(I have been working on a paper—book?—that proposes extending Discourse Analysis along the vector of Event Theory, trying to push against the paradigm of linguistic analysis by recontextualizing language as one form of meaning-making—of affecting—among many. Here’s a piece…)

How do you stop Event Analysis from collapsing into simply “Analysis”? Maybe the trick is you don’t. Maybe Event Analysis is as specifically broad as it is specifically in order to wrap it’s fingers around the reality of meaningful inter- multi- and transdisciplinary research. In this way, going broader than the already-broad and powerful paradigms of discourse analysis allows us to fold, not just different types and modes of discourse into our inquiries but also other forms of method tuned and attuned to the realities and dynamics of different kinds of event.

A methodology of this flexibility could prove to underpin meaningful collaboration across disciplines in ways similar to the powerful confluences attached to work that draws on theoretical paradigms such as Psychoanalytic and Actor Network Theory, and methodological paradigms such as Discourse Analysis, while shedding the last remnants of a linguistic privileging that dog the latter: in respectful disagreement to Stuart Hall, there is meaning outside of language, it just might be meaning of a different, more complex order.