Discourse

Discourse

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD

Studying political communication can be difficult, particularly since such studies cut across various different disciplines and many different schools of thought. One of the fundamental questions you’ll probably face is this: how do the things that people say and do affect society at large, and how does society in turn influence people? There are many theories on how these processes work, ranging from rational choice approaches to arguments influenced by Marxism. In this post, I will introduce you to one influential approach, called discourse theory.

What this theory is about, and what a discourse actually is, is not always easy to understand: sociologists and political thinkers have developed whole systems of philosophy around this term, often in conflict with one another, and researchers deploy a multitude of tools to analyse discourse. This post is meant to help you if you are new to the field and want to get your bearings. I will introduce several definitions of discourse, and will discuss how they relate to various theoretical concepts. In the process, you will meet the key founder of this approach, Michel Foucault, as well as important researchers who work in the field. You will also get a better grip on the sometimes “jargony” key terms, like genealogy or multimodality. And of course I will also share my own views on discourse theory with you. If you are simply looking for a quick overview of the topic, then thisvideo introduction may be useful to you.

Definitions: Discourse is…

“the use of language” (Chilton 2004: 16)

“anything written or said or communicated using signs” (Fillingham 1993: 100)

“the flow of knowledge through time” (Jäger 2004: 129; translation FS)

“talk and texts as parts of social practice” (Potter 1996: 105)

“social cognitions, socially specific ways of knowing social practices”  (van Leeuwen 2008: 6)

What is discourse?

In everyday language, the word discourse usually means conversation or discussion. However, to scholars, discourse is far more than this. Discourse can encompass all forms of communication.

More importantly, it suggests that the truths that we live by are not simply “out there”, to quote the X-Files, but that we create those truths through our interactions. This is a controversial thing to assume, particularly if you are scientific realist who is interested in exploring the natural world and finding facts through scientific tools. Discourse theory is therefore often associated with a postmodernism and its skepticism of the natural sciences.

Personally, I do not think that discourse theory is anti-scientific, and in fact think that there are many parallels to cognitive science, but that is a discussion for another post.

In the side-box, you can see how some of the leading experts explain discourse. Take a look at these different definitions. You may have already noticed a few elements in these quotes that are at odds with one another, and I’ll come back to some of the controversies in the field in a moment. Let’s first see what ideas discourse theorists generally share.