Subject: Re: discourse analysis
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:48:26 -0500


Hi, Nadeem

I would like to help. But I need to know something first: are you thinking
that "discourse analysis" comes from Foucault, because Foucault talks about
"discourse"? What is called "discourse analysis" is not a Foucauldian
method, even though Foucault talks about "discourse."

Discourse analysis (DA) is a method of looking at language on the levels
above the sentence, as in intertextuality--what's going on by saying a group
of sentences instead of only considering the meaning of an individual
sentence one at a time. Before DA, linguistics looked at sentences not as a
group of phenomena but as individualized phenomena, as isolated instances to
be parsed into ever and ever smaller units for analysis. But today with DA
the opposite approach is also true. Rather than just looking at the level of
the sentence or word, as in the study of grammar and syntax or of the
morphemes and phonemes of a word, DA considers how sentences relate to each
and on even a larger scale considers the social and cultural meanings of the
whole of your speech. At this level, sentences can be considered in context.
But context at this level in at the level of interaction between
individuals, not at the level which Foucault looks at problems.

Foucault wasn't using discourse analysis. He had a different notion of
discourse. For Foucault, the analysis of discourse was on a level much
higher than even that of discourse analysis. He was looking at the level on
which things can be said, which includes concepts and strategies beyond the
level on any single context or situation, like DA considers. DA looks at how
people achieve social actions via language use. But I believe that Foucault
wants to look at something much different: the history of those present
notions of achievement.

Perhaps here someone else can step in?

--Mitch

> hi all.
> this looks like a kind routined inquiry on foco list, but still I would
> like to know how one goes about doing a 'discourse analysis'. any
> reference esp. wrt. to 'art history' will be highly appreicaited.
> no
>
>