Heading south! Importing discourse analysis

2000

This study evaluates the development of a discursive approach to social psychology in terms of this discipline's most pressing metatheoretical question: what is the relation between the individual and the social in social psychology? This question is illuminated through a discussion of traditional cognitive approaches to social psychology as well as postmodern critiques of the discipline, after which the discursive approach is introduced to address shortcomings in both these perspectives. The discursive approach incorporates a key insight of recent developments in the philosophy of language, namely that language is not primarily referential, but constructive of our experiences and relationship to reality. By taking seriously both the performative or rhetorical and the abstract-systemic characteristics of language, discursive social psychology addresses the traditional issues of individualism and the reduction of the social on two levels: first, as it is revealed in especially traditional cognitive approaches to social psychology; and secondly, as it supports a set of specifically Western cultural values that reproduce cultural and political practices and power imbalances. Discursive social psychology is subsequently presented as a definite advance with regard to providing richer conceptions of social-cognitive processes and the socio-cultural foundations of psychological phenomena. Despite this there are also important limitations that should be taken into account before discursive social psychology is imported to South Africa as a critical alternative: the focus on language goes along with a negation of the materiality and embodied nature of experience. Because experience cannot be pre-reflexively psychological meaningful, discursive social psychology remains to develop a theory of agency that indicates how criticism, resistance and change is possible. Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za I would like to thank the following people for their continued support throughout this project, and throughout my academic career as a whole. My supervisor, Ms WH Theron, for having given me complete academic freedom in the conceptualisation and completion of this project. She also facilitated and made me aware of various other opportunities that this research made possible along the way, such as publishing and attending an international conference. These, more than the research itself, are the things that create in one a feel (and feeling) for the academic game, and for that I have to thank her. My parents I have to thank for getting me to university in the first place, and supporting me throughout even though at times it probably seemed that I was never going to finish. Their generosity, love and support are things I cannot repay. I can only be grateful and say so. I am no good at doing it any other way, so I'll just write it here. My years as a student have been glorious. Without Deidre it would have been a lot less. I was fortunate in this too.

This book presents post-Marxist theoretical approaches towards social critique and offers discourse analytical tools for critical research. How is a normative critique possible? The author, working at the crossroads of sociological discourse analysis and social philosophy, answers this question and others to show how empirical discourse research can be used to develop normative critique of societies. Divided into three major sections, Herzog introduces the reader to the theoretical approaches to critique, provides tools for normative evaluations of social structures, and finally offers practical examples of theoretical concepts. The book will be of interest to those working in the fields and subfields of discourse analysis, poststructuralism, hegemony theory, cultural political economy and critical theory, with an interdisciplinary orientation.

Annual Review of Critical …, 2006

He had me go through the gamut of outdated tests, the Rorschach blots and blobs, squiggles and various I.Q. examinations. Naturally I was never informed about any of his deductions. I was the guinea pig. These perverted practitioners of the spurious science of psychology do not have as their first priority to help the prisoner who may be in need of it. They are the lackeys of the system. Their task very clearly is to be the psychological component of the general strategy of unbalancing and disorienting the political prisoner. (Breytenbach, 1984, p. 90) The above quotation is drawn from an account by the well-known South African poet and artist, Breyten Breytenbach, of his seven-year incarceration as a political prisoner under the apartheid regime. What makes it interesting in this context is that Breytenbach articulates precisely the institutional and political entanglements, along with the subsequent abuse of power, that mainstream psychology is so often accused ofand which it so glibly evades by declaring itself scientifically and thus politically neutral. But what is perhaps even more telling about Breytenbach"s account is that, even though his experience is steeped in the particular history of apartheid South Africa, it will be immediately recognisable to psychologists and the public almost anywhere around the world. Like the vocabularies and practices of marketing and public relations, psychology in some form or other has achieved an almost global reach over the last century.

Responding to critiques of 'Including social discourses and experience in research on refugees, race, and ethnicity', and providing suggestions for future work in discursive psychology, this article expands upon the complex and dynamic character of research in socioculturally informed social science. Through a better understanding of experience and an awareness of broader social discourse, one is able to consider verisimilar ontologies, which are fundamentally socio-linguistic phenomena. It is important to understand the value in using discursive psychology's analytical practices; however, an awareness of the need to expand upon such practices is necessary in order to better understand how experience is cultivated in dynamic and rhythmic co-regulated social constitution. Future research should endeavor to develop techniques that are not necessarily formulaic, but are still examinable for the purposes of determining good versus bad work.

2017

The Yale Journal of Criticism, 2004

Este artigo examina a relação entre etnografia e análise de discurso. Começa delineando a variação considerável nos tipos de trabalho que se abrigam sob um desses termos. Similitudes e tensões entre essas abordagens são assim investigadas. O que tem sido descrito como a 'recente crítica radical de entrevistas' é usado como um modo de explorar as orientações colidentes de alguns tipos de etnografia e análise de discurso. Esta avaliação crítica está fundamentada em argumentos que podem ser encontrados dentro da etnografia, mas também têm sido motivados por algumas formas de análise de discurso. Na parte final do texto, sugere-se, que há boas razões para qualificar os argumentos construídos na crítica radical e que o valor da prática analítica discursiva é mais bem compreendida dentro de uma visão etnográfica menos restritiva. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: discurso, etnografia, entrevistas. * Uma primeira versão deste artigo foi apresentada em um seminário na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais da Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdã, Holanda, em outubro de 2004. Agradeço aos participantes naquele seminário e, especialmente, ao Harry van den Berg, por suas contribuições à minha reflexão sobre estas questões. Unido. Sua pesquisa inicial foi em sociologia educacional, no entanto, a maior parte de seu recente trabalho está relacionado a questões metodológicas em torno de pesquisa educacional e social. Atualmente, dedica-se a dois projetos de pesquisa, respectivamente, um relacionado com a representação de resultados de pesquisa na mídia de massa e o outro com a natureza de comunidades de pesquisa. Seus mais recentes livros

2003

V And thanks to Mary for being Mary, my breadwinner and source of inspiration. But more important, mi companera. I suppose I owe you a lifetime's sobriety, but you can pay me the whisky back in eternity. I'm not sure what I should thank Sadie and Jamie for, but I'd better mention them anyway. Lastly for my father; and for my mother, who died while I was writing this: "If it's for school, I'll payfor it. " viii 5.3 The NRDDB Constitution. 161 5.4 The Iwokrama Act of Guyana. 5.5 The legal construal of participant roles as part of the wider social context. Chapter Six. Textual Analysis: Utterances and the Context of Situation. 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Analytical methods. 6.3 Textual analysis: Iwokrama-dominated discourse. 6.3.1 Description and interpretation of Text 6.1. 6.3.2 Explanation of Text 6.1 in the wider sociocultural context. 6.4 Textual analysis: Turning the immediate. 193 6.4.1 Description and interpretation of Texts 6.2 to 6.6. 6.5 Conclusion: Explanation of Texts 6.1 to 6.6 in the wider social context. Chapter Seven. Textual Analysis: Genre and the Context of Institution. 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Methods of analysis. 7.3 Textual analysis: Bringing the context closer to home. 7.3.1 Clause structure. 7.3.2 Mode and the contextualisation of discourse. 231 7.3.3 Field and the representation of reality. 7.3.4 Mood and conjunction. 7.3.5 Tenor and the construction of face relations. 7.4 Explanation of Texts 7.1 and 7.2 in the wider social context. 243 7.4.1 Texts 7.1 and 7.2 in terms of institutional constraints. 7.4.2 Texts 7.1 and 7.2 in terms of perturbing the status quo. 7.5 Conclusion.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a theory and method of discourse analysis that focuses on the study of the dialectical relations between discourse and social, cultural, and political developments in different social domains. CDA makes a distinction between the discursive and the nondiscursive in social life, albeit accounting for exchange between the two realms. It views written, spoken, and visual (and other forms of multimodal) discourse—language use in speech, writing, and visuals (and other forms of modality)—as an important form of social practice that contributes to the constitution of the social world, including social identities and social relations, and that is in turn constituted by social practices such as the structure of the political system or the institutional structure of the media. Hence in CDA, discourse constitutes social practice and is simultaneously constituted by it (Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, & Liebhart, 2009, p. 8). The aim of CDA is to shed light on the discursive dimension of social and cultural phenomena and processes of change in late modernity. CDA builds its understanding of language on Halliday's (1978) systemic-functionalist approach, according to which language systems and language use are deeply connected to fulfill social functions. The meanings delivered through language can offer information on the social foundations of language. The theoretical premises of the approach go back to Althusser's theory of ideology, Bakhtin's game theory, and in particular the Western Marxist tradition ranging from Foucauldian poststructuralism to the philosophical traditions of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School. Theory and basic assumptions The influence of the Frankfurt School and Jürgen Habermas is particularly visible in studies that employ CDA. CDA's employment of the term " critical " as in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School assumes that research should produce knowledge that will help in the emancipation of humans from various modes of domination (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 7). Hence the word " critical " in critical discourse analysis does not mean negative as understood in the common sense, but implies the need to challenge common knowledge that is taken for granted. Such a theoretical standing leads to a focus on the role of language in power relations, processes of exclusion, racism, inequality, and identity-building in works that place themselves under the CDA umbrella. CDA adopts an emancipatory mission for radical social change geared toward empowering oppressed groups. In doing that, it aims to uncover obfuscated structures of power