Maria Stern
Introductory Note
- The following is a basic, general overview of approaches and tools used in critical discourse analysis.
- It is important to remember that there is no single way to do discourse analysis.
Theoretical Underpinnings
- Discourse analysis usually coincides with a constructivist way of thinking.
- That is, those using this method typically believe that the relationship between reality and language is socially constructed or that language produces reality and/ or provides access to reality.
- To do discourse analysis is to question the production of meaning/ 'reality.'
- There are competing versions of the world.
- Discourses are considered systems of representation in which meaning is constructed through difference among other things.
- How you delimit your study is dependent upon what you want to find out. That is, which 'discourse' are you looking for?
Helpful Guiding Questions
- How is it that this particular story appears instead of another?
- What is taken for granted?
- Why does it make sense?
- What holds the story together?
- How can you (as a researcher) make the familiar strange?
- What are the underlying assumptions?
- What is left out? / What are the ghosts?
Important Theorists
- Fairclough offers a systematic way of coding and is commonly referred to in the literature. However, discourse analysis doesn't have to be so technical.
- Foucalt: genealogy
- Derrida: deconstruction
- Laclau and Mouffe
An Example of Discourse Analysis: The History of Sexuality by Foucalt
- In this text, Foucalt uses genealogy to question the seemingly 'natural' assumptions of the social world.
- In doing so, Foucalt identifies contingencies or things that could have gone differently / choices that were made.
- He also analyzes specific historical relations of power.
- Foucalt also asks how the discourse constitutes it's objects. As well as what are the modes of objectification, what are the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion; and what are the discursive strategies?
Conclusions / General Observations about Discourses
- Regimes of power overlap.
- Discourses strive for cohesion. In other words, people want their stories to make sense.
- Most good stories 'cover up' all of the discursive strategies in play.
Practical Steps in Discourse Analysis
1. Choose your text(s) and delimit them.
> This is related to your research question and your theoretical underpinnings.
2. Map the representations.
> What are the dominant representations?
> What are the limits of the representations?
> What representations are repeated?
> What picture is being drawn?
> What are the lines of distinction?
3. Analyze the construction of the discourse.
> What is uniting/ differentiating?
> What are the dominant, normal understandings?
> What are the underlying assumptions?
> What signs are so normalized that it is difficult to recognize them?
> How are signs given meaning in relation to other signs?
> How are subject positions allotted/ defined/ delineated?
> What is excluded/ silenced?
> How are myths employed?
> What are the nodal points or main themes that organize the discourse?
> What are the master signifiers?
> What happens when and if you take a nodal point out and replace it?
Deconstruction, Derrida
- Deridda suggests that one should first conduct a double reading.
> Opposition relies on illusion.
> Seeks to reveal the process of construction.
> This has to do with hierarchies in language which are written through violence.
- A double reading consists of brings out the assumptions of the main story and reinstating the binary with a reversal.
> This helps determine the condition of possibility. In other words, when you speak about a man, the conditions of possibility are everything else.
> The 'other' is defined as not 'us' and vice versa.
- Derrida also suggests that one look for the points of condensation or where arguments and values are brought together.
> One should also look for 'ghosts' or silences.
How can you validate a discourse analysis?
- By asking if it makes sense.
- Above all, a discourse analysis must be systematic and explicit.
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