Robert-Alain de Beaugrande (1946– June 2008) was a text linguist

Text linguistics

Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems. Its original aims lay in uncovering and describing text grammars. The application of text linguistics has, however, evolved from this approach to a point in which text is viewed in much broader terms that go...

 and discourse analyst

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event....

, one of the leading figures of the Continental tradition in the discipline. He was one of the developers of the Vienna School of text linguistics, and published the seminal Introduction to text linguistics in 1981, with Wolfgang U. Dressler

Wolfgang U. Dressler

Wolfgang U. Dressler is an Austrian professor of linguistics at the University of Vienna. Dressler is an eminent scholar who has contributed to various fields of linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, text linguistics, clinical linguistics and child language development...

. He was also a major figure in the consolidation of critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are visible in text and talk....

.

De Beaugrande served as professor of English linguistics at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

 from 1991 to 1997, Professor of English Language at the University of Botswana

University of Botswana

The University of Botswana, or UB was established in 1982 as the first institution of higher education in Botswana. The university has four campuses: two in the capital city Gaborone, one in Francistown, and another in Maun. The university is divided into six faculties: Business, Education,...

 in Gaborone

Gaborone

' is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 191,776 based on a 2006 survey, about 10% of the total population of Botswana....

, Professor of English and English Linguistics at the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

 at Gainesville

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

, and later as visiting professor in several universities in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Robert De Beaugrande was born James "Jim" Shoemaker in Missoula, Montana, USA in 1946. His father was Theodore Shoemaker, a professor of Spanish, and his mother was Eunice Julie Shoemaker (1918-2003), whose union produced two children, James and his sister Ellen Rosalie Shoemaker (1944-2003). James Shoemaker attended the University of Montana in Missoula from 1963 to 1966.

External links

• Home page (archived, containing many of his original works)