Discourse and Its Analysis
The notion of discourse is a central concept in this book, both theoretically and methodologically. Chapter 1 made a theoretical claim and asserted the discourse on technology in general and the digital discourse in particular as valid and important sociological objects of study. Let me add here a more general discussion on discourse and consider in particular the interrelations between discourse and practice. Since the linguistic (or interpretive) turn, language has come to be seen as a central arena of social production. Language is a system “through which meaning is constructed and cultural practices organized and by which, accordingly, people represent and understand their world” (Scott 1988). Language is neither a cause nor a reflection of social relations, as the idealist-materialist opposition implies. Rather, “the analysis of language provides a crucial point of entry . . . for understanding how social relations are conceived” and, in turn, “how institutions are organized, how relations of production are experienced, and how collective identity is established” (Scott 1988).
Whereas structuralist analysis seeks to uncover the hidden meaning of language—that is, to reduce the multiplicity of the phenomenology of language (the superstructure) into the unitary and essential meaning (the base)—the assumption behind the poststructuralist approach is that society takes place precisely within language and discourse. Language generates meanings and practices that constitute the social. For Foucault, discourse involves the production of knowledge that “gives meaning to material objects and social practices” (Barker 2003, 102).
While the knowledge produced by discourse does not reveal any essential and ultimate truth, it is not arbitrary; Foucault insists that discourse “generates meaning under specific material and historical conditions” (Barker 2003, 101). The task of the researcher is therefore not to examine the link between discourse and reality but to point out the link between discourse and its conditions of possibility—that is, the social conditions under which it has been produced—and the link between discourse and its effects.
Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) assert the significance of the study of discourse as part of the project of critical social science, especially under contemporary political and economic conditions. Contemporary social changes, with their global scale and sheer complexity, “increase the sense of helplessness and incomprehension” (3). “Social forms that are produced by people and can be changed by people are being seen as if they were part of nature” (4); they are therefore “widely perceived as inevitable” (3). The analytical category of discourse can be critical insofar as it highlights that discourse and practice are mutually constitutive. Bourdieu (1998a, 1998b) points out that the notion of “flexibility,” central to the neoliberal discourse, is already a reality in global capitalism, “but it is also backed by social forces (e.g., the banks) which aim to make it more of a reality, and the discourse of flexibility is one of the [symbolic] resources they have . . . for achieving this” (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, 4). The relationship between discourse and social practice is dialectical so that “imaginaries,” that is, “representations of how things might or could or should be” (Chiapello and Fairclough 2002) are enacted as practices, such as technologies, bodies of knowledge, genres implicated with social practices, and identities, which in turn become the material for further representations of reality. In the language of Bourdieu this book aims to decipher and deconstruct the digital discourse as a “symbolic resource,” which partakes in the construction of the digital society.
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