Discourse analysis I and the Starbucks case

Discourse analysis – that is the topic of today’s post. The first time I heard this strange combination of words I did not really tried to understand its meaning because I have heard both of them separately so it did not sound unfamiliar. But when I started reading about it, a whole new world just opened in front of me. What exactly is this? That is what I am going to try to do without getting too much into details.

 

Even though he is not the person invented this type of analysis, Michel Foucault was the one who introduced the word in the French culture and thus, a lot of what we know about this is because of him. Rose (2001) gives the following definition when it comes to what discourse is: “it refers to groups of statements which structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking”. Even in the research community, there are disputes to what exactly the meaning of discourse analysis is, let alone for a student’s blog. but we will roll with it. For the sake of argument (and this blog post) we will just use the definition of Rose, with the disclaimer that it is not exhaustive.

 

She also divides this whole thing into 2 different parts. We are going to tackle the first one – discourse analysis I – in this blog post and then explain the second part of it next week. Discourse analysis I mainly takes into account various kinds of ‘visual images and verbal texts’ (Rose, 2001, p.140). Therefore, discourse analysis I, just to make it simpler, looks at the words and images used in a given situation. DA I can be used as analyses from big events, for instance the Second World War, to literature and painting, and to examining something as simple as person dressed for a cocktail party.

 

The idea is that a lot of the things that we are going to use in this analysis are some type of ‘heuristics’ – things that we have learned from one way or another, such as culture, upraising, research, or just general knowledge.

For instance, if we see three girls as in the picture, we would first, notice that they are wearing some king of elegant dresses. We can even continue by assuming that they are going to attend a black tie event You can interpret the meaning of what they are wearing. Finally, based again on their dresses and the things that we already know, we can go even further by thinking about what they are going to do, who are they going to meet, etc. This small analysis is based on a similar explanation by Panofsky (1957).
A much more elaborated – and let me tell you, easier to understand than Rose’s – analysis is made by Charlene Elliott (2001) for Starbucks. She extensively explains how exactly Starbucks sells to its customers not only coffee but also experience. And in this case, we are not talking about ambient experience, which we all know Starbucks tries to make, but she is talking about the perceptions in the customers’ heads when it comes to the coffee itself. The main thing that Elliott (2001) looks at is the cross cultural experience that the company manages to transfer to its customers. Some of the blends that they are selling are for the mass customer, they are explained with non-threatening words and in a positive way. Others, on the other hand, are coming from the Orient; from places that are exotic, maybe even dangerous, and that is the message that they are sending to those types of customers. Starbucks is building a lifestyle – using the Italian words when they are perfect substitutes from the English language, conveying a sense of Orient in coffee itself. Basically, Starbucks is spicing up of all those coffee experiences, building something new and somehow manages to grab and hold onto its customers, which are hooked forever to this experience. And there goes the vicious circle. If you are interested in this analysis in its integrity, you can find the name of the article in the references.

 

Finally, I would like to address some similarities and differences between the two different approaches I just presented. Obviously, the main similarity is the fact that the analysis is done in a similar manner. Nevertheless, there a couple of important differences in this case. One of those being that discourse analysis I considers text as well as pictures (or any other kind of representative materials), but in the Starbuck example Elliott does not talk about pictures, images, videos, etc. at all. She only pays attention at the linguistic part of the equation. If she wanted, she could try to analyze the logo, the commercials and the way the coffeehouses actually look.

 

References:

Elliott, C.
(2001). “Consuming caffeine: The discourse of Starbucks and coffee” In: Consumption, Markets and Culture, 4(4), pp. 369-382.

Rose, G.
(2001). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. London: Sage. (Chapter 6: Discourse Analysis I)

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