week2-what-is-discourse-analysis

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What is Discourse and What is Discourse Analysis

Discourse is  a set of vocabulary about a particular field of knowledge that is created by social interactions within social institutions.

Video Lecture Notes:

Lecture Notes

Definitions of Discourse

• Definition 1 — Discourse as language use: Any form of language use manifested as text of talk-in-interaction, in a broad semiotic sense.
  • Letter example: In short, a letter can carry meanings of formality and occasion, commitment and lastingness, seriousness and legality. These meanings are cultural, made familiart through the many experiences of being part of a society.
  • Meaning: There is no fixed one. There are different tools and perspectives for mining a specific and different meaning.
• Definition 2 — Foucault’s notion of discourse: “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about - a way of representing the knowledge about - particular topic a particular historical moment… is about the production of knowledge through language. since all social practices entail meaning, and meanings shape and influence what we do - all practices have a discursive aspect.”
  • the production of knowledge:
  • social practices as carriers of meaning: revolutions as historical and discursive break points — French revolution and it’s social practices in relation to previous historical context
  • Discourse analysis as exploration of social knowledge:
    • understanding a writer’s intention (hermenuetics) vs explaining a linguistic form in context (discourse analysis)
      • Discourse analysis: “I am not interested in what your intention is. What were the conditions when you were writing? In which institutional context that led you to write this?”
  • Example — the social construction of mental illness (Foucault 2001): “consider, first, the difference between the terms ‘mad’ and ‘mentally ill’, and second, how the categorization of people as mentally ill inevitably involves a chain of connections. THe authority of the experts who can ascribe such catefories is linked to a justification for treating supposedly mentally ill people in certain ways, the traditions and institutions which provide the ‘knowledge’ underpinning the justification and the power structures and institutions through which the treatment is administered.”
    • How discourse about “mental illness” got into use, what changes it made in social-perspective
    • Mentally ill as someone “cureable”
    • Defining normality and abnormality
    • Creating social institutions for curing and exclusions of mental illnesses (birth of the clinic)
• In linguistic sense, a word is always related to (a) symbolic meaning(s) — which is very much socially constructed
  • yet, some of these relations are more effective/groundbreaking for society, and some of them are not; some are powerful like gender/nation/sexuality/beauty , some are not like cotton/stone/water…
• Indexicality: An index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object.
  • Index
  • Icon
  • Symbol