Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis

The focus of these two sessions will be the linking of theory to method, paying particular attention to the relationship between language or other forms of representation or communication and the broader social milieu with special attention to power relations. The topic will be approached from a broadly Foucauldian angle: Foucault writes that discourse “consists of not—of no longer—treating discourses as groups of signs signifying elements referring to contents of representations, but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.” The emphasis of these two lectures will be less upon what is known as ‘conversation analysis’ or ‘content analysis’ and more on methods based on post-positivist methods and critical theory which emphasize how language and other social practices create reality rather than reflect it, and thus methods of interpreting discourse are themselves not ideologically or politically neutral practices.

Session 1: The origins of critical discourse analysis (the Frankfurt school, Foucault, post-structuralism, feminism); how theoretical backgrounds shape research design
Session 2: 'Doing' discourse analysis: analysing methods and approaches

Number of sessions: 2

• Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol. 12, no. 4 (Summer 1987)
• Lene Hansen, “Gender, Nation, Rape: Bosnia and the Construction of Security,” International Feminist Journal of Politics. Vol 3. Issue 1 (2000).
• Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency” A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1994).
• Helen Kinsella, “Gendering Grotius: Sex and Sex Difference in the Laws of War,” Political Theory, (April 2006); vol. 34, 2: pp. 161-191.
• David Campbell, Writing Security: US Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992 (1998).

Not assessed

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