Discourse is language as it occurs, in any form or context, beyond the speech act. It may be written or spoken, monological or dialogical, but there is always a communicative aim or purpose. The present volume provides systematic orientation in the vast field of studying discourse from a pragmatic perspective. It first gives an overview of a range of approaches developed for the analysis of discourse, including, among others, conversation analysis, genre analysis, functional discourse grammar and corpus-driven approaches. The focus is furthermore on functional units in discourse, such as disco.

• Preface to the handbook series
• Acknowledgements
• Table of contents
• 1. Discourse pragmatics: signposting a vast field
• 2. Conceptualising discourse
• Part I: Approaches to discourse
  • 3. The emergence of discourse analysis as a disciplinary field: philosophical, pedagogic and linguistic approaches
  • 4. Conversation analysis
  • 5. Systemic-functional approaches to discourse
  • 6. Genre analysis
  • 7. Critical discourse analysis
  • 8. Corpus linguistics and discourse analysis
  • 9. Multimodal pragmatics
• Part II: Discourse structures
  • 10. Discourse Markers
  • 11. Stance
  • 12. Speech act sequences
  • 13. Phases in discourse
  • 14. Move structure
  • 15. Silence
• Part III: Discourse types and domains
  • 16. Taxonomies of discourse types
  • 17. Classroom discourse
  • 18. Pragmatics and medical discourse
  • 19. Legal discourse: processes of making evidence in specialised legal corpora
  • 20. Electronic discourse
  • 21. Press releases
• About the authors
• Author index
• Subject index