Robert-Alain de Beaugrande (1946– June 2008) was a text linguist and discourse analyst, one of the leading figures of the Continental tradition in the discipline. He was one of the developers of the Vienna School of Textlinguistik (Department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna), and published the seminal Introduction to Text Linguistics in 1981, with Wolfgang U. Dressler. He was also a major figure in the consolidation of critical discourse analysis.
De Beaugrande served as professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna from 1991 to 1997, Professor of English Language at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Professor of English and English Linguistics at the University of Florida at Gainesville, and later as visiting professor in several universities in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Robert De Beaugrande was born James "Jim" Shoemaker in Missoula, Montana, USA in 1946. His father was Theodore Shoemaker, a professor of Spanish, and his mother was Eunice Julie Shoemaker (1918-2003),[1] whose union produced two children, James and his sister Ellen Rosalie Shoemaker (1944-2003).[2] James Shoemaker attended the University of Montana in Missoula from 1963 to 1966.