Camiciottoli (2010) investigated discourse conjunctive devices in financial disclosure texts.
As multi-functional devices, discourse connectives have provided fertile ground for language researchers, regardless of theoretical orientation, methodological approach or context of analysis.
Although he had no semiotic theory, Wright's view of scientific discourse as a device substituting for useless thought made him sensitive to the role of signs (PD 280).
In their study of referential devices used in discourse in English, Kehler and Rohde highlight the important role that appears to be played by the ways in which sub-parts of a discourse relate to each other the "Coherence Relations" that exist between sentences in connected discourse.
Using the ancient Indo-European poetic device of interrogative discourse, Zarathustra asks, "Who is the original father of arta?
Our analysis enriches the literature on the potential of metaphor as an instrument of cognitive and affective manipulation, a device of strategic discourse, and a tool in shaping public opinion.
The void or vacuum at the heart of a discourse of waste is a powerful device implying the existence of a latent value at risk of going unrealised.
An indefinite like "a donkey" is treated not as a quantifier but simply as device for introducing a discourse referent and one or more conditions; on the DRT account, indefinites have no quantifying force of their own.
Unlike typewriting, a discourse whose rules are determined "by mechanical devices and hierarchies," he writes reassuringly, "computing is a discourse whose rules are determined by the functioning of software and networks".
He carefully lays out fundamentalism's rhetorical devices, its appreciation of prophetic discourse, its sometimes maddening capacity to drag words out of meaningful context, but he never helps us understand why words as such should have this power.
