Discourse: an Object of Research or a Research Construct?
We suggest a new approach to discourse, according to which it is a construct that emerges when describing a language in the process of its functioning when language structures correlate with a text/utterance. At the same time, the conditions due to which these correlations are possible, and these relations themselves are explicated. These conditions and procedures can be designated as a discourse. As relationships or functions, they combine various aspects of speech activity. Since these aspects are not material spheres, but abstractions, the relations between them can be represented in the form of such an abstract object as a semiotic borderline, defined by analogy with the mathematical one - as a set of lines whose points belong to both adjacent sets. But this analogy can also be interpreted biologically - then this borderline appears as a membrane, and the relations between different domains become lines not only of the connection but also of the interpenetration of the elements and rules of one area into another.