Information AboutDiscourse |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT DISCOURSE | |
| discourse analysis | |
| semantics | |
| sociolinguistics | |
| anthropology | |
| political philosophy | |
| social philosophy | |
| philosophical concepts | |
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS In Semantics , ''discourses'' are linguistic units composed of several sentences — in other words, Conversation s, Arguments or Speeches . The study of discourses, or of language used by members of a Speech Community , is known as Discourse Analysis . It looks at both language form and function, and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It is a cross-disciplinary field, originally developing from Sociolinguistics , Anthropology , Sociology and Social Psychology . THE SOCIAL CONCEPTION OF DISCOURSE In the '', discourse is also composed of architectural ''dispositifs'', such as Jeremy Bentham 's '' Panopticon '' or the map of a classroom, etc. A ''dispositif'' is "a resolutely heterogeneous assemblage, containing discourses, institutions, architectural buildings architecturaux'' , reglementary decisions, scientific statements, philosophical, moral, philanthropic propositions, in one word: said as well as non-said dit aussi bien que du non-dit'' , those are the ''dispositif'''s elements. The ''dispositif'' in itself is the network that we can establish between those elements." According to Foucault, discourse can't be reduced to an Ideological reflexion, it is to be thought as itself a ''Kampfplatz'' or battlefield. Against Kant 's conception, Foucault argues that truth is not the objective bounty that the winners can take; truth is not an Absolute , it is on the contrary produced in this battle with strategic aims. This conception of truth may be related to Althusser 's theory on the "epistemological break" between science and ideology (the "epistemological break" is not an event, but a process; "science" always has to fight for its truth against ideology, which keeps coming back). Since truth and power are intrinsically related, according to Foucault, he can thus say that power relations are Immanent to discourses, whereas in the classic Marxist conception, the discourse is conceived as the ideological Superstructure - which, of course, interacts with the infrastructure, as did Marx always write, but this doesn't impede the power relations being essentially located in the economic infrastructure, afterward reflected in the superstructure. Furthermore, as he showed in ''Society Must Be Defended'' (1976-77), discourse is not anyone's property and thus has no Essentialist meaning. The same discourse may change political sides quite often, being reappropriated and endlessly modified, as did Foucault show in his Analysis Of The Historical And Political Discourse ; there is a "polymorphic tactics" of discourses. In other words, specific discourses are not tied to the Subject ; rather, the subject is a Social Construction of the discourse, or, as Nietzsche said, a "grammatical fiction". Judith Butler would maintain this ambivalency of discourse, which can be ''performed'' in various contexts by different subjectivities. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS See Also: Critical discourse analysis Norman Fairclough 's books, ''Language and Power'' (1989) and ''Critical Discourse Analysis'' (1995), are the origins of the term, which designs an interdisciplinary approach to the study of texts. It views "language as a form of social practice" and attempts "to unpack the ideological underpinnings of discourse that have become so naturalized over time that we begin to treat them as common, acceptable and natural features of discourse" ( Peter Teo 2000). This analysis is founded on the idea that there is unequal access to linguistic and social resources, resources that are controlled institutionally. In terms of method, CDA can generally be described as hyper-linguistic or supra-linguistic, in that practitioners who use CDA consider the larger discourse context or the meaning that lies beyond the grammatical structure. This includes consideration of the political, and even the economic, context of language usage and production. This approach is explicitely influenced by Althusser, Foucault or Pierre Bourdieu 's analysis, in order to examine ideologies and power relations involved in discourse. Fairclough notes in a foucaldian statement "that language connects with the social through being the primary domain of ideology, and through being both a site of, and a stake in, struggles for power" (1989: 15). MISCELLANEOUS In Computational Linguistics practice, a discourse may lightly refer to a cohesive piece of text, such as a newspaper article or a book paragraph. SEE ALSO
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