Discourse and text

Abstract

If many linguistic disciplines and concepts have a long history of their existence and a clear, generally accepted definition, then such concepts as "discourse" and "text" have not yet received fully adequate interpretations due to the complexity of these objects. These two concepts are quite capacious and ambiguous and therefore require a number of studies by linguists. In 1950s Emile Benveniste, developing the theory of utterance, consistently applies the term discourse, traditional for French linguistics, in a new meaning - as a characteristic of "speech assigned by the speaker." Z. Harris published the article "Discourse analysis" on the distribution method in relation to over-phrasal unities in 1952. So, these two reputable scientists establish the tradition of the identical designation of different objects of research.