Discourse analysis

About: Discourse analysis is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16055 publications have been published within this topic receiving 515384 citations. The topic is also known as: DA & discourse studies.

A Juggling Act: A feminist post-structuralist analysis of girls' and boys' talk in the secondary classroom

Abstract: Relatively few models of good practice in feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis exist in current educational research. Drawing on a study of girls' and boys' speech in a secondary, mixed-sex classroom, the article aims to show that the use of feminist post-structuralist analysis can often be a tricky juggling act. On one hand, it aims to show the complexity of how girls are multiply positioned by competing classroom discourses as at times powerful and at other times powerless; on the other, it aims to reveal how and why girls can be silenced in particular classroom contexts. Such multiplicity in the analysis does not, however, undermine the use of feminist post-structuralism as a politically confident theoretical framework. On the contrary, it is argued that it can produce powerful insights about gendered discourse that may potentially transform educational practice.

Popular culture and everyday life

Abstract: Popular Culture and Everyday Life offers a broad-randing survey of social and cultural theory, while also issuing an audacious challenge to contemporary cultural studies with its emphasis on speculation, rather than observation-the spectacular, at the expense of the routine. Combining an analysis of power and subjectivity drawn from cultural studies with perspectives on the everyday provided by ethnography, textual reading, ethnomethodology, and discourse analysis, Toby Miller and Alec McHoul invite us to question our participation in both dominant and subcultural practices. To achieve this end, each chapter focuses on a routine practice, such as eating or listening. Each opens with a summary of key ideas on the relevant subject, considers the discourses that construct these practices, and concludes with one or more empirical investigations. By acknowledging the historical specificity and mundane character of popular culture and everyday life by looking at everyday practices in their own right rather than merely as representations of something else, the authors open up the possibility of a significant departure in cultural studies.

Identity, language, and new media: The Kurdish case

Abstract: This paper draws on theories that describe interrelationships between identity, language and the media to investigate how the Kurds utilise two forms of electronic media—satellite television and the Internet—to construct their identities. The data for this study is generated from four sources: a Kurdish satellite television channel (Kurdistan TV), a variety of Kurdish Internet sites, literature reflecting on the place of the new media among the Kurds, and informal interviews and personal communications with Kurdish media producers and audiences. Strategies including participant observation and online ethnography have been used to select data. Data analysis is informed by a critical discourse analytic approach that calls for examination of data at three levels: discourse practices, text, and socio-cultural contexts (Fairclough in Media discourse. Arnold, London, 1995). Findings suggest that the Kurdish language is held as one of the most important and salient manifestations of Kurdish identity. Satellite television and the Internet have magnified the symbolic role of the Kurdish language in defining Kurdishness. In addition, these new media have enabled Kurds from different regions and all walks of life to share and discuss cultural, social and political ideas and issues publicly and dialogically, and to construct and reconstruct their identities discursively with relative freedom and ease. The study also underlines significant differences between these two forms of new media in relation to identity construction and language use. Whereas satellite television seems to foster mutual intelligibility among the speakers of different Kurdish varieties the Internet tends to further diversify the language across alphabet and regional lines.