Critical discourse analysis

348SAM Lecture 2

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348SAM Managing Change

L2: Concepts & Language: Discourses

23 January 2018

Dr. Tina Bass

[email protected]

348SAM Lecture 2

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Dr. Tina Bass

Deputy Head of School of Strategy & Leadership, Coventry University

External Examiner, Aston University, Plymouth University, Nottingham Business School

Guest Lecturer

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348SAM Lecture 2

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Lecture 2

348SAM

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Concepts and Language: Discourses

My background

Love of language

Interest in people

Poet

Book of conversations on the syllabus at Loughborough University

HE Manager of 130+ academics and through them some 2700 students

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At the end of this lecture you will:

• Be able to explain what discourses are
• Be able to explain why this understanding is important to business students/future managers
• Be able to apply some basic techniques to analyse/assess discourses (both written and spoken)

Learning Outcomes

Prepares you for cw 1

I was really excited when I first read about discourses and became fascinated both by the academic theory and the application of the theory to everyday life.

Flag that I am going to concentrate on written discourses but that spoken discourses are very common too.

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• Performing a discourse analysis upon a piece of text is the focus of coursework 1. But you need to know what a discourse is before you can analyse it!
• Discourse/discourses/discourse analysis are messy terms.
• You might want to start by thinking of discourses as ‘taken-for-granteds or ‘unspoken assumptions’ or ‘truth(s)’
• Knowledge, power and discourses are closely linked
• Michel Foucault has a lot to say on the subject!

Why Discourses?

Point 3 – these are ways of going on that we do not question. This occurs in many human interactions. In the house you live in if you share with anyone – why does x always sit in the same chair? Why does y always put the new toilet roll on the holder? Who decided that this was how your household was going to function. I will guess that ‘it just happened like that’. However, I would argue that it happened like that because of some basic understandings of how the world is organised and this might be due to understandings of gender or status or something else…

Business organisations have such unspoken assumptions too. Why does the MD’s secretary make important decisions in one organisation but not in another. Why does the HR function seem to have absolute control in one organisation and yet barely exist as a separate unit in another. Were these due to conscious decisions or were there lots of small power manoeuverings that led to the current structure?

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Discourses (as we are using the term here) are ideas that the author presents as taken-for-granted truth(s) and therefore does not fully explain to the reader.

Burr’s (1995, 2003, 2015) discussion of fox-hunting discourses is particularly useful in understanding the term

Discourses Defined

Fox- hunting as pest control

Fox-hunting as inhumane

Fox-hunting as healthy, outdoor pursuit

Fox-hunting as a symbol of over-privilege

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What is strategy?

How many definitions do you think we could come up with in this room?

How close do you think we could get to the truth?

Which truth would be the dominant one? Who’s truth was Gerry teaching last semester?

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“One way of looking at reality - using written words, spoken words and all other forms of communication between human beings as a starting point”

Dr Tina Bass

Definition(s) of Discourse

Not a rejection of science

Or religion

But a way of looking at reality that focuses on how we can get along and get on with each other rather than analysing what we are or getting into philosophical debates about where we came from. We are here and we find it really hard to communicate with each other quite a lot of the time. We struggle to know when to be direct and when to be cautious. We struggle to know how to make that person over there know that we care about them or that we really think they have something special to offer.

That is what interests me.

I would like to help you start to think about how you can better understand others, communicate with others and also to get the best out of your first coursework when you will concentrate on written text.

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• When we write about concepts
• When we talk about concepts
• When we present pictures/graphs to represent concepts

…we create a reality just by communicating ideas.

The more we say/write/depict the more real an idea gets….

In Brief

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• It becomes the truth
• It becomes commonsense
• It is taken for granted as ‘the way we do things around here’

Until…

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• The way we see the world can only ever be based on the discourses we have access to
• And so our view of the world is only one view

Foucault’s Understanding

• And our view of the world is no more valid now than someone with no education living 500 years ago. It is just different.

We are all enriched and limited by our history and our experiences.

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• No texts are neutral. Not even journal articles and business textbooks
• Not even the most factually based, numerically based, statistics or finance texts
• All are written by someone who has a purpose to their writing and historical and cultural influences that they draw upon which can limit them
• No conversations, graphs, images, adverts etc. are neutral either
• As future managers and leaders you need to be aware of this
• To strengthen your own writing and speaking skills
• To help you critically approach the written and spoken words of others
• To help you to see where you can have the power to change your organisation
• Understanding discourses raises critical awareness!

Key Points

A basic understanding of discourses is very useful in helping us to appreciate the nature of individual truth(s). As business people and managers this can heighten our awareness of the world that other people inhabit, heighten our sensitivity to others, and potentially reduce the likelihood of being involved in unnecessary conflict.

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• Humans are constantly manoeuvring to have their sense of the world be the common (dominant?) understanding
  
• Whoever controls the dominant discourses or common sense/truth has power to shape the way we see the world
  
• Who decides within a society what the appropriate age is to work? Who decided that married women could work full-time in the UK? Who decides what are appropriate advertising standards? Who decides the best business strategy or even what the definition is of business strategy?

You Could Argue

Just as the unspoken decision about who changes the toilet rolls in your house/flat may have come about through subtle power maneuverings so too might be the outcomes of the above questions.

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• And the really powerful thing about discourses is that they shape your world without you knowing
• Over time what is common-sense / normal / obvious shifts as the prevailing discourses move
• If this seems uncomfortable bear in mind that there are always other discourses competing…

…Who decides where you eat on Friday night in your house? Or what you eat?

The Power of Discourses

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• Register – What language is being used. Scientific? Fact-based? Are they really unquestionable facts?
• Tenor – Is this book written for students? Does the writer assume authority using words like ‘clearly’ and ‘obviously’? Are they trying to persuade you that their point of view is THE point of view?
• Mode – Is there just text or do we have charts and graphs too? Do the images mean anything or are they adding emphasis? Are they just there to persuade you?

The Basics of Discourse Analysis

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• Discourses regulate knowledge of the world
• We draw on discourses to make sense of our world
• Discourses are truths/taken-for-granteds
• Discourses inform our social practices (we use them to justify our social practices)
• Intimate relationship between discourses, knowledge and power

Discourses and the Common Sense

Gavel. Explain it. Not possible. Wooden hammer and wooden disk. How does that represent justice or decisiveness? Only because we expect that it does. (medieval english gafol tribute) symbol of authority

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• What are the dominant discourses?
• Who benefits from this view of reality?
• Who wrote this?
• Who do they think is going to read this?
• What language devices are they using to persuade me of their arguments – repetition; opposites; metaphors etc.
• What charts and graphs and other images are they using? Do they make sense?
• Why are they leaving XXX out?

When Reading a Text, Ask..

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• Burr, V. (2015) Social Constructionism. Sussex: Routledge. Ch 4
• Potter, J., Wetherell, M. (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology. Sage
• Foucault, M. (1982) ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 4 (pp. 777-795)
• Gee, J. (2014) An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. Abingdon: Routledge

Selected References / Bibliography

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Thank you for your time

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