Representation and Discourse Analysis

Transcription

1 Representation and Discourse Analysis Kirsi Hakio Hella Hernberg Philip Hector Oldouz Moslemian Methods of Analysing Data

2 Schedule 09:15-09:30 Warm up Task 09:30-10:00 The work of Reprsentation (Stuart Hall) 10:00-10:30 Video + Discussion 10:30-10:45 Break 10:45-11:15 Discourse (Sara Mills) 11:15-12:00 Text + Discussion

3 Warm-up Task Mental maps are shaped by our own history and context. We are able to communicate because we share broadly the same conceptual maps and thus make sense of or interpret the world in roughly similar ways.

4 THE WORK OF REPRESENTATION Stuart Hall

5 REPRESENTATION Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people. Representation connects meaning and language to culture. Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. Representation is part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It involves the use of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things.

6 REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language

7 REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language The system by which all sorts of objects, people and events are correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations. It consists not of individual concepts, but of different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them. Concepltual Maps.

8 REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language Our shared conceptual map must be translated into a common language, so that we can correlate our concepts and ideas with certain written words, spoken sounds or visual images. Signs: General term we use for words, sounds or images that carry meaning. Signs include: writing system (Indexial), spoken system, visual (Iconic). Non linguistic signs such as, facial expressions or of gesture, language of fashion, traffic lights, etc.

9 REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language CODE Code sets up the correlation between our conceptual system and our language system Codes stabilize meaning within different languages and cultures.

10 REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language CODE The meaning is constructed by the system of representation through the linkage and relation between things, concepts and signs. There is no absolute or final fixing of meaning.

11 SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language REPRESENTATION CODE

12 SYSTEMS System of Concepts System of Language CODE REPRESENTATION Reflective Intentional Constructionist THEORIES

13 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist

14 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist Meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world. Greeks used the notion of mimesis : simply reflecting or imitating the truth that is already there and fixed in the world is sometimes called mimetic.

15 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist It is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language. Words mean what the author intends they should mean.

16 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist We construct meaning, using representational systems-concepts and signs. It recognizes the public and social character of language. It is social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning.

17 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist All signs are arbitrary: Arbitrary means that there is no natural relationship between the sign and its meaning or concept. Meaning is relational : It means that signs themselves cannot fix meaning. Instead,meaning depends on the relation between a sign and a concept which is fixed by a code. It introduces the symbolic domain of life: words and things function as signs.

18 REPRESENTATION THEORIES Reflective Intentional Constructionist Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Michel Foucault Discursive

19 CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORY Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Language, a system of signs Structure of language signifier langue signified parole Michel Foucault Discursive

20 Language, a system of signs Structure of language signifier langue signified parole Language is a system of signs. Sounds, images, written words, paintings, photographs, etc. function as signs within language only when they serve to express or communicate ideas. The combination of signifier and signified. Signifier: The form, the actual word, image, photo, etc. Signified: The idea or concept in your head with which form was associated. Both are required to produce meaning but it is the relation between them, fixed by our cultural and linguistic codes, which sustains representation.

21 Language, a system of signs Structure of language signifier signified langue parole INTERPRETATION If the relationship between a signifier and its signified is the result of a system of social conventions specific to each society and to specific historical moments, then all meanings are produced within history and culture. Not a fixed meaning and always subject to change: No true meaning. The constant production of new meanings: new interpretations. Meaning has to be actively read or interpreted.

22 Language, a system of signs Structure of language signifier langue signified parole Langue: The underlying rule-governed structure of language, which enables us to produce wellformed sentences (the language system). Parole: Acts of speaking or writing or drawing, which - using the structure and rules of the langue - are produced by an actual speaker or writer. Saussure regarded the individual speech-act or utterance (parole) as the surface of language.

23 Language, a system of signs Structure of language signifier langue signified parole STRUCTURALIST The structure of rules and codes (langue) was the social part of language, the part which could be studied with the law-like precision (Scientific). We are born into a language, its codes and its meanings. Language is therefore, for Saussure, a social phenomenon.

24 CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORY Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Michel Foucault Discursive This general approach to the study of signs in culture, and of culture as a sort of language is generally known by the term semiotics. Since all cultural objects convey meaning, and all cultural practices depend on meaning, they must make use of signs; and be amenable to an analysis. In semiotic, not only words and images but objects themselves can function as signifiers in the production of meaning.

25 CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORY Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Michel Foucault Discursive denotation connotation Denotation: The first level, a descriptive level where consensus is wide and most people would agree on the meaning. Connotation: The second level, the signifiers are connected to broader themes and meanings, linking them to the wider semantic fields of our culture. the level of Myth.

26 CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORY Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Michel Foucault Discursive How human beings understand themselves in our culture and how our knowledge about the social, the embodied individual and shared meanings comes to be produced in different periods. Representation as a source for the production of social knowledge Production of knowledge (rather than just meaning) through discourse (rather than just language).

27 SYSTEMS THEORIES System of Concepts System of Language CODE REPRESENTATION Reflective Intentional Constructionist Ferdinand de Saussure Linguistics / Semiology Roland Barthes Semiotics Michel Foucault Discursive Language, a system of signs Structure of language denotation connotation signifier langue signified parole INTERPRETATION STRUCTURALIST

28 VIDEO: The surprising pattern behind color names around the world Example of a connection of language and culture, and how language is used to represent the world. Arbitrary concepts and collections of letters Mutual agreements of fixed codes Is the model of representation valid?

29 VIDEO: What are cassette tapes Ability to interpret requires access to systems of representation Generations and shifting connotations of words Things don t inhere meaning The aspect of time and development stages of society

30 Photo: Wikimedia Discourse Sara Mill, 1997

31 What is discourse?

32 What is discourse? The term discourse is widely used and has a wide range of possible significations Meanings range from linguistics through psychology to philosophy Foucault is one of the most important theorists on discourse. Central to his thinking are aspects of power, knowledge and truth

33 Some theorists make a distinction between spoken and written language as discourse and text (F.ex. Crystal 1987) But, others understand it differently.

34 Social context of discourse: F.ex. Leech and Short emphasize the communicative aspect of discourse : discourse is seen as transaction between speaker and hearer: interpersonal (communication) activity with a social purpose. Text is seen simply as a message either spoken or written.

35 The institutional nature of discourse and its situatedness in the social is central to all different perspectives of discourse : Discourse is: enacted within a social context determined by that social context contribute to the way that social context continues its existence (Macdonnell 1986)

36 Michel Foucault is one of the most important authors in discourse theory. Foucault focuses on: discursive structures and rules that regulate what can be said and what is counted as knowledge or meaningful. historical perspective, how discourses change over time, and how different types of discourses exist simultaneously having different rules/structures.

37 Discursive structures

38 Discourse is rule-governed and internally structured Discourses as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak (Foucault 1972) F.ex. Archeology: uncovering the support structures which make things meaningful at a certain time and place, not about looking for truth

39 Discursive structure: systematicity of ideas, opinions, concepts, ways of thinking and behaving which are formed within a particular context. the rules and structures of discourse are shaped by its internal mechanisms seen as support mechanisms, which are both intrinsic and also extra-discursive and socio-cultural.

40 Structural elements The episteme: the sets of discursive structures as a whole within which a culture thinks The statement: those utterances / text that make some sort of truth-claims and which are ratified as knowledge Discourse/discourses: a set of sanctioned statements / a set of rules and procedures for the production of a discourse Archive: the set of discursive mechanisms which limit what can be said, etc. (episteme vs archive?) Exclusions Circulation (Foucault)

41 (T)here is no intrinsic order to the world itself other than the ordering which we impose on it through our linguistic description of it. (Foucault 1981)

42 (T)here is no intrinsic order to the world itself other than the ordering which we impose on it through our linguistic description of it. (Foucault 1981) Foucault is not denying that there is a reality (of objects, nature, etc) but that we can only create meaning of it through discourse. Example of non-european plants and Linnean typologies

43 Discursive limits and exclusion within discourse Exclusion: limits what can be said, what can be counted as knowledge F.ex. geographer vs. the archeologist Architecture language vs. design language

44 Examples of exclusion: Prohibition or taboo - such as death or sex in different times

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46 Examples of exclusion: Prohibition or taboo - such as death or sex in different times Discourse of those who are considered insane, thus not rational What can count as a statement and thus part of a discursive framework: division between knowledge that is perceived to be true or false

47 Internal mechanisms that keep (academic) discourses in existence: 1. Commentary: keeping texts in circulation this has an effect on which texts are seen worthy of publication and which ones remain in print 2. Academic discipline determines what can be said and regarded as factual within a given domain what methods, forms of propositions, arguments, etc are considered to be true

48 Foucault: the disciplinary structures exclude more propositions than they enable. --> challenge of interdisciplinary work

49 Discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis

50 2 approaches: Discourse analysis developed within linguistics: analysis of the functional structures of language above the level of the sentence Critical discourse analysis, based on Foucault s work: a political analysis, concerned with power-relations

51 Discourse analysis Developed within linguistics analysis of the structures of language above the level of the sentence language in use / real, naturally occurring language concerned more with the functional value, rather than meaning, of words or utterances, within the larger discourse

52 Criticism towards discourse analysis: does not concern itself with social relations does not concern the power relations between participants, questions of interpretation, or whose view of what the function of a particular item is taken by the analyst

53 Critical discourse analysis (CDA): A political analysis of text, based on Foucault sees language as a form of social practice Investigates how societal power relations are established and reinforced through language use Emerged in 1970s, Norman Fairclough as one of the most prominent figures Relates structures of text or talk to structures of the sociopolitical context.

54 RIOTING BLACKS SHOT DEAD BY POLICE AS ANC LEADERS MEET - The Times 1975

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56 Criticism towards critical discourse analysis: It is complicated Tends to suffer from the same theoretical problems as discourse analysis; for example, viewing the text as a product, assuming that language items have a single meaning which all analysts can agree on. Assumption that powerful participants simply dominate discursively Assuming a simplistic relation between linguistic form and function, for example that the choice of the passive voice within a text results in a particular type of meaning.

57 3-dimensional framework for studying discourse (Fairclough) three separate forms of analysis onto one another: 1. analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, 2. analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) 3. analysis of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice

58 Video: What is critical discourse analysis?

59 Exercise: Read the text and think of these questions: What kinds of attitudes, ideals, values etc. are reflected in the choice of words? What community is the speaker part of? What is the form of the text? Does it include passage borrowed from other discourses? What norms and traditions of the related institution or culture are reflected in the text?

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