Discourse

Foucault, 1972
The interplay of the rules that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge: Translated from the French by AM Sheridan Smith. Pantheon Books, 1972:33

Lupton, 1992
A group of ideas or patterned way of thinking which can both be identified in textual and verbal communications and located in wider social structures.

Lupton D. 'Discourse analysis: A new methodology for understanding the ideologies of health and illness'. Australian Journal of Public Health 16: 145–50. 1992:145

Wood and Kroger, 2000
All spoken and written forms of language use (talk and text) as social practice.

Wood, Linda A., and Rolf O. Kroger. Doing discourse analysis: Methods for studying action in talk and text. Sage Publications, Incorporated, 2000:19