Discourse Analysis I

 

Gillian Rose (2001) defines discourse as something that “refers to groups of statements which structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking” (p.135). She claims that discourse is knowledge about the world that shapes how we understand and and act in this world. Discourse can also be considered in the terms of a particular subject – for example medical discourse or the discourse of art. Both produce a specific language, forms of knowledge and institutions.

The term discourse is most often associated with Michel Foucault and his works on the interaction between institutions and their subjects. His work centers around the notion of power and powerful discourses, that produce us as human subjects. These discourses structure our way of thinking and understanding of the world that surrounds us, thus creating the world as we know it. Foucault also argues that often certain dominating discourses form that claim absolute truth, making knowledge also something that is produced by power.

Rose has derived two different methodological approaches from Foucault’s work, which she names Discourse Analysis I and II. The first one focuses more on visual images and verbal texts and less on how discourses produce practices. The second approach in turn focuses more on institutions and their practices, and is “more explicitly concerned with issues of power, regimes of truth, institutions and technologies” (p.140). She warns that these two approaches are not inherently distinct and therefore can be found working together in several research papers.

Conducting a discourse analysis begins with finding sources and this can be complicated, as doing discourse analysis assumes working with a wide range of different sources. Rose claims that it is not useful to restrict oneself to only works of a particular genre or technology. Instead, discourse is intertextual and therefore best revealed by a strategic and coherent pattern of statements across a variety of different sources. She points out that verbal discourse can also be a part of an analysis and conducting interviews or recording day-to-day communications might prove useful for research.

There are only a few explicit procedures for conducting a discourse analysis. Rose says that the first step to doing a discourse analysis is forgetting all preconceptions. Although Foucault was rather vague in his writings about methodology, he saw that approaching texts with pre-existing mental categories can lead to missing some insights that would otherwise be visible. As one gets more familiar with their sources, key themes can be outlined by looking for similar images and words in different works.

She warns that conducting the analysis can lead to revealing new issues that at first were inconceivable, but assures that these can be incorporated into the existing work as this type of analysis is highly flexible. This means that texts and images can be interpreted in several, conflicting manners without disrupting the overall quality of the research.

Probably the most important part of doing a discourse analysis is revealing the “effects of truth” in the discourse, which have been designed in an attempt to persuade. Discourses often claim absolute certainty or truth and a successful discourse analysis needs to bring these claims to the foreground. It is especially useful to analyze attempts at reconciling conflicting ideas or coping with contradictions as they enable to highlight tactics of persuasion.

The article Consuming Caffeine by Elliott Charlene (2001) is a great example of a discourse analysis, but it is hard to classify it as “Discourse Analysis I” or “Discourse Analysis II”. While she focuses her efforts primarily into texts produced by Starbucks, she also pays attention to its institutional apparatus of the company and the discourse of coffee production altogether. Rose warned that at times the lines between the two categories can be blurry, but I think this article fits better into the first category, as most of the paper deals with specific texts.

She claims that there is a lack of works that would attempt to “analyse global culture through the lens of a specific cultural commodity, artefact or event.” (pg. 370). The specific commodity she has chosen to investigate is the packaging of Starbucks coffee beans, which carry various different names and connotations. Her sources are perhaps not so intertextual as Rose would deem necessary as she bases the majority of her analysis on Starbucks brochures and other promotional media.

Charlene argues that by drinking a Starbucks coffee, the person is not simply consuming a product, but also the discourses surrounding that product. While the consumers of 1950’s or 60’s had little knowledge of the origin of their coffee, contemporary coffee-lovers value the “foreignness” of the product. Starbucks uses clever rhetorical tricks to “fetishize” their product by emphasizing their origin (often not correctly) and by using “Orientalist discourse” (pg. 377) that portrays their coffee as something foreign, exciting and mysterious. This allows the company to turn a simple coffee bean into something symbolical. Meanwhile the House Blend and Espresso Roast beans are not transparent in their origin – Charlene claims that this is the case because Starbucks also wants to provide something “familiar” for their customers.

 

Bibliography:

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

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

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