Discourse Analysis In Social Discourse

The preoccupation of discourse analysts is to investigate how people, through the variability of language, represent versions of reality within discursive contexts and its implications for knowledge production. Discourse analysts contend that beliefs, attitudes, representations and perceptions of people are not stable and enduring across contexts; rather, they are constructed in accordance with historical and socio-cultural frameworks of discourse and interpersonal interaction. To fully understand the perceptions of people about a given social phenomenon, for example, it is essential to understand how, within a given environment, people strategically draw on available discursive devices to negotiate and represent their reality of the phenomenon. …show more content…
The society’s perceptions about a phenomenon are not a stable pre-existing internal state but vary depending on the purpose, circumstance and context of the discourse. It can accordingly be argued that the truth about a given phenomenon is not assumed by individual participants in a social discourse, but perceived through the lenses of their specific society or context. This is because participants in a social interaction are both producers and products of culture within their social environment. In other words, to make sense of what people say, we need to take into account the social context within which they speak (Willig, …show more content…
Given that the researcher is part of the social world in which the research is being conducted, I argue that the researcher will inevitably bring some of his or her personal accounts to bear on the topic under investigation. The concern about a discourse analyst’s own presuppositions and the possible influence these may have on research itself is reasonable. To fight this bias, discourse researchers instinctively search for a pattern in the discourse, as it stems from a given context, and offer rigorous analyses on the basis of values, beliefs, ideals and the socio-cultural experiences embedded in the communicative environment. Critical discourse analysis, by consequence, thoroughly obeys the principles of flexibility and reflexivity, where historical and socio-cultural experiences of both researchers and those under investigation shape and channel data interpretation and analysis. In essence, it is advisable that discourse analysts be self-aware of their presuppositions and beliefs and that the researcher’s interest and connection to the topic should not be viewed “negatively as bias, but as a position to be acknowledged” (Potter, 2003, p.