Sociocritique

Discourse analysis is a cross-disciplinary method of inquiry which studies the structures of texts and considers both their linguistic and sociocultural dimensions in order to determine how meaning is constructed. In the Anglo-American context, discourse analysis concentrates on various forms of oral communication (everyday conversation, speech acts, 'talk') from an interactional and ethno-methodological perspective, and investigates how power and authority are distributed in verbal exchanges (Coulthard). The French stream of discourse analysis, following the works of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Michel Pêcheux, and Mikhail Bakhtin, constitutes its object very differently, concentrating largely, but not exclusively, on written material in its institutional, social and political contexts. Discourse analysis does not favour the 'high' cultural disciplines ('literature, philosophy, history); it employs methods developed in areas such as content analysis, narratology, textual semiotics, and Ideologiekritik to permit (if not favour) studies of all manifestations of discourse in everyday life. Discourse analysis theory proposes that relations of power in our society affect and shape the way we both communicate with each other and create 'knowledge.'

Although Ferdinand de Saussure's work on structural linguistics may have provoked or pre-empted interest in discourse analysis, Saussure was more interested in structures than in systems. More clearly a predecessor of contemporary discourse analysis is the linguist Zelig Harris who, in a book published in 1963, undertook to describe a 'method of seeking in any connected discrete linear material, whether language or language-like, which contains more than one elementary sentence, some global structure characterizing the whole discourse (the linear material), or large sections of it' (Discourse Analysis Reprints 7). Harris was interested in the ways in which segments of discourse (utterances, sentences, parts of sentences, words, parts of words) recur within a whole constituent or a sequence of constituents. Thus he concentrated upon the structure (the pattern or relations of meanings) in discourse which can be studied without reference to other information.

More recent work in discourse analysis relates studies in the structure of discourse to broader social and institutional phenomena and owes a significant debt to Foucault's work on enunciative analysis, the unities of discourse, and discursive formation set out in L'Archéologie du savoir [Archaeology of Knowledge 1969] and L'Ordre du discours [Orders of Discourse 1971], and to his many works which explore the articulation of knowledge and power in discourse: 'there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations' (Surveiller et punir; [Discipline and Punish 1975; trans. 1977], 27). The work of Louis Althusser also contributes to the study of the way discourses are formed and of what institutional practices contribute to them. His 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' (1970) emphasizes that consciousness is constructed through ideologies and that 'ideologies are systems of meaning that install everybody in imaginary relations to the real relations in which they live' (McDonell 27).

Discourse analysis contextualizes and formalizes studies in content analysis and thus generates questions concerning the production, reproduction, function, and effect of basic units of discourse within given ideological configurations and sociohistorical moments. These units are bound to their conditions of production and to the sociohistorical moment from which they emerge. Thus, discourse analysis is also a study of the rules, conventions and procedures which legitimate and to some degree determine a particular discursive practice. A thorough analysis of these areas of study covers a broad range of issues, beginning with the overriding problem of how to objectify the 'system' of a corpus, as well as the question of showing 'how the functional categories are realised by formal items' (Coulthard 8).

The French School of Discourse Analysis examines exchanges between several discourses (rather than any single practice). Marc Angenot, for example, defines social discourse as 'all that is said or written in a given state of sodety ... [or rather than] this empirical whole, ... the generic systems, the repertories of topics, the enunciative rules which, in a given sodety, organize the sayable - the narratable and the arguable - and insure the division of discursive labour' (1989, 13). Angenot et al. claim that within the compendium of social discourse, there emerge patterns, such as 'narrative and argumentional constructs, topical maxims, pragmatic markings, semantic paradigms, sociolectal markers and rhetorical figures that organize themselves into social objects' (Durkheim), and facts which, through usage, become powerful social forces which are neither strictly linguistic or gnoseological, and 'which function independently of particular usages and applications (1991, 3-4). By examining the relations between various kinds of texts (literary, political, scientific, religious, journalistic), discourse analysis both relies upon and develops research on intertextuality (Kristeva, Riffaterre). Literature's once privileged place is abandoned in favour of a study of shared strategies of discourse which contribute to the general production of knowledge and power. Thus, for example, a study of 19th-century realism would focus not on 'a moment of literary history, but rather on narrative realism as ... [a] way of making sense of the world in various discourses - medical, so-ciological, criminological, in parliamentary debates, sermons, press reports' (Leps 232).

By concentrating upon the words and utterances of social discourse and by elucidating these rules, conventions, procedures, and facts, discourse analysis emphasizes the materiality of language, including that language which conveys the 'ideas,' 'mentalities,' 'values,' 'social imaginaries,' and 'representations' studied in fields such as the history of ideas. Such research also allows the study of broad political issues such as which "hegemony favours given discursive practices and what kinds of texts are preferred in particular sociodiscursive contexts. Discourse analysis is proving useful in many areas - sociology, history, anthropology - as a conceptual matrix to explore the social production of knowledges.

Robert F.BARSKY

Primary Sources

Althusser, Louis. 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).' In Lenin and Philosophy mid Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 1971, 127-86.

Angenot, Marc. Glossaire pratique de la critique contemporaine. Montréal: Hurtubise, 1979.

- 1889. Un État du discours social. Longueuil : Le Préambule, 1989.

Angenot, Marc, Antonio Gomez-Moriana and Regine Robin. Constitution: The Inter-University Centre-for Discourse Analysis and Text Sociocriticism. Trans. Nadia Khouri and Michelle Weinroth. Montreal:
CIADEST, 1991.

Benzecri, J.P., ed. Analyse des données: Leçons sur l'analyse factorielle et la reconnaissance de la forme, et travaux du laboratoire de statistique de l'Université de Paris VI. Paris: Dunod, 1973.

Brown, G., and G. Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Coulthard, R.M. Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Longmans, 1977.

Foucault, Michel. L'Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1969. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan-Smith. New York/ Hagerstown: Harper and Row, 1972.

- L'Ordre du discours. Inaugural lecture. Collège de France, 2 Dec. 1970. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1971. 'Orders of Discourse.' Trans. Rupert Swyer. Social Science Information 10 (April 1971): 7-31. Repr. as 'Appendix: The Discourse on Language.' In The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan-Smith. New York/Hagerstown: Harper and Row, 1972.

- Surveiller et punir. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1977.

Harris, Zelig. Discourse Analysis Reprints. The Hague:
Mouton, 1963.

Leps, Mane-Christine. 'Discursive Displacements: The Example of i9th Century Realism.' Proceedings of the 12th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association 5. Munich: ludicium, 1988,231-6.

McDonell, Diane. Theories of Discourse: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Stubbs, M. Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.

Van Dijk, T.A., ed. Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 4 vols. London: Academic, 1985.

McGill