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In Teun van Dijk (ed.), Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 1996, 35-62.?The Story of Discourse Analysis ?Robert de Beaugrande?In the mid-1990s, providing a ‘user-friendly’ introductory survey of the research trends which have contributed to discourse analysis is a tough problem. My solution is to ‘tell a story‘ highlighting the main ideas that have helped or hindered discourse analysis, crediting projects or researchers only for illustration. Many citations and references are found elsewhere.1 A. ‘Science’ as map-makingIn the popular ‘story of science’, scientists observe things in the real world and then describe or explain them accurately, steadily piling up more facts and marching on toward the final truth. A more accurate, though less dramatic, story would tell of scientists drawing a series of maps for a rugged and periodically shifting terrain that is not located in the ‘real world’ of ordinary experience yet is connected to it in ways the scientists determine. This terrain requires specialised methods for observing, describing, or explaining. Each map fits the vision of its makers and the intentions of its users, putting some features or places into sharp perspective and ignoring others, just as ordinary maps look different if they show roads, climates, altitudes, or mineral deposits. No scientific map is ever final or complete, just as no ordinary map ever becomes identical with the terrain.Again like an ordinary map, a scientific map gets tested by seeing how well it helps people find things. The natural sciences make maps of a sparse terrain — one that can be disconnected from the rich and messy world of ordinary reality. Looking at the world around us and the society we live in, we do not see the forces and particles of physics, or the compounds and polymers of chemistry, or even the cells and neurons of biology. But these sciences give us reliable maps revealing these things in the underlying order of reality, and give special instruments