Discourse Event

For Norman Fairclough (1989, 1995) each discourse event is made up of three dimensions or facets.  There is the text itself and the discourse practice of producing and interpreting the text.  In addition, every discourse practice is seen to be an instance of social practice.  Fairclough illustrates these layers in a three-dimensional framework in which the connection between text and social practice is mediated by discourse practice (Fairclough 1995: 133).  Against this framework, discourse is seen as a site of social action and as constitutive of social relations and identities.

The view of language as action, embodied in the title of Austin's (1962) posthumously published How to do Things with Words, is inspired by both ordinary language philosophy (Austin 1962; Searle 1969; Wittgenstein 1953) and Critical Theory.  According to Habermas, for example, ‘language is also a medium of...social force' (1977: 259).