UNIVERSIDAD SANTO TOMÁSVICERRECTORIA DE UNIVERSIDAD ABIERTA Y A DISTANCIA

FACULTAD DE EDUCACIONLICENCIATURA EN LENGUA EXTRANJERA INGLÉS

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (DA)

Prepared by Edgar Lucero

APPROACHES TO DATowards an analysis of discourse

Post-structuralist Discourse (PDA) and Post-feminist Discourse Analysis (PFDA)

PDA PFDAFirstly, it is pertinent to distinguish PDA from CA and CDA. Remember that CA focuses primarily on the patterns of communication in language in use to unveil the social acts that those patterns enact, while CDA studies the social phenomena in terms of the ritual and institutional practices by revealing structures of power and unmaking ideologies. PDA then describes and illuminates, by analyzing and interpreting discourse, how participants of a discursive event are positioned as powerful or powerless by competing in the social or institutional discourse. In other words, PDA seeks for unveiling how an individual is positioned or reposition as powerful by the other(s) in certain moments and as powerless, by the others as well, in other moments throughout a discursive event. The analysis then focuses on how individuals in a discursive event negotiate and shape their subject positions by multiple subjectivities through and within discourse. PDA is outlined by three principles:

1) Scepticism towards universal causes: it refers to the “will to truth” is also a “will to power.” In other terms, the superior knowledge of an individual about the world (a regime of knowledge) enables him/her to hold power over (an) other people (person) and their inferior knowledge. However, the analysis under this principle challenges the positive view of a unique type of knowledge, since in discourse there can be multiple and competing knowledgeable positions in which one piece of knowledge enriches, complements, challenges, and contests any other knowledge.

2) The contestation of meaning: this principle

In this type of analysis of discourse, there are two bases: a vision of feminism, and a vision of post-structuralism, both connected conceptually and pragmatically up against other visions of discourse analysis. Thus, PFDA has a different facet from liberal discourse, essentialist discourse, and social-radical discourse. In other words, PFDA is the counter discourse of the discourse of elites established in CDA. Its main goal is to analyze the discourse in the need to resist and subvert the structures of power from three principles: 1) the functional belief in a universal cause, 2) the notion that the personal is political, and 3) the search for a common voice expressing a cause.

1) A universal cause: the analysis of discourse following this principle seeks for signifying a liberatory knowledge which means making people aware of their subjugation by consciousness raising and equipping freedom from all forms of oppression. The objective is then, from analysis of discourse, to make people be part of consciousness towards human equality, authenticity, self-improvement, democracy, freedom, and social progress.

2) The personal is political: this principle centers on people (mostly female) experiences to gain self-knowledge and give expression to people (mostly female) subjectivity. Therefore, as people gain more knowledge of themselves and their position in a determined context, their power to transform social relations in that context should increase accordingly. This has been more evident in the feminist discourse about the differences between men and women which have

clarifies that there is not a fixed meaning in the competing forms of knowledge since the social/cultural practices are constituted by the struggle to produce, stabilize, regulate, challenge, and resist superior meanings. Therefore, meanings are continuously negotiated and contested through language and discourse. It happens because there is not a meaning by itself, but by its relation with and difference from other meanings.

3) The discursive construction of subjectivity: this principle establishes that in the construction of discourse, human identities are constructed. Therefore, the formation and reformation of identities is a continuous process, accomplished through actions and words and not through some fundamental essence of character. It happens because individuals are always inside cultural and social forces with discursive practices, thus, their identities are determined by them. It means that individuals can have different subject positions in different discursive contexts. In sum, different subject positions in a context create identities that are then revealed through different subjectivities.

constructed varied forms of female consciousness and identity. The main objective of discourse analysis under this principle is to construct a protest against how trivial, irrelevant, sensitive, and threatening a marginalized group is been seen by the power.

3) A common voice: the results of the analysis of discourse under this principle seeks for unifying a group to confront power structures of oppression by making evident its voices, arguments, and demands for change with a common voice. This protest is constructed to penetrate power but to compete with it. The protest is to make power realize what it is to be a subjugated.

Comparative table

Approach Objective ConceptsCA To reveal interactional patterns in communication

in context to unveil social acts.Interactional patters, social acts. (Neutral view of subjectivities)

CDA To reveal the discourse of power over submission. Position, identities.PDA To reveal how an individual is positioned as

powerful or powerless by the others through and within discourse (multiple subjectivities).

Position, subjectivities, identities, voices.

PFDA To reveal the discourse of submission to confront power.

Sex, gender, identities, position, voices.

Examples for PDA and PFDA

PD

A[Whole class discussion]T: Anne?ANNE: If you don’t go to habitat, you can’t survive with just the water and overcoat because… [Joe interrupts]JOE: but you can still go there!REBECCA: YesANNE: not if you don’t have a compassJOE: yes… but if you travel in the day [Some boys reinforce Joe by speaking loudly, the girls have their hands up]T: RebeccaREBECCA: but you can’t be in one place [Boys hubbed Rebecca]T: Hands up, pleaseREBECCA: you need to move and without a compass you can lost…[Damian interrupts]T: DamianDAMIAN: yes yes but you can wait for rescue there [Boys reinforces Damian by speaking aloud but girls laughed at him]

In this extract from a real discursive event, Anne and Rebecca struggle to complete their participations or develop a point of view with girls’ support. It happens because they experience a series of interruptions and distractions from some boys. When Anne has just got her point, she is interrupted by Joe challenging her. Rebecca signals Joe’s point while he succeeds to make it clear. Though Anne agrees too, she is unable to finish her point just until Joe has presented his and now has to follow the conversation from Joe’s point. Again, Joe challenges and defeats her when he receives boys’ support to his point. During this, girls keep their hands up. Teacher supports the girls’ conformity and nominates Rebecca. She then tries to state her point although boys’ lack of support. Damian interrupts and challenges her. Situation that is accepted by the teacher when nominating him. Damian’s point is supported by boys’ speaking but partially challenged by girls’ laughs only.

Conclusions:- Boys are assigned more power in this class by the teacher, other boys, and the submissive role of girls.- Girls are powerless in the right of expressing their points.- Boys are assigned by the teacher and the girls’ acceptance of more knowledge.- Girls fail in competing knowledge to the boys’ since girls’ knowledge is usually challenged more drastically.- Though boy’s points are more accepted, theirs is not fixed since they are partially challenge by the girls’.- Identities: Teacher as mediator and giver of power. Boys as knowledgeable, defeaters, challengers, powerful. Girls as accepters, pointers, and powerless.Subjectivities:Voices:

PF

DA

[Teacher working with flashcards for professions and occupations]T: who is she? [showing a female bus driver]S1: she? Bus driver!S2: pero no, es un hombre!S1: pero una mujer también, mira el dibujo.S2: esta mal!

In this extract the teacher shows a flashcard of a female bus driver. S1, who is a girl, answers based on the picture of the flashcard. It denotes affinity to the picture. However, S2, who is a boy, disagrees with this picture and answers by inferring that bus driving is a male profession. The girl immediately restates her perspective affirming that it is not a profession exclusively for men. The boy does not agree either, by affirming now that the mistake is in the picture as well.

Conclusions- The girl takes a stand against male position of dominance in the action of bus driving as an exclusive profession for males.- The girl, though doubting at the beginning, liberates women by standing that they can also perform that profession of bus driving as perfectly well as men.- The girl makes clear to the boy that it is completely suitable for a woman to drive a bus, and she makes it clear by the affirmation that the picture in the flashcard displays. - The girl’s defiant sentence makes clear her position of protest against boy’s comment.- Though the girl defies the boy, she is not stating that that profession cannot be done by a man, as the boy does, but also by a woman. Identities: Voices:Gender acts:

References

Baxter, J. (2002). Competing discourses in the classroom: a post-structuralist discourse analysis of girls’ and boys’ speech in public contexts, in Discourse and Society 13 (6): 827-842.

Baxter, J. (2003). Positioning Gender in Discourse: A Feminist methodology. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan.

Castañeda-Peña, H. (2008). Interwoven and competing gendered discourses in a Pre-school EFL lesson, in Harrington, K. et al (eds.). Gender and Language Research Methodologies. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, pp. 256-268.

Creese, A. (2005). Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual classrooms. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.