Discourse analysts come from a variety of intellectual traditions (systemic-functional linguistics, American descriptive linguistics, ethnomethodology, and critical theory among them) and work in a variety of ways. As a result, there is recurring discussion among practitioners about the boundaries that constitute discourse analysis as a field/theory/method in relation to other fields/theories/methods. The following reviews all take up this discussion in treatments of discourse analysis in recent textbooks and other programmatic work. Readers should note that this collection is the result of happy editorial coincidence – Ruth Wodak proposed a review article that came to press about the same time as other book reviews fitting this theme arrived at LiS. It is not the result of a systematic attempt to cover the field, which would require the kind of intellectual boundary-work these reviews report on and represent.