Books

“For democracies, controlled at least in theory by citizenries, the key questions have been whether and in what measure corporate activities in pursuit of profit have promoted the public interest; and can citizenries, acting through elected governments, establish rules and regulations capable of ensuring that profit-seeking does not harm citizens and undermine the public good” (p. 27).

“The discourse of social organization is a discourse that produces its own conditions of circulation as well as the conditions for circulation of all other discourse — a matrix of interactions in which culture is nourished and grows. Without it, there could be no circulation. With it, discourse flows and the universe comes to life, not only as something the eye sees, but also as something the mind comprehends” (p. 27).

“The discourse-centered approach to culture is founded on a single proposition: that culture is localized in concrete, publicly accessible signs, the most important of which are actually occurring instances of discourse” (p. 1).

“The processes that result in phenomenal textuality — what we have come to call the simultaneous processes of ‘entextualization’ and ‘co(n)textualization’ — are the central and ongoing practices within cultural orders. To equate culture with its resulting texts is to miss the fact that texts (as we see them, the precipitates of continuous cultural processes) represent one ‘thing-y’ phase in a broader conceptualization of cultural process” (p. 1).

“…the papers demonstrate a commitment to a discourse-centered approach to the language, culture, and society relationship” (p. 1).

“Discourse is part of ongoing social and cultural behavior. It is embedded in a concrete context shaped by actors pursuing multifarious goals… It is the active manifestation of both language and culture. Yet, simultaneously, it is also the creator of language and culture, which, otherwise, subsist in a purely individual mental realm” (p. 13).