ANTH 000/4085 - Discourse Analysis: Working with language in use (3 cr.)
Description
Many researchers work with textual material in the form of interview transcripts, ethnographic field notes and other types of semiotic material like archives, social media, newspapers, film and images. Yet a persistent challenge for young scholars is establishing a systematic and well evidenced approach to analyzing their research material.
Discourse analysis is a broad approach to language in use. It helps us to to unravel the form and functions of particular discursive constructions to chart their implication in particular social contexts. Importantly DA provides a step by step process to analysis and encourages researchers to think carefully about their material, how it can be analyzed in a well evidenced manner and how to be transparent about your claims.
Textual material cannot be understood as unproblematic representation of behavior, social relations and cognition. Discourse analysis approaches problematise texts, suggesting that they may have performative or rhetorical functions like mitigating blame, justifying or reflecting power relations, creating consensus, regimes of truth and so on.
In this course we will read about the various ways in which textual material can be analyzed and we will invest considerable time in the practice of conducting discourse analysis. We will cover five main approaches to discourse analysis:
- Working with interviews and transcripts
- Foucauldian discourse analysis
- Critical discourse analysis
- Multi-sensory multimodal and social semiotics
- Doing Discourse Analysis
When Offered
According to program needs
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