The modern scientific approach considers discourse as the major form of daily vital practice of a human being and defines it as the complex communicative phenomenon, including a part from the text, extralinguistic factors (knowledge of the world, opinions, settings, aims of the addresser), necessary for understanding the text.The word discourse creates a few difficulties of being in the joint of a discipline like Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology, Criticism, Etnography etc. Nowadays it has been developed and it began to exist as an independent discipline.

Discourse analysis focuses on the structure of spoken language as in conversations, interviews, commentaries and speeches.

The theory dates back to antique rhetoric and only in the middle sixties of the twentieth century began to develop and to exist as a field of study, being introduced by linguistic researchers in courses of Linguistics.

Linguistic researchers found great interest in explaining the language at its communicational level, to study language at all the spheres of human activity expressed through the text.

The term first appeared as lingustics of text, but many scientists considered it unsuitable and replaced it with the word discourse. At those times, and even nowadays, the term was not explicitly defined. In English vocabularies the word has the meaning of: to speak about or to hold forth on. Linguistically it represents language and linguistic structures above the level of a sentence.

In discourse analysis we refer to those elements which are seen to be rule-governed and systematic, but which do not occur at the level of a word or a phrase.

Discourse analysis focuses on the spoken level of the language as found in conversations, interviews, commentaries and speeches. In the case of text analysis it focuses on the structure of the written language as in essays, notices, road signs and chapters.

Both terms can be used synonymously, the only difference between them being their function. Discourse has a social purpose, whereas text fulfills the function of conveying a meaning.

The written form of language called text has a non-interactive form of information, having only the function of conveying meaning whilst, on the contrary, discourse is interactive, it can be involved in two ways of conversation, that of formal and informal language.Discourse can be seen as a linguistic communication between a hearer and a speaker, while text is also a linguistic communication, which can be either written or spoken, being seen as a message coded in its auditory and visual medium.

Both forms have something in common, because both use the medium of language and both try to convey a meaning.

In comparison with discourse, texts have a limited scope. Discourse can be cathegorized in the system of a language, while text only deals with the written form of language.

Henry Widdowson, professor of Linguistics argued upon this topic and said that a text is made up of sentences that have a property of grammatical cohesion and it deals with cohesion.

Discourse uses such sentences and it is made up of utterances with coherent property, investigating coherence.

Texts are terms that denote a physical product; in exchange, discourse is the process of it. Meanings are not to be found in texts, discourse carries them, by being derived through the readers interaction with the text.As a final conclusion, discourse analysis includes all the studies which investigate the supra-sentential structure of any language, being that spoken or written, whereas text analysis usually leads to confusion. The word text should be eliminated, unless it is used to refer to a physical arrangement of linguistic signals on paper.

References1. Widdowson, H, G, Text, Context, Pretext, Blackwell publishing, Oxford, 2004, pg.1-172. http://www.rusnauka.com/9_KPSN_2011/Philologia/3_81911.doc.htm3. http://www.slideshare.net/cupidlucid/discourse-analysis-presentation-7103334. http://www.faculty.ksu.edu.sa http://www.rusnauka.com/9_KPSN_2011/Philologia/3_81911.doc.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/cupidlucid/discourse-analysis-presentation-710333

http://www.faculty.ksu.edu.sa