Discourses and Discourse Analysis

Varieties of Discursive Analysis

A concern with the role of discourse can be identified across a wide range of disciplines within the social and human sciences (e.g. sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, social psychology), and as a result a variety of approaches to the analysis of discourse have emerged. Although all of them emphasize the importance of processes of discursive construction in the organization and management of social life, they differ in the emphasis they place on different aspects and dimensions of these processes. For example, some discourse analysts are particularly concerned with the ways in which institutional discourses are implicated in the maintenance of power relations within a society, for example by obscuring or mystifying power inequalities (e.g. Wodak, 1996; Fairclough, 1995), thus taking a ‘critical’ approach to the analysis of discourse. Others are more interested in the micro-level processes associated with the use of discourse in relatively mundane, everyday conversations (e.g. Schegloff, 1968; Drew and Heritage, 1992) and their role in creating and maintaining the social worlds that speakers inhabit; this approach is referred to as ‘conversation analysis’ (see Toerien, Chapter 22, this volume). Another approach, perhaps best described as ‘socio-linguistic’, involves the close examination of the ‘language behaviour’ of different social groups in order to understand the differences between them and their implications for social (and power) relations (e.g. Labov, 1966; Tannen, 1990). Yet another way of studying the role of discourse involves the examination of cultural representations (see Winter, Chapter 17, this volume), for example in the media (see Hodgetts and Chamberlain, Chapter 26, this volume), and the ways in which they make available and thus perpetuate shared meanings. Here, the focus is upon ‘the production and circulation of meaning through language’ (Hall, 1997:1) and its role in the production of ‘culture’. There is also narrative analysis (see Esin et al., Chapter 14, this volume) which is concerned with the structure, content and function of the stories people tell about their experiences, in terms of both their social impact and their psychological effects (e.g. Riessman, 1993; Mishler, 1995). There are many ways in which researchers have addressed questions about the role of discourse in social life, and in this chapter we are going to examine in more detail only one of these. However, Wodak (1996: ch. 1) provides a helpful historical overview of a range of perspectives on the study of discourse.

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