Abstract

This article sets out to define an approach to discourse that takes into account the characteristics of the phenomenon of social communication. First, the article examines different conceptions of discourse analysis such as `cognitive', `representational' and `communicational'. These distinctions are made using various criteria: definitions of the subject of analysis, the nature of the speaker, the corpus of data resulting from the discourse. This is followed by an examination of the types of competence that have to be satisfied by speakers if they are to produce a speech act: for example, `situational', `discursive', `semantic' and `semiolinguistic competence'. The article then analyses how speakers stage their discourse, i.e. their consideration of the constraints of the communicative situation and their use of `discursive strategies'. The article concludes by demonstrating the necessity of relating the `communicative situation' to the `positioning' of the speaker.