Second-Week Post on Discourse Analysis

To write about the methodology for me is the most challenging attempt in social sciences. I have been reading various resources on discourse analysis (DA) and conversation analysis (CA) that can be classified in terms of their orientations and articulations. In this post, I am going to discuss some of them including our readings in order to articulate the trajectory of discourse and conversation analysis. When we look at the definition of discourse, it is really hard to find one and clear definition of discourse. In order to define it, there are many concepts that are necessary to be defined and elaborated. For example, Philips and Hardy (2002, pp. 3-11) defined it by giving reference many concepts like reality, meaning, social reality, data, qualitative etc. “They defined a discourse as an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception, that brings object into being (p.3)”. It is a clear that the concept of discourse could not be defined without giving a reference to philosophical, methodological and theoretical concepts.

System / Structure Related Concepts	Agent / Subject / Act Related Concepts	In Between
Ideology	Act	Power
Hegemony	Certainty	Truth
Language	Position	Meaning
Structure	Art	Reality
Order	Aesthetic	Dialogical
Langue	Parole	Forming
Encoding /Coding	Encoding / Coding	Dialectic
Construction /Deconstruction	Perception / Reception	Change
Formation	Interpretation	Struggle
Objective	Subjective	Intersubjective
Ontological	Epistemological	Methodological
Grammar	Texts	Intertextuality
Social Rules	Talks	Normativity

As you see in this table, there are many concepts related with the practices and interpretations of discourse and conversation. These are not enough to define and debate the discourse as a methodological ground / home, but they might help us to get “a coherent framework” to be aware of our philosophical, theoretical and methodological differences and similarities among the approaches (Jorgensen and Philliphs, 2002 p.4).

            To make my way of thinking is more visible and graspable, I would like to ask some practical and technical questions like

1.     “how language is used in a certain context”

2.     “how language is acted in a certain context”

3.     “how language is presented in certain acts”

4.     “how speech acts are thematized in both langue and parole in certain contexts”

5.     “how truth could be accessed in a certain context”

6.     “how non-discursive could be defined with / without being discursive” 

Reference:

Jørgensen, M., & Phillips, L. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage Publications.

Phillips, N., & Hardy, C. (2002). Discourse analysis : investigating processes of social construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.