Society and Discourse by Teun A Van Dijk

Society and Discourse by Teun A Van Dijk

After his earlier book Discourse and Context, also published by Cambridge University Press, Teun A. van Dijk in this study presents the second part of his multidisciplinary theory of context. The main thesis of this theory is that the influence of society on discourse is not direct, as is postulated for instance in sociolinguistics, but cognitively mediated by subjective mental models of the communicative situation: context models. These dynamic models control discourse production and comprehension and define the pragmatic appropriateness of text and talk. Whereas in Discourse and Context the psychological and linguistic aspects of context were analyzed, this book focuses on the social psychological, sociological, anthropological and political aspects of context. Tony Blair's 2003 speech defending his motion to go to war against Saddam Hussein and the following debate in parliament is used as an example illustrating the new theory.

Teun A. van Dijk was Professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Amsterdam until 2004, and is at present Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. After earlier work on generative poetics, text grammar, and the psychology of text processing, his work since 1980 has taken a more critical perspective and deals with discursive racism, news in the press, ideology, knowledge and context. He is the author of several books in most of these areas, and edited The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (four volumes, 1985) the introductory book Discourse Studies (two volumes, 1997) as well as the reader The Study of Discourse (five volumes, 2007). He has founded six international journals - Poetics, Text (now Text & Talk), Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication and the internet journal in Spanish Discurso & Sociedad (www.dissoc.org) - of which he still edits the latter four. His last monographs in English are Ideology (1998) and Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America (2005), and his last edited book (with Ruth Wodak) is Racism at the Top (2000). He is currently completing a new interdisciplinary study in two volumes on the theory of context, and planning a new book on discourse and knowledge. Van Dijk, who holds two honorary doctorates, has lectured widely in many countries, especially Latin America. With Adriana Bolivar he founded the Asociacion Latino-Americana de Estudios del Discurso (ALED), in 1995. For a list of publications, recent articles, resources for discourse studies and other information, see www.discourses.org.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521516907
ISBN 10	0521516900
Title	Society and Discourse
Author	Teun A Van Dijk
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2009-01-22
Number of pages	298
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable