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New Developments in Discourse Analysis (1978-1988)

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Power, discourse and ideology

As this summary of recent developments in discourse analysis in the last decade shows, it is a new discipline moving slowly towards becoming a full-fledged interdisciplinary, socially-oriented scholarly practice. The classical core of discourse analysis, viz., structural analyses of linguistic, stylistic, rhetorical or pragmatic properties of texts and speech, has been advanced by various methods of formal or empirical analysis. Genres such as everyday conversation, institutional dialogues, as well as stories, have received extensive and detailed attention during the last decade. The insights gained in these studies are of immense value for the further analysis of other genes of discourse, such as news reports in the press, or courtroom or legislative dialogue. Such descriptive efforts remain as one of the central tasks of discourse analysis in the narrow sense.

On the other hand, discourse analysis has witnessed an impressive extension of its domain into areas that were traditionally studied by other disciplines, such as law, history, mass communication and, in particular, sociology, psychology and ethnography. We have seen how the cognitive psychology of text processing has made significant contributions to our insight into the empirical processes of understanding and interpretation. We now know more or less how discourses and their structures are related to strategic processes of analysis, textual representations, situational models, and scripts. Social cognition research is now beginning to show how both discourse and cognitive representations are tied to language users' group membership, as well as to more structural features of society. This is seen most clearly in the production processes, the structures and the reception of media messages.

Theoretical developments in discourse analysis have finaily reached a point where the critical analyses of language and discourse may be considered to have a solid foundation. 19 Socio-political studies of language use are not new, but they have seldom influenced the dominant core of linguistics and discourse analysis. There are obvious political reasons for the lack of impact of critical studies in this field: Most scholars, including those in the studies of language and communication, are members of a power elite. They belong to the (Western, white, male) groups that dominate these disciplines. The rare political and ideological challenges have so far come from some of the most

140 Teun A. van Dijk JILS/CIEL 1(1989)

conspicuous dominated groups, as is the case, for instante, in feminist contributions to linguistics and discourse analysis. The same is true, especially in the social sciences, for ethnic minority groups and contributions from Third World scholars, who plead for a fundamentally different perspective in scholarly analysis. My own work on the reproduction of racism in Western societies is intended as a contribution to this form of scholarly practice understood as a form of socio-political action.

I suggest that with its extension towards social cognition and the social and political sciences in general, discourse analysis has finally reached a point in its development where it maybegin to make serious contributions to the analysis of complex social structures, conflicts and problems, e.g., those of power, dominance, inequality, exploitation and oppression of many sorts. Note that the structural analysis of news or conversations does not itself provide the necessary linkage between textual structures and these (macro-)social relationships and

processes.Weneedintermediatetheories,suchasthoseofsocialcognition

and social interaction, to show how power structures can be related to social representations of people and groups involved in such power relationships, and how such representations in turn may be expressed, signalled, enacted or otherwise manifested in discourse and (other forms of) interaction. Group interests and goals, thus, may be translated into the relevant hierarchies in social representations about their own (in-)group and the threatening ' (out-)groups, and in the management of systems of norms and values that underpin fundamental notions of social representations. These socio-cognitive structures will necessarily show up in text and speech, simply because it is through discourse that they are shared and legitimated throughout the group.

The crucial notion linking these discursive and socio-cognitive practica as social practices within a societal configuration is ideology. Alter the many studies of ideology in the social sciences, a more explicit theory of the links between discourse, social cognition and social structures finally allows us to make the rather vague or ambiguous notion of ideology more explicit or more transparent. Thus, in my recent work on the links between discourse and power, I have tried to show how ideology can be conceptualized as the basic framework underlying the social cognitions of a social group. Such an ideology monitors not only the preferred contents of knowledge and attitudes, but also establishes (cognitive and social) coherence between differ-

New Developments in Discourse Analysis (1978-1988) 141

ent attitudes and goals. Ideologies similarly control the fundamental strategies for the defense, legitimation, and enactment of social attitudes in speech, text and action. They provide the general interpretive frameworks for social and political events in the everyday lives of people, and thus define the consensos upon which communication and interaction of (in-)group members is based. They are, in other words, the socio-cognitive translation of the goals and interests of the group. Discourse analysis is now able to make systematic and relatively explicit studies of these ideological frameworks, as well as of their contents and strategies. That is,we no longer simply `read' an ideological text by superficially and directly relating its properties to group interests, to a dominant elite or a power relationship. These relationships are much more complex, more variable (also among individuals of a group), and more indirect, involving intricate cognitive processes of understanding, model structures, knowledge scripts, attitude schemata, and other forms of social cognition. The complexity of these relationships explains why there is no (full) determinism, but rather unstable boundaries of autonomy and variation, and why ideologies may appear to be forms of "false consciousness". On the other hand, this approach also shows how the discourse and other social practices of group members tend to be constrained by shared social cognitions that seem to subject social members to the ideological coordinates of their social position.

The interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the relationships between the structures and strategies of discourse, social cognition, interaction and societal relationships will be a major task for discourse analysis in the next decade. Only then will the new discipline, in my view, become a mature form of scholarly practice, that is, a practice that allows us to critically examine some of the social problems mentioned aboye, and to contribute to the development of alternative ideologies and practices that define effective resistance.

NOTES

A Spanish version of this anide will be published as a new chapter in my bookEstructurasy funciones del discurso (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), 6th edition (1989).

1. For details about the field and advances of discourse analysis, the

142 Teun A. van Dijk JILS/CIEL 1(1989)

reader is referred to this Handbook (van Dijk, 1985a). Other introductions to discourse analysis that have appeared during the Iast decade include, among others: de Beaugrande (1980); de Beaugrande & Dressler (1981); Brown & Yule (1983); Stubbs (1983); van Dijk (1983).

2.Besides the studies mentioned in note 1, grammatical analyses of discourse have been published in numerous books, such as Benson & Greaves (1985); Fox (1987); Givón (1979, 1983); Polanyi (1989); Tannen (1981); Tomlin (1987).

3.See Downes (1984) and Lavandera (1984) among many other publications in sociolinguistics.

4.See Leech (1983) and Levinson (1983).

5.Among the many current publications on conversational analysis, see Atkinson & Heritage (1984); Coulthard & Montgomery (1981); McLaughlin (1984) and van Dijk (1985a, vol3).

6.Several books have been published on the cognitive psychology of text processing, e.g.: Flammer & Kintsch (1982); Graesser (1981); Sanford & Garrod (1981); van Dijk & Kintsch (1983).

7.See e.g., Mandl, Stein & Trabasso (1984); Kieras & Just (1984). 8.Until now, only one book has been published on the social psychology of

discourse: Potter & Wetherell (1987). See also the references given below. 9.See Gumperz (1982a, 1982b) and Saville-Troike (1982)

10.See especially the work by Pierre Bourdieu, e.g., Bourdieu, 1982, 1987. 11.Most work in this area is devoted to language and politics. See e.g., Shapiro (1984) and Geis (1987). For more specific studies, e.g., of power and

discourse, see below.

12.See Haslett (1987) and some of the contributions to Berger & Chaffee (1987).

13.See Atkinson & Drew (1979) and the triple issue of TEXT edited by Danet (1984).

14.For details of the theories summarized in this section, see van Dijk & Kintsch (1983) and further references given there. For more recent studies, consult the Journal for Memory and Language.

15.See also the book by Johnson-Laird (1983), who has been the first to discuss the notion of models in psycholinguistics.

16.For an excellent introduction to this new area of social cognition, see Fiske & Taylor (1985). See also the contributions in Wyer & Srull (1985).

17.See van Dijk (1984,1987). An extensive study (in English) on racism and the press (a modest Dutch book was published in 1983) is in preparation. See also Smitherman-Donaldson & van Dijk (1988).

18.For my recent studies on media discourse, see van Dijk (1985b, 1988a, 1988b).

19.Critical, political or ideological studies of discourse are being done in several research directions. See e.g., Chilton (1985); Fowler, Hodge, Kress &

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Trew (1979); Kramarae, Schulz & O'Barr (1984); Kress & Hodge (1979); Mey (1985); Seidel (1988). See also the important work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham, founded by Stuart Hall. Work from this center combines linguistic, feminist, and generally socio-cultural analyses, especially of the media, with a systematic critical study of ideologies. See e.g. Hall, et al. (1980).

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