Discourse

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Latest revision as of 13:18, 24 October 2012

The term discourse has become one of the key terms in the vocabulary of the humanities and the social sciences. For within the human sciences this term is becoming embarrassingly overloaded and more likely to induce confusion than any clarity it might originally have been set to produce (Cousins and Hussian, 2010). The most common explaination of the term discourse is that it is a temporal perpective or an important subject of debate and talks for a while. The definition of the word discourse concerning the oxford dictionary is: written or spoken communication or debate.

The term Discourse is explained and used in various ways:

• In discourse analysis: A generalization of the concept of conversation within all modalities and contexts.

• The language used in a certain given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice, such as legal discourse, medical discourse, etc.

• In the works of Michel Foucault, he describes it as 'an entity of sequences, of signs, in that they are enouncements (énoncés)'.

When looking at the type of discourse of Foucault, an important note has to be added. Many people think discourse is not as 'free' as one might expect: the society you are in determines a lot about your discourse. About what you should say or even about what you are prohibeted to say. "I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality." - Foucault This above line says a lot about the difference between the way Discourse is interpreted by Foucault as opposed to other views.

Example: How emerges a discourse?

“The rise in the water level is a material fact. But as soon as people try to ascribe meaning to it, it is no longer outside discourse. Most would place it in the category of ‘natural phenomena’, but they would not necessarily describe it in the same way. Some would draw on a meteorological discourse, attributing the rise in the water level to an unusually heavy downpour. Others see it as one of the many global consequences of the ‘greenhouse effect’. Some might see it as a manifestation of God’s will, attributing it to God’s anger over a people’s sinful way of life or seeing it as a sign of the arrival of Armageddon”(Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 9). Thus discourse emerge if someone ascribe meaning, talks and debate over a certain subject.

From language to discourse: Foucault's discourse

Michel Foucault, as a so-called anti-foundationalist (anti-foundationalism), does not believe that there is some fundamental belief or principle which is the basic ground or foundation of inquiry and knowledge (Rorty, 1979). Thus, knowledge is an inherent social construct, which implies that we as human beings actually create discourses regarding e.g. societal issues (Foucault, 1961). Foucalt was therefore a constructionist just like the semioticians. But instead of studying language (like the semioticians do) he was studying discourses and the the production of meaning and knowledge trough discourses (Hall, 1997). Concerning to Foucault a discourse is a combination of reasoning whereby a subject is put in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by the written and spoken text about a subject and has a lot of power in marking what is normal and what isn't. The 'powers' that hold discourses on their place are called exclusion mechanisms (Foucault, 1961) . So not the language itself but the discourse as a systems has to be studied (Hall, 1997).

Enouncement

But what is very important in the discourse of Michel Foucault is that it is created by enouncements. An enouncement is not a unit of semiotic signs, but an abstract construct that allows the signs to assign and communicate specific, repeatable relations to, between, and among objects, subjects, and statements. (M. Foucault (1969) L'Archéologie du Savoir. Paris Éditions Gallimard) As stated above a discourse is composed of semiotic sequences between and among objects, subjects and statements.

See Discourse (vs. Language) for more information

References

• Cousins, M. & A. Hussian (2010) Foucault and Discourse. found on 17-10-2010 at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/discours.htm
• Foucault, M. (1961) Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. Found on 16-10-2010 at http://www.fss.uu.nl/wetfil/96-97/foucault.htm
• Foucault, M. (1969), L'Archéologie du Savoir. Paris Éditions Gallimard
• Foucault, M. (1971). "Orders of discourse." Social Science Information, 10: 7.
• Hall, S., Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices (Sage, Londen 1997)
• Jørgensen, M.W. & Phillips, L. (2002). Discourse analysis: as theory and method. Sage, London
• (Oxford dictionaries. Found on 16-10-2010 at www.oxforddictionaries.com
• Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the mirrow of nature. Priceton, NJ: Princeton University Press

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