Discourse and Genre in Everyday Texts

Letters to the Editor are an important research site
to investigate social dynamics of specific groups
because they are created by discourse producers with
status and authority different from the elites
holding and exercising socio-political control. This
real-life material includes community concerns and
personal relations, thus bringing the private
or subjective into the public sphere and showing
what is valued in situated communities. This
original and comprehensive book explores an everyday
genre using data from two countries which have
produced few studies on these discourses and even
fewer comparisons. It examines its subject through
the looking-glass of a postrationalist proposal,
Autopoiesis theory, which has been barely used in
this area of the Humanities. Its method of Discourse
Analysis incorporates analytical tools from
Pragmatics, Cognitive Linguistics and Discursive
Psychology. This text is intended for scholars and
university students working with discourse from a
multidisciplinary approach and searching for
connections that integrate the biological,
cognitive, and social dimensions of life.

Autorentext

Sol Rojas-Lizana, BA(Hons) U. Cape Town; MA, PhD. U. Queensland. Associate Lecturer at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. Sol's research interests include: (critical) discourse analysis, autopoiesis theory, (applied) cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, politeness studies.

Klappentext

Letters to the Editor are an important research site to investigate social dynamics of specific groups because they are created by discourse producers with status and authority different from the elites holding and exercising socio-political control. This real-life material includes community concerns and personal relations, thus bringing the private or 'subjective' into the public sphere and showing what is valued in situated communities. This original and comprehensive book explores an everyday genre using data from two countries which have produced few studies on these discourses and even fewer comparisons. It examines its subject through the looking-glass of a postrationalist proposal, Autopoiesis theory, which has been barely used in this area of the Humanities. Its method of Discourse Analysis incorporates analytical tools from Pragmatics, Cognitive Linguistics and Discursive Psychology. This text is intended for scholars and university students working with discourse from a multidisciplinary approach and searching for connections that integrate the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of life.