Discourse as the object of philosophical and linguistics studies

The article deals with the ways philosophers and linguists reflect the topic of discourse. In the first part, the conception of the discourse as the theoretical construct is characterized. The next parts are devoted to discourse analyses as they were developed by linguists, semioticians and philosophers in the sixties and seventies. The works of Emil Benveniste, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are put in the foreground. As for Foucault’s archeological method, this attempt to find rules of the autonomous discourse led to an impasse. The last part of the article draws the research line of the critical discourse analysis and shows its philosophical inspirations.