The concept of “discourse” as applied in discourse analysis is wider than the generally accepted sense of the term, referring solely to the linguistic aspect of communication. As used by Foucault, discourse refers to all forms of utterance that are perceived as inherently understandable in a given society, thereby constituting its “reality”.(1) This also includes all kinds of practices extending beyond speaking – the conventions of body language, for example, as investigated by gender research, and also instructional order structures. Discourse analysis helps us to become aware of these conventions, “to take the ‘magic’ out of reality, and reveal it as constructed, and therefore able to be changed(2). According to Foucault, the task of discourse analyses was “not (or no longer) to treat discourse as a set of signs [...], but to discuss it as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.”(3)
Language is nonetheless assigned a prominent position. In discourse analysis. The concept of “statement” refers not to the linguistic unit of the proposition, nor the logical unit of the argument, but solely to the occurrence of particular propositions at their particular time and in their particular power context.(4) In this sense, Foucault understands the action of speaking as a social act of constructing reality, which is not reducible to the intentional action of speakers, but is rather formed by institutionally established rules and order structures of discourse.(5) The central question for the description of a discourse event is: “How did it come about that a particular statement occurred, rather than another in its place?”(6)
Foucault describes discourse as a set of disparate statements occurring at different places, but formed according to the same pattern or system of rules. They can therefore be assigned to the same discourse, and as practices they constitute the subject-matters of which they speak. The goal of discourse analysis is to elicit these structures and order systems.
One of the benefits of discourse analysis for the research field of the Institute for Art Education is to allow the systematic analysis of modi operandi of education actors that are perceived as “natural” and generally go unquestioned, making them all the more powerful. Discourse analysis focuses on symbolic order structures, dominant language rules and representation conventions.
In methodological terms, “discourse analysis” is a collective term for various disciplinary complexes, mainly within the social, historical and linguistic sciences, ranging from linguistically based discourse research, to be understood as a broad interdisciplinary field of speech and text analysis as “research on language in use”, to sociology of knowledge approaches (cf. Rainer Keller), historical discourse analysis (cf. Sarasin 2003) and on to critical discourse analysis (cf. Siegfried Jäger 2009 and Jürgen Link 1993)(7), which aims to be a form of engaged research (to name just a few of the key strands). All these research perspectives are united by not using discourse analysis as a method, regarding it rather as a “broad subject-matter domain, an investigative programme”(8). Or in the words of the historian Philipp Sarasin: “Instead of seeing discourse analysis or discourse theory as a method that can be ‘learned’, I see it as a theoretical, perhaps even a philosophical, attitude.”(9)
The lack of a methodology for discourse analysis is a challenge for researchers. Accordingly, it can be difficult to determine precisely what constitutes discourse in the context of a particular issue, and how the researcher finds that discourse or its elements, or what criteria can be used to decide where that discourse begins or ends. Notwithstanding the wide variety of questions raised by discourse analysis and the resulting modi operandi, efforts have been made within various disciplines to describe the individual steps in the discourse analysis process. One such formulation of possible investigative steps, finding a topic, then forming a corpus, through to analysis procedures for texts, has been proposed by Achim Landwehr for historical discourse analysis, while also providing potentially useful guidance for research in other domains.(10)
(Anna Chrusciel)
1 Cf. Keller, Reiner: Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms (Sociology of knowledge discourse analysis. Foundations of a research programme), 3rd edition, Wiesbaden, 2011.
2 Keller, Reiner: “Diskursanalys” (Discourse analysis), in: Hitzler, Ronald; Honer, Anne (eds.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Hermeneutik (Hermeneutics in the social sciences), Opladen 1997, p. 328.
3 Foucault, Michel: Archäologie des Wissens (Archaeology of knowledge), Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 74.
4 Ruffing, Rainer: Michel Foucault, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008, p. 53.
5 Keller, Rainer: Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms (Sociology of knowledge discourse analysis. Foundations of a research programme), 3rd edition, Wiesbaden, 2011.
6 Foucault, Michel: Die Hauptwerke (Major works), Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2008, p. 501.
7 A summary of the topology of the various conceptions of discourse is provided in Keller. Taking Foucault as starting point, Keller compares Foucault’s original ideas with approaches, further extending these in discourse research, specifically the concept of discourse used in cultural studies and the political studies discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, Rainer: Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse (Sociology of knowledge discourse analysis), 2011, p. 99.
8 Ibid, p. 325.
9 Sarasin, Philipp: Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse (History and discourse analysis). Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003, p. 8.
10 Landwehr, Achim: Historischer Diskursanalyse (Historical discourse analysis), 2008, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 100–131.