Week 5 Reflection

Hello,

This week was the first time for me to see that everything is not discourse. Maybe, I am wrong but in Jorgensen and Phillips chapter, there was an example of bridge. Building a bridge is only a physical action and does not include any discursive action. On the other hand, there was an example of schools and other social institutions in Luke’s paper. I just want to make sure that although schools and other significant institutions are also physical buildings, they are kinds of social contexts for human beings. That’s why they are identified as discourse or “constituted by discursive relations”. Also, as indicated in Luke paper, it makes sense to me that we should approach to the texts or interview data skeptically, which is one of methodological contribution of Faucault’s poststructuralism, to better understand the discourse. However, to what extent do we need to be skeptical? I think it will be very hard to conduct discourse analysis if we treat very skeptical. It will be very helpful to a little bit focus on this question because I think it is very important.

Also, I realized that I was arguing with myself to understand what the easiest way of understanding discourse. I think that the main point which makes me confused has been that the discourse is both constitutive and constituted, which is the perspective critical discourse theory. However, I don’t think there is something wrong with me because when we look at the history of discourse theory, there has been difference within the discursive actions of discourse theory. For example, Laclau and Mouffe stated all social practice as discourse while Fairclough limited discourse to semiotic systems such as language and images as indicated in Jorgensen and Phillips chapter. On the other hand, one important common point or concept of discourse analysis is “construction”. Even if some limits the scope of discourse, there should be a social action to construct meaning within the discourse analysis. I have another question at this point: I can understand how texts are important as Luke indicated, but what does Luke mean with “texts position and construct individuals”?

I would like to comment a little bit on Vasconcelos article. When I read the article, I thought it will be discourse analysis paper which includes interviews. However, after reading the research questions, I thought that the questions cannot be answered by only interviews. It seems to me that the study looks very strong in terms of methodology and data collection tools. Furthermore, it is not usual to encounter with a study which has more than one theoretical or conceptual framework in my field of IST. Vasconcelos study is strong in terms of both methodology and theoretical framework. I think it can help us to see how it is possible to emerge different methodical perspectives, including discourse analysis.

 

Thanks