I have carried out a discourse analysis of some policy documents, guidance and reports but would like to compare and assess this against other people's work. Can anyone direct me to any references for such work?
Hi Jerome, my analysis is of health policy documents, government guidance documents, published reports of social care inspections and reports of public inquiries or serious case reviews of health or social care.
I will take a look at Wodak & Kryzanowski, thanks for the pointer
I have used Brine's 2008 10 step policy discourse analysis approach outlined here in a presentation I attended in 2008:
Brine J (2008) Reading the Text: constructed subjects and dominant discourses. Workshop and presentation at Centre for Research into Higher Education, Carnegie Research Institute, Leeds Metropolitan University,
30 April. Available at: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/14002/4/Reading_the_Text_08-1.pdf (accessed 10 April 2011).
Here's a a paper that I have written based on use of this analytical approach:
Jones, S. (2012) Gendered discourses of entrepreneurship in UK higher education: The fictive entrepreneur and the fictive student International Small Business Journal DOI:10.1177/0266242612453933
Hi Norman, I developed the theory of critical discourse analysis, and used it in analysing politics in Apartheid media, which might be of use: see: http://learning-affordances.wikispaces.com/Discourse+and+Text.
More recently I developed some new theoretical ideas on Affordances and the New Political Ecology, which I am feeding into current work on discourse, see: http://learning-affordances.wikispaces.com/affordances+and+the+new+political+ecology
Hi Norman, try Norman Fairclough's work on critical discourse analysis, one of his areas of methodological expertise and he has focussed on public policy topics e.g. UK new Labour Welfare Policies
Cathy, agreed. Fairclough's work is well worth the read. If you are looking for something more contemporary, Zizek is even better, nowadays, but he works across lots of disciplines - be warned. Jacqueline Rose's book on the Middle East , "Proust Among the Nations" is excellent too, although quite specific in its subject matter. (I'm sure neither Zizek or Rose would consider themselves CDAnalysts, of course, but I think they both take the broad CDA agenda forward - i.e. an analysis of power and the many ways it is articulated).
Thanks for the comments and suggestions I shall take a look. Cathy, I am familiar with Fairclough's work and the broad remit of CDA and its approach. Something I found recently looks promising - Burton and Carlen's Official Discourse. Has anyone read it/have any views?
On Burton and Carlen's Official Discourse: It depends on what one wants from it; I did not find it very useful as I was looking for something practical--a template for how to do discourse analysis of official texts. The book, though, is quite theoretical and there isn't really much actual discourse analysis in it (or, at least, not the type I was looking for--analysis of discourse found in specific texts).
Take a look at:
OTuathail, G. (2002) Theorizing practical geopolitical reasoning, Pol Geo, 21(5) 601-628
Korf, B. Who is the rogue? Discourse, power and spatial politics in post-war Sri Lanka, Pol Geo 25 (2006) 279-297.
In analysing 'official' discourse as represented in the media i use the following framework:
o In creating a difference between the self and others, who was the self and who were the others?
o Practice: How was the discourse ‘done’? Through what means was discourse conveyed?
o Organisation: How were the messages organised?
o Meaning: What was meant to be understood?
o Action: What were the actions the messages justified? What was done—or planned to be done—based on the messages?
I could send you an example of this if you wanted (a draft in progress).
Hello Andrew, thanks for your comments. I shall take a look the references you have provided - the Sri Lanka one in particular interests me. The framework sounds useful to - if you could send me a copy it would be very helpful.
I have written some papers and a book on what I might call the design of a better planning discourse support system. Most of those papers are posted on Academia.edu, and on my Wordpress blog 'AbbeBoulah's Weblog'. I am not sure they are about discourse analysis specifically, except perhaps one on my attempt to develop a mapping overview of the discussions surrounding the challenge by physicist Dr. Keating to 'climate change deniers' to actually supply the proof they claim is easy to make, that man made global warming is not real. (I had to give up on a comprehensive coverage of that project because the material was overwhelming Dr. Keating's blog and became scattered on too many sites to keep track of: precisely the lack of a better discourse support platform I have been calling for. )
Thanks Jo, I will track the article down. Thorbjoern, I am looking to conduct analysis of specific policy documents as opposed to the wider media discussions of them, but thank you for replying.