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Focus Unit 5:
• The phenomena Language, Language as a (tangible,
physical) symbolic system for communication
• Language as a window to the mind (internal
representations of the world)
• Language mediates experience
• People mediate experience by means of language
• ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’: with the words and sentences
we leave the domain of language as a system of signs
and enter into the another universe, that of language
as an instrument of communication, whose expression
is discourse
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[SEMANTICS]
the study of meaning
• Popular expression: “It’s a case of mere
semantics”
To capture and study the intangible process of
meaning [and its negotiation] we have to work
on the level of language
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“Down the rabbit hole”
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Introducing Discourse
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Language as social practice:
Realities = Social Practices
(action & experience)
Represented in Discourse
Construction of a reality
language mediates experiences, people
behind messages (the sender) mediate
experiences through language
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The study of discourse
• Language as a means of constructing realities.
• Unit of analysis for this: Discourse.
• Discourse as actual instances of communication in the
medium of language.
• Discourse as “socially constructed knowledges of some
aspect of reality” (Foucault)
• Discourse analysis offer the possibility of understanding
how language permeates human affairs.
• Discourse= an extended stretch of connected speech or
writing, a text.
• Discourse Analysis: the analysis of an extended text, or
type of text
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[Socially constructed knowledges]
• These knowledges have been developed in specific social contexts,
and in ways which are appropriate to the interests of social actors
in these contexts
• Contexts: large ( e.g. a company, the socialistic ideology) or small
(e.g. family, between best friends) or institutionalized (e.g. mass
media).
• Discourses are resources for representation, knowledges about
some aspect of reality, which can be drawn upon when that aspect
has to be represented.
• Frameworks for making sense out of things
• Plurality of discourse: there can be several different ways of
knowing -and hence also of representing- the same ‘object’ of
knowledge. Different ways of making sense of the same aspect of
reality, which can include or exclude different things, and serve
different interests.
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[Socially Constructed Knowledges]
• Evidence for the existence of a given discourse
comes from texts, from what has been said or
written.
• More specifically it comes from the similarity
between the things that are said and written in
different texts about the same aspect of reality
• It is on the basis of such similar statements,
repeated or paraphrased in different texts and
dispersed among these texts in different ways,
that we can reconstruct the knowledge which
they represent
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e.g. Discourses about Animals
1. Animals as living creatures, cute creatures,
pets. They have feelings (anti abuse of
animals)
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Animals as petsAnti abuse of
Animals
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Animals as delicious food
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Totem power of Animals
• Evoking the spiritual power of animals
(shamanic cultures)
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Properties of Discourse (1)
1. Discourse are finite:
• “ Discourse contain a limited number of
statements (Foucault, 1977)
• (‘’) Bits of knowledge are shared between many
people and recur time and time again in a wide
range of different types of texts and
communicative events, even if they are not
always formulated in the same way and not
always complete.
• (‘’)But, once you know a discourse, a single part
of it can trigger the rest…
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Properties of Discourse (2)
2. Discourses have a history
3. Discourses have a social distribution (=discursive
formation)(belong to a certain relating theme:
e.g. ‘animals as pets’ is not the same theme as
‘animals as food’)
4. Discourses can be realized in different ways (can
be realized through action (e.g. animals have
feelings  anti animal abuse attitude) or
through the representation of such way of life
(e.g. being a vegetarian)
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Social constructed?
• There is a relation between discourses and social
activities
• Understanding is ultimately based on doing, our
understandings derive from our doings. But
discourses transform these practices in ways
which safeguard the interests at stake in a given
social context.
• DiscourseDoing: What? Why? Plus ideas and
attributes
• Actual example: Status Aparte: LGO?
UPG?influences the social act voting
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Discourse  Doing: What? Why? Plus ideas and attributes
Ideas and attributes:
1. Evaluations: a value
2. Purposes
3. Legitimating: reasons why particular things
should be done in particular ways, by
particular people, etc.
– (advertising, political discourse  the art of
persuasion )
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The Anatomy of Discourse (1)
• Actions: the things people do, the activities that make
up the social practice and their chronological order
• Manner: the way in which (some of or all of) the
actions are performed. (e.g. slowly, energetically,
graciously, based on anger)
• Actors: people (also animals) involved in the practice,
and then different roles in which they are involved (for
instance active and passive roles)
• Presentation: is the way in which actors are dressed
and groomed. All social pratices have their rules of
presentation, although they differ in kind and degree of
strictness
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The Anatomy of Discourse (2)
• Resources: the tools and materials needed to enact a social
practice
• Times: Inevitably social practices are timed, they take place at
certain times, and they last for certain amounts of time
• Spaces: the spaces where the social action takes place,
including the way they should be arranged to make the
practice possible
•
•
In reality all these elements must be part of the way a social practice is actually
enacted. But texts/discourses may include only some of them, and so do the
discourses on which these texts draw their content. Knowledge is selective and
what it selects depends on the interests and purposes of the sender(s) (institutions)
that have foster the knowledge
Being critical literate is being aware of this fact!
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Social practices represented in Written
texts:
• Written texts include only 2 elements of the
social practice, the actions and the medium
through which they are realized.
• Not represented are the writer and the reader,
and the circumstances of writing and reading
–time, place and grooming etc-
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How is reality changed into discourse?
4 basic types of transformation of reality:
1.
2.
3.
4.
•
Exclusion: discourses can exclude elements of social practice
Rearrangement: Discourses can rearrange the elements of social
practices, for instance when it ‘detemporalizes’ elements which in reality
have a specific order, or when it imposes a specific order on actions
which in reality do not need to take place in any specific order
Addition: discourses can add elements to the representation (purposes,
evaluations, legitimations)
Substitution: discourse substitutes concepts with other concepts
Being critical literacy is being aware of the strategies that
are applied in order to construct reality
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Assignment:
• The social construction of women in different ads during the 70’s, 80’s,
90’s and now etc.
• Please look at the following ads and answer the following questions:
– Which of parts that constitute a social practice (components of the
anatomy of discourse) are present in the following discourse practice?
(Identify and elaborate on each part that is present in this specific
discourse practice) (see sheets 19 en 21)
– What is the underlying message? (if you could describe the message in
a couple of statements , what would these statements be? (the
message is not always explicit, this can be discursive present in the
discourse)
– How is the woman being socially constructed in this discourse?
– What does the ad tell us of the social context it is embedded in? What
does it say about the gender roles? What is the relationship between
women and men? (history, culture, social convention, political context
etc.)
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