From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdiscursivedis‧cur‧sive /dɪsˈkɜːsɪv $ -ɜːr-/ adjective formalCHANGE FROM ONE THING TO ANOTHERdiscussing many different ideas, facts etc, without always having a clear purpose
a long, discursive article —discursively adverbExamples from the Corpusdiscursive• Rich's novels are circling and discursive.• Now their conversation was discursive and jokey.• For a humanreader a discursivenaturallanguagedefinition is a more sensibleformat.• Derrida himself is interested in the tensioncreated between discursive play and history.• But such analyses do not take the discursive power of historical and social relations seriously enough.• This will involve a study of differences in kinds of knowledge and discursivepractices.• Hemingway's short sentencesderive their power from their revolt against earlier, more discursivestyles.Origindiscursive(1500-1600)Medieval Latindiscursivus, from Latindiscursus; → DISCOURSE1
