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The diversity of modes of discourse and the development of sociological knowledge

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Summary

This paper presents an analysis of the structure of contemporary sociological knowledge in terms of a theory of scientific discourse. The concept of ‘discourse’ is introduced as a theoretical refinement of the concept of ‘paradigm’ and is applied to the classes of knowledge claims of the natural and social sciences. It is concluded that general modes of scientific discourse are definable in terms of their vertical differentiation from everyday discourse, while particular modes of sociological discourse are additionally definable in terms of their horizontal differentiation. A classification is then proposed which identifies three modes of sociological discourse: natural, technical and formal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Sociology, The University of Alberta, T6G 2H4, Edmonton, Canada

    Nico Stehr & Anthony Simmons

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  1. Nico Stehr
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  2. Anthony Simmons
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The authors greatly appreciated and benefitted from a critical reading of an earlier draft of the paper by Karin Knorr, Helga Nowotny and Peter Zernitz.

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Stehr, N., Simmons, A. The diversity of modes of discourse and the development of sociological knowledge. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 10, 141–161 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01809032

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