Approaching Discourse Semantics: Differences and Similarities Between Sydney School and European Continental School

Traditional semantics looks into the meaning of words and sentences and has developed full-fledged theoretical frameworks.But this branch seldom explores effective approaches to big texts or discourses.In fact, the meaning of big text or discourse orients human communications to their real goal, for the text or discourse is a social process we live by.Therefore, to explore big texts and develop theories and analytical frameworks are focuses of contemporary discourse analysts and discourse semanticists.In this paper, we review discourse-semantic studies done by Sydney School and European Continental School in the aspects of their theoretical foundations, masterpieces, and their frameworks.Then on the basis of the analytical framework of "one paradigm", "two veins of texture", "three meta-functions", "four veins of meaning", and "five perspectives" developed by Wang Zhenhua (2009), we explore the similarities and differences between the two schools in terms of research paradigm, research objective and research focus.We then come to some tentative conclusion that these two schools are complementary in discourse-semantic studies.