Discourse analysis has continued to develop since the 1960s. The idea that multiple discourses coexisted in time, and that historians might usefully consider what gave these “languages” their meanings, their expression or social enactment, was only slowly accepted. For many historians, such questions seemed to distract historical inquiry from its “real” (empirical) task of uncovering the past and to carry historical research away from social reality and toward an obsession with the mere form of historical representation. Foucault appealed to many historians, however, because he suggested possible links between discourse and specific social institutions. The work of other critics such as Derrida or Barthes, by contrast, seemed to focus much more on the internal problems of texts and writing.