In Seo
Ed Leadership Curric Fdnt Dept, Chicago State University
April 3, 2016

This updated second edition is an excellent handbook for students. It contains examples, analyses and further reading.

Dr Sermin Tag Kalafatoglu
Department of Cinema and Television, Ordu University
December 26, 2014

Great overview of discourse analysis and the many perspectives within discourse studies.

Dr John Lupinacci
Teaching Learning Dept, Washington State Univ-Pullman
February 22, 2014

This is a fine book on this now established body of literature. Van Dijk offers a broad and intriguing insight in Discourse Studies and this is a worthy companion for any student in this area.

Mr Joe Fitzgerald
School of Business, Institute of Business & Technology
August 21, 2013

The book is really good for students to support their work with the independent project module especially when analysing data collected from text.

Ms Eva Mikuska
Childhood Studies (Bishop Otter), Chichester University
January 18, 2013

The book represents a comprehensible and encompassing introduction into the field of discourse studies. The main strengths of the book consist in the multidisciplinary approach that it takes in presenting the history and more recent conceptual and methodological developments within discourse analysis as well as the ways in which it combines theoretical texts with concrete analytical examples that illustrate described methodological and theoretical aspects of discourse studies.

Dr Julia Klausen
Department of cul, Aalborg University
August 15, 2012

This book is a user friendly guide to discourse studies and an essential for any student undertaking a discourse analysis. I recommend it to all my dissertation students adopting the method.

Mrs Siobhan Stevenson
Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University
March 13, 2012

Discourse analysis is the focus of a two-hour session (within a 5-week, 2 hours per week) introducation to qualitative analysis course.

Van Dijk's edited collection is therefore too detailed, in my opinion, to be any more than listed under 'further references' for my course.

This does not reflect the quality of the book - just the format and level of the course I am teaching.

I do particularly like Anita Pomerantz and B. J. Fehr's chapter on conversational analysis, largely because it does provide a step-by-step, accessible introduction to why and how one might undertake a conversational analysis. This is what I need for the kind of course I am teaching.

I might therefore explore making a chapter such as this 'recommended reading'.

I also enjoyed Lazar and Kramarae's chapter on 'Gender and Power in Discourse' and Jiwani and Richardson's chapter on 'Discourse, Ethnicity and Racism'. These chapters provide a) an excellent introduction into these issues but b) also make a strong case for why discourse analysis is a strong and appropriate method for examining these issues. As I am introducing the various qualitative analytical approaches to early stage PhD students, it is important they get a sense of i) for what kinds of research questions / interests a particular approach might be appropriate and ii) a brief introduction to how you undertake this kind of analysis. I might therefore also consider making these two chapters recommended readings for the course next year.

Dr Claire Maxwell
Doctoral, Institute of Education
January 25, 2012

Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter 2: Principles shaping grammatical practices: an exploration

Chapter 2: The clause as a locus of grammar and interaction

Chapter 3: Schemata as scaffolding for the representation of information in con

Chapter 3: Rhetorical structure theory: Looking back and moving ahead

Chapter 3: Applications of rhetorical structure theory

Chapter 4: Account episodes in family discourse: the making of morality in ever

Chapter 4: Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers’ stories

Chapter 4: The construction of moral agency in the narratives of high-school dr

Chapter 5: Strategic Manoeuvring in Argumentative Discourse

Chapter 5: Argumentative Discourse Theory and ‘Letters to the Editor

Chapter 5: Reasoning Dialogues

Chapter 6: A system for image-text relations in new (and old) media

Chapter 6: Systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA)

Chapter 6: Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse

Chapter 7: Views from a cognitive scientist

Chapter 7: Source evaluation, comprehension, and learning in Internet science i

Chapter 8: Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis p1

Chapter 8: Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis p2

Chapter 8: Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis p3

Chapter 8: Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis p4

Chapter 8: Talk scandals

Chapter 8: Being politically impolite: Extending politeness theory to adversari

Chapter 9: Multimodal resources for turn-taking: pointing and the emergence of

Chapter 9: Directives: Entitlement and contingency in action

Chapter 9: A note on laughter in “male-female” interaction

Chapter 10: Managing prospect affiliation and rapport in business-to-business s

Chapter 10: Silly questions and their answers in police-suspect interrogations

Chapter 11: Entitled to consume: postfeminist femininity and a culture of post-

Chapter 11: Gender relevance in talk-in-interaction and discourse

Chapter 11: Doing gender

Chapter 12: The language of “race” and prejudice: a discourse of denial, reason

Chapter 12: The veil as a means of legitimization: an analysis of the interconn

Chapter 12: Right-wing parliamentary discourse on immigration in France

Chapter 13: Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic Approach

Chapter 13: The discursive construction of national identities

Chapter 14: Resistance through consent? Occupational identity, organizational f

Chapter 14: Politeness, power and provocation: how humour functions in the work

Chapter 14: Principles of critical discourse analysis

Chapter 15: Critical discourse analysis of political press conferences

Chapter 15: Politeness, politics and democracy

Chapter 15: An ideological/cultural analysis of political slogans in Communist

Chapter 15: Meeting the challenge on the path to democracy: discursive strategi

Chapter 15: Discourse analysis and social analysis

Chapter 15: Discourse semantics and ideology

Chapter 15: The linguistic pragmatics of terrorist acts

Chapter 16: Managing misunderstandings: the role of language in interdisciplina

Chapter 16: Husserl, intersubjectivity and anthropology

Chapter 17: Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discour

Chapter 17: Informalization in UK party election broadcasts 1966–97

Chapter 17: Mediation between discourse and society: assessing cognitive approa

Chapter 18: Stacking the cars of ideology: The history of the ”Sun Souvenir Roy

Chapter 18: “I am not a racist…”: mapping White college students’ racial ideolo

Chapter 18: Understanding the new management ideology: a transdisciplinary cont

Chapter 18: Ideology in the US welfare debate: neo-liberal representations of p

Chapter 18: Discourse Semantics and Ideology


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