The Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

The French philosopher Michel Foucault studied not language, but discourse as a system of representation. Normally the term 'discourse' is used as a linguistic concept. The term Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) is associated with the work of researchers such as Ian Parker, Erica Burman and Wendy Hallway. The term is widely known as Foucauldian discourse analysis or the analysis of discourse because it is related with Foucault’s writings. It has come from many theoretical sources. FDA can be performed upon various types of communication and textual meaning in short wherever meaning exists FDA can be performed. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) offers a particular critical approach to researching psychological and social worlds by considering broader contexts, rigorously dissecting discourses rather than imposing a single theoretical framework. In his quest to reveal power relations, the French post-structuralist philosopher and historian Michel Foucault claimed discourses comprise bodies of knowledge which systematically create and reproduce particular social institutions. Foucault wanted to reveal how certain discourses help sustain networks of social meaning which regulate and control people in ways that appear natural. He popularized discourse analysis by exposing links between textual …show more content…
Foucault gives the following definition of discourse: “We shall call discourse a group of statements in so far as they belong to the same discursive formation” (Foucault 117). On discursive formation he writes that “Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation” (Foucault