A discourse is an instance or occurrence of linguistic activity, of what in Saussure's terminology is ‘parole’. For most purposes, the term is synonymous with text, , although they may be contrasted in the sense that discourse designates the dynamic, text designates the static aspect of ‘parole’.

Taxonomy

1. Mode of discourse: spoken vs. written
2. Genre: classes of discourse that correspond to certain standard communicative goals, typical of specific speech communities.
3. functional style, degree of formality ...

Discourse genres cross-cut the modes.
A genre tends to reflect an underlying genre schema. It has a meronymy of its own in that it may be composed of passages of certain types.

Meronymy

1. Global discourse structure: composed of passages: major component of a discourse, of paragraph size.
2. Local discourse structure: composed of elementary discourse units, of clause or sentence size.

Passages have their own taxonomy. The following types may be distinguished.

1. narrative
2. descriptive
3. expository
4. argumentative
5. instructive.

Reference

Kibrik, Andrej A. 2011, Reference in discourse. Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory); ch. 1.4.