Language and Society – Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies

Discourse Studies is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of discourse analysis, especially articles that offer a detailed, systematic and explicit analysis of the structures and strategies of text and talk, their cognitive basis and their social, political and cultural functions. It specifically also publishes studies in conversation analysis. The journal was established in 1999 by Teun A. van Dijk.

Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific example of such a system.

A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.