Discourse in Perspectives: A Linguistic Study

Discursively, this paper examines critical perspectives on “discourse”, which is the focus of “discourse analysis”. Discourse reveals the communicative potentials of human language across domains. A conventional instrument of communication, language is not exhaustive in its communicative potential. The literature of discourse analysis is replete with front-burner postulations on the nature of language, discourse, human communication, social structures and value systems. A study of such postulations is worthy of scholarly attention as it can explain their implications, relevance and functionality when language is used either for cohesive or divisive roles in society. Language anchors the relationship between humans and socially realistic phenomena. In this regard, discourse is a framework for elucidating the bottom-line issues of “language in use” in the real world of humans: the universe of discourse. Hinging on Critical Linguistics, this study concludes that across texts and genres, discourse is: construction of knowledge, social phenomenon, sense and reference, ideology, linguistic convention, action, context of speech and context of situation.