Discourse analysis (DA) is a general term for number of approaches to analysing language use, regardless of production form (e.g., writing, speaking, signing). The term discourse analysis first entered general use as the title of a paper published by Zellig Harris in 1952. Harris' method was more of an expansion of grammatical analysis than what is now commonly thought of as discourse analysis, and as a result this portion of his work is now largely neglected, other than the title itself. Thus, most discourse analysts following Harris have conducted work that falls under the heading of “pragmatics” in modern linguistics, rather than “syntactics,” though many discourse analysts would reject linguists’ tripartite division of the main characteristics of language--the third characteristic being "semantics."