ARTICLE

Received 30 Nov 2016 | Accepted 30 May 2017 | Published 4 Jul 2017 DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.58 OPEN

The heterogeneity of discourse: expanding

the field of discourse analysis

Dominique Maingueneau1

ABSTRACT This contribution aims to outline some limits of discourse analysis today.
Discourse analysis may not privilege any specific kind of data, but, like modern linguistics
since the beginning of the 20th century, most discourse analysts focus on a restricted area
within the manifold manifestations of discourse. They take for granted that discourse must be
modeled after conversational practices, and/or that the basic relevant unit of discourse
analysis is the pair text/genre. This restriction can be explained by the historical context in
which discursive approaches have emerged. However, it can be argued that such a standard
is not relevant for a wide range of data, that discourse practices can be divided into various
regimes, which correspond to various models of communication and must accordingly be
analyzed with specific concepts and toolkits. This article discusses two main phenomena that
call this standard into question: (1) the notion of genre on the Internet; (2) “textless sen-
tences” and authorship. Indeed, these all imply another conception of discourse activity that
deserves to be taken into account if we are to consider discourse activity in the full diversity
of its manifestations.

1 University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France

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A
Introduction
t this point of the twenty-first century, the field of of these “monologues” have been detached from interviews).
discourse analysis is faced with a paradox. While Overall, 65% of the articles therefore deal with oral data.
discourse analysts are supposed to study any manifesta- Now, let us have a look at the remaining 35%:
tion of discourse, they often limit themselves to either “ordinary”
conversations or certain genres. The discourse genres studied by - Five articles involve the study of data from the Internet, but in
discourse researchers often belong to media and politics and the form of forum discussions or email; these are tackled with
other social areas such as education, business, justice, the health concepts and methods from Conversation Analysis; and not
system.1 data that cannot be studied with the help of the usual toolkit of
I think that this problem does not strike most discourse discourse analysts.
analysts because they presuppose that discourse is basically - 11 articles ignore the distinction between spoken and written
homogeneous. Such a presupposition is based on two postulates. utterances: they study discourse markers, from the perspective
One is that discourse must be modelled after conversational of linguistic pragmatics or text linguistics;
practices, and/or that the basic relevant unit of discourse analysis - Out of the remaining 19 articles, two articles are devoted to the
is the pair text/genre. Each of these postulates may be linked to a study of images, and one makes a taxonomy of political
specific tradition within discourse studies. North-American speakers.
research, for instance, tends to give priority to conversation
while2 many European researchers focus on text and genre.3 As a result, only 16 articles study written data, which are based on
In our current globalized world, they both combine and contami- various sectors: academia, newspapers, the health sector and
nate each other: indeed, most discourse analysts studying politics. There are no studies on the discourses of Art, literature,
conversation consider conversation as a genre or as covering a Law, religion, philosophy or science. Scientific discourse is not
wide range of genres while, conversely, those who study genres dealt with specifically, but simply as a type of academic discourse
from institutional settings tend to focus on talk.4 (conferences or handbooks), or as corpora for the study of
However, the many researchers belonging to both traditions discourse markers. The only article about religious discourse
(and I include here myself too) share a certain conception of (Loeb, 2014), using Conversation Analysis methods, analyses “call
discourse as a human practice. Specifically, they see it as an and response” sequences in “Bible study meetings” of an Afro-
interaction between flesh-and-blood people who act in well American community.
defined settings, and develop strategies in keeping with their own Such a restriction in terms of the data being studied can be
aims and interests, to influence each other or modify the explained by the convergence of the founding principles of
situation. However, this implicit model does not fit for a wide modern linguistics that assumed that only oral data were relevant
range of other substantial data. for the study of language, and those of the micro-sociological
In this contribution I will start by showing that many trends, which played a key role in the development of discourse
researchers who focus on immediate interaction bypass many studies. The pragmatic conception of language also favoured the
other types of discourse, while others, notably register theorists, emphasis on oral interaction. Significantly, Grice’s (1975) theory
do tackle the question of heterogeneity head on, but in a rather of implicatures, which draws on the “cooperative principle”, is
superficial way. Contrary to these approaches, I claim that organized around “conversational maxims”.
discourse is basically heterogeneous, that it can be divided into But other reasons can be invoked to explain why discourse
various regimes, which correspond to various models of analysis focuses on oral interaction:
communication. I will mention several phenomena in support
of this proposition. I will first make a distinction between - Discourse analysis appeared within a given historical context, in
conversation and “instituted genres”, and emphasize the hetero- the 1960s in Western countries, when TV had become
geneity of the very notion of genre. I will then demonstrate preeminent and for the first time in history researchers had
that the functioning of the Internet challenges some basic at their disposal technical resources to easily record long
presuppositions of discourse analysis, which has developed since spontaneous interactions.
the 1960s in a world where recorded orality and printed texts - Discourse analysis has mainly developed in the area of Social
prevailed. In the last section I will propose a distinction sciences, and has remained relatively absent from the depart-
between “attached” and “detached” utterances, for which there ments that up until then had been studying prestigious
are neither “speakers” nor “addressees” in the ordinary sense of texts (Literature, Law, Philosophy…). In contrast, doing
each word. discourse analysis implied paying high attention to areas of
discourse that before were considered as peripheral, and were
now considered as “authentic” discourse activity: ordinary
How heterogeneity is overlooked conversation, media, politics, education… As is often the case,
I will begin here with a quick survey of past issues of Discourse this has become a routine and a norm for discourse analysts: in
Studies, the most important journal in the field, which proves very this way, they set themselves apart from tradition, and
revealing.5 This journal focuses on talk, although it claims not to conveyed a specific ethos.
be affiliated with any specific school, defines itself as “an - Studying conversations, political discourse or TV shows makes
international journal for the general study of text and talk”, and it easier to link linguistic phenomena with social contexts,
aims “to publish outstanding research in any domain of the study which is the main purpose of most discourse analysts.
of spoken and written discourse”. Six issues are published every Obviously, this link is much more difficult when one studies
year. I examined the years 2010, 2014 and 2015 (all in all 98 literary, scientific or religious corpora.
articles); to reach 100, I added the first two articles of the
year 2016. One could object that my diagnosis is excessive, that many
Out of these 100 articles, 55 deal with oral interactions, which discourse analysts take into account the “heterogeneity of
have been transcribed and analysed with the help of methods language” (Stubbs, 1993: 11). Indeed, discourse analysts are
from the toolkit of Conversation Analysis. To these can be added always distinguishing spoken and written utterances, formal and
10 articles dealing with monologic oral utterances (actually most informal settings, monologic and dialogic discourse and so on.

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This is particularly the case of corpus linguistics (Biber, 1988, “Scenes of enunciation”. The very notion of genre in “instituted
Sinclair, 1991), which itself has been influenced by the theory of practices” must also be refined to take into account the hetero-
"registers", within the systemic-functional linguistics of M.A.K. geneity of discourse. Various kinds of discourse genres must be
Halliday. Registers are hybrid realities: from an extra-linguistic distinguished, according to the way speech is staged. I propose
viewpoint, they are identifiable upon the basis of the situation (Maingueneau, 1998) to analyse a genre as a “scene of enuncia-
type they are associated with; from a linguistic viewpoint, they are tion”. The scene of enunciation can be broken down into three
characterized by a set of distinctive linguistic features. In fact, in components:
this kind of approach, saying that language is “heterogeneous” is
only a way of acknowledging that the system varies according to - An “enclosing scene”6 : roughly speaking, this corresponds to
situations. If for instance literature or religion is defined as a main areas of discourse within a society (religious, political,
register or a “style” (Crystal and Davy, 1969), it is because administrative, medical and so on);
literature and religion are considered as specific uses of English - A “generic scene”, which assigns roles to actors, prescribes the
language, not because there exists a “literary discourse” or a right place and the right moment, the medium, the text
“religious discourse” forming a part of institutions that play a superstructure and so on;
specific role in society. Furthermore, despite efforts to consider - A “scenography”: texts belonging to the same generic scene
any area of language use as a register, the status of conversation may stage different scenographies. For example, preaching in a
remains a problem: “there is broad agreement among linguists church, can be staged through a prophetic scenography or a
that conversation is not just any register but a prominent one for meditative scenography. In the former case, the speaker will
various reasons (…) Further, conversation is regarded by many speak in the way prophets do in the Bible and will give the
linguists as the fundamental basis for other registers” corresponding role to his addressees; in the latter case, he will
(Rühlemann, 2007: 8). feign to be speaking to himself.

On this basis a distinction can be made between four types of

On the need to recognize the heterogeneity of discourse genres depending on the degree of variation and/or originality
“Conversational” versus “instituted” practices. I consider that that is permitted within the genre:
the kind of heterogeneity discourse analysts are usually referring
to—whether they use the notion of register or not—is not suffi- - Type 1 genres: these are not subject to variation, or only to very
cient. My own conception of heterogeneity is stronger: discourse little variation; their speakers follow strictly pre-established
practices can be divided into various regimes, which correspond formulas and schemes: telephone directories, birth certificates
to various models of communication and must accordingly be and so on. In fact, we cannot really speak of “authors” for
analysed with specific concepts and toolkits (Maingueneau, 2014). such texts.
A fortiori, such a conception of heterogeneity has nothing to do - Type 2 genres: speakers produce singular utterances while
with the philosophical assumption of the Althusserian trend of obeying a script, a routine: television news, business corre-
discourse analysis (Pêcheux, 1975) which claims, by referring to spondence and so on. But some of these genres may tolerate
psychoanalysis, that the discourse and the subject are submitted distortions and give speakers the possibility of using an original
to a “radical heterogeneity” (Authier, 1984, in Angermuller et al. scenography: a travel guide, for example, may be presented as a
(eds) 2014: 163). friendly conversation, a novel and so on.
Nobody can deny the importance of conversation in the - Type 3 genres: they require the invention of original
construction of subjectivity and social order, but this does not scenographies: advertising, folk songs, entertainment programs
mean that it is the centre and the model of discourse activity, or on television and so on. If you make an advertisement for a face
that the concepts and the methods of discourse analysis must be cream or a car, you must invent the scenography through
based on this kind of data. which it will be presented. Of course, many scenographies are
Instead of emphasizing the unity of discourse “practices”, two stereotypical, but the logic of such genres urges people to
discourse regimes, subject to different constraints, can be innovate perpetually. However, these innovations are not
distinguished: conversational practices, on the one hand, and supposed to modify the frames imposed by the generic scene
instituted practices on the other. Conversations are not closely or to question them.
related to institutions, roles or stable scripts; their textual - Type 4 genres: instead of following a strict pattern, an author
organization and their contents are usually rather fuzzy; their with individual experience self-categorizes his or her own
frame constantly evolves during interaction, as the participants verbal production, as “essay”, “fantasy”, “thoughts”, “story” and
constantly negotiate their roles. Conversations are subject to so on. Generic labels such as “newspaper”, “talk show” or
predominantly local and horizontal constraints, whereas the “lecture” are given to activities that exist independently of these
constraints of instituted genres are predominantly global labels (actually, many discursive practices have no name at all).
and vertical: they integrate speakers into more or less ritualized But when a religious author, a politician or a moralist calls his
communication devices where speakers are given specific or her text a “meditation”, an “utopia” or a “report”, these
roles. Obviously, the distinction between these two regimes is names cannot be replaced by another one because they are the
not clear-cut, and verbal practices that have the properties consequence of a personal decision, the manifestation of an act
of both regimes can easily be found. Moreover, both regimes can of positioning inside a certain field. Such labels contribute
be used in the same speech event. But generally, while in significantly to the way the text is to be interpreted, but they do
instituted practices the very notion of genre of discourse not refer to the actual communication activity: if I name
is fully relevant, in the conversational regime it is highly “meditations” an academic book about philosophy, this does
problematic. Conversation cannot be easily divided into distinct not mean that it is not an academic book.
categories. It is important to note, however, that we should
abstain from establishing a hierarchy between these two regimes, Genres of the third and the fourth types are similar in many
which are intertwined and complementary. People’s lives are aspects: both must set up stimulating scenographies to convince
made of the interaction between these two ways of shaping their audience, and give sense to their own discursive activity by
subjectivity. proposing a frame in harmony with the very content of the

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utterance. But, while advertising texts (third type) have a specific is particularly the case with chats, forums, emails, phone text-
purpose (chiefly making people buy something) and are always messages and so on. As the focus of discourse analysis is not on
searching for the best way to achieve this objective, religious the most important aspects of the Web, its study belongs mainly
writers or novelists cannot really define what they are aiming at to specialists from other fields. The Discourse reader (Jaworski
when publishing their texts: “there remain some genres for which and Coupland, 1999) does not mention the Internet. But,
purpose is unsuited as a primary criterion” and which “defy surprisingly, this is also the case 13 years later in The Routledge
ascription of communicative purposes” (Swales, 1990: 47). Handbook of Discourse Analysis: the introduction does not
Significantly, most discourse analysts focus on the first three mention the existence of new communication technologies and
types of genres which prescribe roles, settings, registers…—in none of the 46 chapters deals with this topic.
particular the second one—and ignore that texts can also be In my view, most discourse analysts do not pay much attention
created by the invention of original scenographies. to the Internet, probably because their concepts and their
In addition, some categories that discourse analysts use do not methods are poorly adapted to this kind of data. This is
correspond to genres. This hierarchical distinction between the particularly the case for the notion of genre.
components of the enunciation scene—Enclosing scene4Generic As said earlier, genre is structured by a double hierarchy:
scene4Scenography—appears to be insufficient to take into between Enclosing scene4Generic scene4Scenography, on the
account categories such as “interview”, “letter”, “diary”, one hand, and between hypergenre and genre, on the other hand.
“report”…, which cannot be considered to be genres, but rather The problem is that this double distinction is hardly compatible
as “hypergenres” (Maingueneau, 1998) (or “disembedded genres” with the Web. To the detriment of generic and enclosing scenes,
(Fairclough, 2003: 68–70)). They can be used during long periods, on the Web, scenography plays the key role: the main problem for
in different discourse areas, to frame texts belonging to a wide the producers of Websites is the way they stage their commu-
range of genres. The constraints that they impose are very poor; nication. This can be explained by the fact that all units are of the
to categorize a written text as a dialogue, for example, one only same kind (they are “websites”) and are subject to strict technical
needs to stage at least two speakers. constraints. The need to circulate from site to site reinforces this
We can go further by claiming that the universe of discourse is homogenization. Of course, Websites can be divided into main
not a monotonous space where any discourse activity (from categories (blogs, social networks, news…), but these categories
conversation to highly elaborated texts) can occur. On the are not genres in the true sense of the term: they are hypergenres.
contrary, one can claim that some areas have a specific status. For A blog, for example, is generally considered as a “bridging
example, it can be argued that there exist atopic discourses genre” (Herring et al. 2005), which traverses thematic categories
(pornography, for instance) (Maingueneau, 2008), which (personal, institutional, commercial, educational and so on
do not occupy a legitimate place in society. As for “self- (Myers, 2010)). Its communicative properties are minimal: some
constituting discourses” (aesthetic, religious, scientific and so on) being (with a proper name) speaks about him/herself to
(Maingueneau Cossutta, 1995; Maingueneau, 1999) they are somebody who is visiting his/her website. What matters for the
paratopic, in that they must show they both “belong” and at the people who manage blogs is the invention of suitable sceno-
same time do not “belong” to ordinary society. Bordering on what graphies inside the frame imposed by this hypergenre. For
is unspeakable, they must negotiate the paradoxes that such a example, in her study of 80 blogs of French politicians which were
position implies. To found other discourses without being on line in September 2007, Lehti (2011) has distinguished five
founded by them, they must set themselves up as intimately kinds of scenographies: “diary”, “scrapbook”, “notice-board”,
bound with a legitimizing transcendent source and show that they “essay” and “polemic”. By imposing their own scenography, the
are in accordance with it, owing to the operations by which they designers of websites give meaning to their own activity, to the
structure their texts and legitimate their own context. images of themselves and of their addressees, to the relationship
In the following pages I will question another facet of the between them and so forth.
presupposition that the universe of discourse is homogeneous: the Such a transformation also impacts on textuality.Websites can
idea that any utterance (spoken or written) is a text that belongs no longer be reduced to “speech”: they are screen pages, images
to a genre. I think that this postulate can be challenged by taking that integrate texts, pictures, sounds and videos. Whereas the
into account various kinds of data. I shall consider here the classical conception of genres focuses on verbal scenography, on
Internet and what I call "detached enunciation". the Web, verbal scenography is part of a “digital” scenography,
which can be analysed as two inseparable components:

The challenges of the Internet - iconotextual: the site includes images, and it is itself an image,
Paradoxically, now that the field of discourse studies has high limited by the screen;
visibility, the universe from which discourse studies emerged is - reticular: a site is a network of pages and is linked with
vanishing. New communication devices subvert the very distinc- other sites.
tion between orality and writing, and so we have to rethink many
categories: textuality, speaker, addressee, utterance, memory, The very notion of “page” is questioned. A “page” on the Web
storage, circulation, etc. We can no longer consider technology cannot be taken in at a glance: the screen displays only a part of a
as just an element of the “context”: it now needs to be considered whole that cannot be considered as a unity. On most sites, pages
as a true actor in the communication process. Such a are mosaics of heterogeneous modules: ads, slogans, videos,
transformation relates to the data—since the Internet offers quotations, beginnings of articles, diagrams, pictures… Many
new kinds of semiotic productions—but also to the very modules are not autonomous: they are only fragments which,
conditions of research, which depend increasingly on sophisti- when we click on them, give access to other pages of the same site
cated programs and data bases. The problem is that most or other sites. The digital world is increasingly a world of
discourse analysts seem to live in a world where traditional face- decontextualised chunks which can be combined in countless
to-face talk is still the norm of communication. If we consider the ways, independently of a reference to a text totality they would be
handbooks and the articles published in the field, a peripheral role a part of.
is given to corpora produced by new technologies, except if they Even the identity of a page is a problem. What can be seen on
can be tackled by using the toolkit of Conversation Analysis. This the screen exists only at a specific point in time. According to the

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kind of sites we consider, modules can change at any moment: viewpoint which is staged in the utterance (Ducrot, 1984): the
some remain stable for a certain period, whereas others are always enunciator of proverbs, for example, is not the speaker but
moving (the score of a tennis match, the Stock Exchange…). This “popular wisdom” or “common sense”.
calls into question what was considered as one of the main In any society, many “detached sentences” circulate. By
properties of a text: stability. “detached sentence”, I mean a sentence that does not belong to
Researchers often analyse what I call designed textuality (the a text, that is, to a cohesive sequence of sentences. Mottos or
planned production of oral or written texts), as opposed to slogans immediately spring to mind: they are autonomous, that is,
immersed textuality of oral interaction. But the Internet is detached by nature. But many detached utterances have been
characterized by the browsing textuality of hypertexts. extracted from texts, such as maxims, soundbites, titles in
This implies new ways of “reading”, the possibility of passing newspapers, photo captions and so on.
instantly from one “page” to another in an open space. Most of the time the people who detach a fragment modify it,
“Hypertext” has been intensively studied (see for example even when the original text is right next to it. Let us have a look at
Landow, 1994, 2006; Barnet, 2013): it is up to every single user this title of an interview in a magazine:
to make the hypertext he/she is “reading”. Such a practice J. Foster: Once fear has touched you, you realize it’s been hiding
questions an assumption which is at the heart of traditional beneath the surface of daily life
Humanism: the constitutive relationship between one Subject (the Clearly, the content of the detached utterance is not exactly the
author or the reader) and one well-defined text that is already same as the corresponding fragment of the interview:
given, waiting to be deciphered.
The problem is that the conception of textuality that And once that fear touched you, you realize that it’s been
commonly prevails in discourse analysis is implicitly based on there all along, hiding beneath the surface of your everyday
“immersed” textuality in American approaches or “designed” life. (Newsweek, 10 September 2007, p. 64)
textuality, whose core is the generic scene7, in European trends.
Whereas the usual conception of genre implies a map of verbal The ethos of the enunciator is slightly different too: in the title,
activities (the universe of discourse can be divided into various Jodie Foster seems to utter a sort of maxim.
main areas, which in turn can be divided into well differentiated These modifications are quite normal if we assume that
speech institutions and genres), the Web, by giving a key role to detached utterances do not imply the same kind of enunciation as
scenography and hypergenre, implies a “de-differentiation” of usual utterances do, and if we therefore make a distinction
speech areas. On the screen one can see more or less transient between what I call “aphorising enunciation”—or “aphorisa-
images, moving mosaics of modules, nodes in networks, rather tion”—and “textualizing enunciation”. While in “texualizing
than texts that could be anchored in specific places within well- enunciation” speakers produce texts belonging to genres,
defined institutional territories. aphorising enunciations are not texts or fragments of texts, but
I have just evoked a very limited aspect of the Web: the utterances for which the very notion of text is irrelevant.
relevance of the notion of genre. But technical innovations are To this claim that they are foreign to genres and texts,
increasingly challenging our traditional categories. For example, the objection could be raised that aphorisations are part of
our world swarms with messages produced by non-human beings texts: that is, those texts into which they are inserted. Indeed, it
that do not communicate in the usual sense of the term, and that, cannot be denied that aphorisations are always parts of texts, but
strictly speaking, are not speakers. We could instead call them their authority is based on their claiming to be foreign to
“angelic speakers” (Maingueneau, 2014: 195), which cannot exist texualizing enunciation. What matters is the tension between
independently of the production of their utterances. Actually, this their insertion into a text and their constitutive exclusion of
term covers a wide range of distinct phenomena: messages that textuality.
appear on computer screens or displays in airports, stations, Unlike texts, aphorisations are not produced by speakers.
shops and so on, messages that we hear on automatic voice Primary aphorisations (for example, sayings, slogans) are
messengers answering phone calls, messages voiced by G.P.S. basically polyphonic: their responsibility is attributed to another,
devices or automatic checkouts for payment and so on. In these anonymous instance (for example the so-called “Wisdom of
examples, only pre-formatted utterances are produced, but in nations”). Secondary aphorisations, those which have been
other cases complex messages can be generated, belonging to a detached from a text, are not attributed to true speakers, but to
given genre (a written abstract, a weather forecast, a technical aphorisers, who have been created by the very detachment
report and so on.). Some programs write poems or novels. When of the sentence. Aphorisers are supposed to speak independently
we think about it, the invention of writing many centuries ago of any genre and to speak in an absolute way. They are presented
had already offered the opportunity to create a strange kind of as Subjects in full right: in Latin, sub-iectum refers to something
“speaker”: authors, who could for example be fictive, collective, or that does not vary.8 In aphorisations, the linguistic Subject
abstract. coincides with the ethical and legal Subject: by his/her
aphorisation, aphorisers express their values in the face of the
world, without leaving room for an answer. They do not target a
Detached utterances specific addressee, defined by a genre, but a kind of “universal
Aphorising enunciation. From a very different point of view, the audience” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958), the whole
question of “textless sentences” also allows us to challenge the community for which their utterances are supposed to be fully
way notions such as text, genre and speaker are commonly used. meaningful.
This question draws on the perspective of French “enunciative When courts condemn somebody for what he/she has said, as a
pragmatics” (Angermuller, 2014), which gives prominence to the rule they condemn aphorisations, not texts. For example, some
distinction between “speaker” and “enunciator”. While the years ago, the French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was
speaker is the individual, considered as someone belonging to condemned for having said that the extermination of the Jews was
the world outside language, the enunciator exists only through “a detail” of the Second World War. His lawyers objected on the
enunciation: this term refers to the role of appropriating and grounds that this sentence was unduly detached from its context.
setting language in motion during the process of enunciation The problem is that Law needs to judge Subjects, independently
(Benveniste, 1966), or to a being that is responsible for a of any context, and not roles in genres. If you consider a sentence

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within a text, you have no access to a full Subject but to a role Auctors escape it upwards, by converting texts into fragments of a
played inside a genre. higher unit, “Works”. Aphorisers escape it from below: texts are
The distinction between speaker and aphoriser allows us to decomposed into aphorisations. In both cases, the usual notion of
better understand why in posters, newspapers or websites, there “speaker” is not relevant. Aphorisation and “Works” are highly
are often photos close to aphorised utterances of the face of their valued productions of their Subjects, and are foreign to the logic
authors: the journalists are prompted to show the faces of the of ordinary exchange. Through them, speech is taken to a new
Subjects who are responsible for what has been said. Typically, stage: aphorisations are quotations; “Works” re-present texts
the face is the noble part of the body, that which shows the inside a new frame. They do not call for the response of other
identity of the speaker, and not the individual in a particular speakers: they have to be commented on. As detached utterances,
setting: aphorisers are staged as being far from circumstances and they differ from the countless attached utterances, those which
immediate interactions, in contact with transcendent values. are submitted to the logic of text and genre.

Conclusion
Texts that are detached into “Works”. Unlike that of speaker, Discourse analysis, like modern linguistics, emerged in a context
the category of “author” does not really have a status in discourse where ignoring the corpora which had been associated with
analysis. Traditionally, authorship is considered as a topic for traditional hermeneutic practices was a way to position and
literary theorists. Indeed, the notion of “author” questions usual legitimate oneself. By organizing the field around conversations
distinctions: it refers to a being that is not the “enunciator”, that and genres from institutional settings, it gave a relative
is, a linguistic category, nor a flesh-and-blood human being, homogeneity to its data and its toolkit. But I think that we
outside language, but a function that tightly combines agency (X should take a more realistic view of the possibilities offered by
is the cause of an utterance) and a legal dimension (X must discourse analysis, by paying attention to phenomena that
answer for it). To any monologic utterance one must be able to challenge its prevailing routines. In the preceding sections I have
attribute an author, be it an individual, a group or an abstraction. evoked various manifestations of discourse heterogeneity:
Not all kinds of authors are associated with Works. “Works” is
a category that discourse analysts generally ignore, probably - The distinction between conversation and (instituted) genres;
because in their mind it is tightly connected for example with - The difference between various kinds of (instituted) genres;
literature, philosophy or religion. This is surprising if we take into - The existence of self-constituting discourses, which implies that
account the fact that any culture depends on a restricted set of the universe of discourse is not “monotonous”, that is,
major personalities—including the ones that discourse analysis qualitatively undifferentiated;
draws on. “Works” is a unit which brings together a multiplicity - The specificity of the Web, whose functioning is not compatible
of texts that are supposed to express a singular view of the world. with the traditional conception of genre and of textuality;
It is the kind of authorship that Foucault reflects upon in a - Aphorisation, which is not submitted to the logic of text
famous article, “What is an author?” (1969). For the sake of and genre;
clarity, we shall refer to it by using the Latin word Auctor, in - The existence of producers of utterances who are not “speakers”
order to distinguish it from ordinary authors, who are associated in the usual sense of the term: “enunciators”, “aphorisers”,
with definite descriptions: “the author of this letter, this report…” “auctors”, and “angelic speakers”.
Auctors are separated from the multitude of speakers whose - Utterances that have no addressee in the usual sense of
utterances will not enter into collective memory. And among the term.
these auctors very few become “great authors” or “authorities”.
“Great authors” are characterised by the fact that all the types of Indeed, these phenomena do not belong to the same category
their texts can be published: school homework, letters, diaries, or to the same level, but they force us to open up the field of
and so on. discourse analysis. The current mainstream of discourse analysis
Like the notion of aphorisation, that of “Works” pushes gives an illusory centre to discourse and casts to the fringes the
discourse genres into the background. The "Works" of an auctor data which do not fit its usual toolkit. But the universe of
detach the original texts from their original context to give them a discourse is too complex to be represented in this way: it has no
new pragmatic status. As a fragment of the “Works” of an auctor, centre, no fringes.
a text is no longer read as the product of a situated speech activity Discourse analysis must take this reality into account if it does
but as the expression of an extra-ordinary Subject. If, in the not want to be reduced to a set of “qualitative methods” for a
Complete Works of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy, we read some restricted area of social sciences. This implies the acknowl-
letters that they wrote to their friends or some pages of their edgement that all manifestations of discourse are relevant, and
diary, we do not read them as typical of a specific genre but as that one of the key challenges of discourse theory and discourse
fragments of their “Works”. When Jane Austen wrote her letters, analysis is to reflect on the conditions of the heterogeneity of
she was involved in a routine of her social environment; when we discourse.
read them in her Complete Works or in handbooks of English
literature, they are separated from this discourse practice and
referred to in the world’s view because they represent a great
personality and are part of the cultural heritage. As for the
Notes
addressees of texts belonging to “Works”, they are not specified
1 Significantly, in The Routledge Handbook of discourse Analysis (Gee and Handford
by the corresponding genres, but are an undeterminable audience. (eds) 2012) Part III is dedicated to “spoken discourse”, Part IV to “Educational
In addition, like aphorisers, auctors cannot institute themselves applications” and Part V to “Institutional applications”, that is, advertising, media,
as such: this operation requires the intervention of third parties, business, healthcare, Law.
who decide that these or these utterances are worth being 2 For example: Garfinkel, 1967; Cicourel, 1974; Sacks, et al., 1974; Goffman, 1981;
detached from their genres and presented in a new configuration, Gumperz, 1982.
3 Bakhtin, 1986; Luckmann, 1986; Swales, 1990; Charaudeau, 1995; Bronckart, 1997;
referred to as an auctor. Maingueneau, 1998; Adamzik, 2000; Rastier, 2001. Of course, some trends, particularly
As we can see, each in their own manner, aphorisers and the “ethnography of communication” (Gumperz and Hymes (eds) 1972) are at the
auctors are allowed to escape the constraint imposed by genres. crossroads of these two traditions.

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PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.58 ARTICLE

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