Data analysis

On completion of data collection, the digitally recorded interviews were transcribed and were thereafter considered a corpus of transcriptions that formed the raw data for analysis. These were subsequently subjected to a discourse analysis in order to construct subthemes, themes and thematic clusters arising from the raw data. Note taking during the collection phase also supplemented this process.

Specifically, the critical Foucauldian approach suggested by Parker (1992; 2004a) which aims to demonstrate the way discourses construct objects of knowledge and subjects within frameworks of power was utilised to analyse these transcripts. The detailed and rich material that this type of discourse analysis is able to analyse means that it is geared for application to interview data to explore victims’ discursive accounts of their FSA events. More importantly, Parker’s (1992; 2004a) particular approach draws on a Foucauldian framework to critically explore “the constitution of the modern psychological subject and its place in regimes of knowledge and power” by deconstructing the emergent discourses in the data (Parker, 2004a, p. 310).

Parker (1992) offers seven criteria for distinguishing discourses. Firstly, discourse is always realised in texts. Texts refer to “tissues of meaning” (Parker, 1992, p. 6) that are considered able to evoke connotations, interpretations and allusions beyond the individual that ‘authored’ them. Discourses are also arrangements of meanings that constitute objects and thus analysis requires some degree of objectification. Furthermore, discourses contain subjects because they make available positions for particular types of selfhoods. Discourses are comprised of metaphors, statements and allusions that can be pulled together into a coherent and regulatory system of meanings. However, discursive systems are not isolated but rather “embed, entail and presuppose other discourses” (Parker, 1992, p. 13) and thus discourses are always in articulation with other competing and collaborating discourses. Additionally, because there are contradictions in discourses and discourses implicitly contain their own negations, “a discourse reflects on its own way of speaking” (Parker, 1992, p. 14). Finally, discourse is located in time and history and is thus always in flux. To these seven criteria Parker (1992) provides three auxiliary criteria proposing that discourses are implicated in the

structure of institutions; discourse reproduces relations of power and discourse has political effects through its capacity to sustain these power relations.

Following these criteria, Parker (1992) outlines 20 steps that frame his discourse analysis process. These 20 steps involve the researcher 1) turning the text into the written form (transcription); 2) free associating to different meanings as a means to access cultural networks; 3) systematically itemizing the objects of knowledge within the text; 4) treating the text itself as an object of study, rather than what it appears to refer to; 5) systematically itemizing the subjects and subject positions in the text; 6) reconstructing presupposed roles and rights of subjects specified in the data; 7) mapping the networks of relationships into discourses to then be located in relations of knowledge and power; 8) bringing knowledge of discourses from outside of the text to amplify the system of discursive relationships inside of the text; 9) contrasting discourses against one another in order to identify the different objects that they constitute; 10) identifying overlapping discourses that constitute the same objects in different ways; 11) drawing on other texts to elaborate on the discursive networks within the text of analysis; 12) reflecting on words used to describe particular discourses especially those that are morally and/or politically loaded; 13) identifying how and where the discourses emerged; 14) describing how the discourses are dynamic and changing; 15) identifying those institutions reinforced by particular discourses; 16) identifying those institutions subverted by the emergence and circulation of particular discourses; 17) indicating those subjects that are advantaged and/or disadvantaged by the circulation of a discourse; 18) ascertaining which subjects and institutions would want to promote and/or dissolve a given discourse; 19) demonstrating the ways that a discourse connects with other discourses that sanction oppression and 20) demonstrating how discourses endorse the dominant narrative and subjugate the marginalised narrative. This process is possible because institutionalised discourse “pervades, constructs and draws sustenance” at the level of the subject and the organisation of discourse in a particular cultural context provides opportunities “at the ‘surfaces of emergence’, for certain representations and practices of the self” (Parker, 2004a, p. 311).

These principles and stages informed the way data were selected, understood and interpreted. Accordingly, a combined analysis took place by relating core themes and patterns within the data to discursive patterns within the larger cultural context. Specifically, metaphors, wording, expressions, idioms and colloquialisms used by the participants were systematically

coded according to the most significant themes that ran through the data and interpreted in terms of how language forms part of the construction of subjectivities and contributes to either the reproduction or the resistance of masculine hegemonic discourses (Phillips & Jørgenson, 2002). This coding process was guided by Butler’s (2004) theory of performativity, especially regarding the ways that participants produced their victim subject positions. The Foucauldian understanding of discourse as a means “to describe and critique the discursive world people inhabit and to explore their implications for subjectivity and experience” underwrote the analytic procedure (Willig, 2001, p. 91) as well as an awareness that the analysis of a particular construct is, in effect, the procedure through which that construct is (at least partly) being produced (Butchart, 1997). The use of Foucault’s (1978) theoretical work on sexuality as the framework of this research necessitates acknowledging that in analysing FSA victim subject positions, this research inescapably becomes the machinery through which FSA victim subject positions are further reproduced and reified. The overall analysis involved the reading of the transcripts according to the above frameworks and stages and the selecting of discursive themes in the data. These themes were then either collapsed into one another to form larger themes or structured hierarchically to form sets of subthemes with an overarching theme. Themes were thereafter labelled and defined. It must be noted that this process is cyclical and requires multiple levels of re- reading and recoding (Willig, 2001). The findings are, however, presented linearly for the purpose of clarity.

A critical approach to discourse analysis is not a politically neutral process (Phillips & Jørgenson, 2002). It aims to expose, interpret and override current prevailing discursive practices (van Dijk, 2001). While language conventionally transmits culturally normative productions of the self, the ‘critical’ imperative of this type of discourse analysis attempts to understand the mechanisms underlying this transmission. It is in this way that the analysis operates as the means through which resistance narratives and discourses can be produced and reproduced and in doing so, challenge dominant narratives and give voice to excluded discursive frameworks most often belonging to marginalised groups. As a critical process, a Foucauldian informed discourse analysis necessarily begins at the interview stage with note taking and observation. Thus throughout both the data collection and analysis phases the researcher is the instrument through which the data is understood and interpreted. The researcher’s ideological and cultural value systems thus form an integral part of the analytic

process and will inevitably emerge in the research material. Thus the researcher’s own social experiences and reality will undoubtedly speak back into the way the interviews were conducted and the data was read, understood and selected for inclusion in the final analysis. Given this nature of discourse analysis, along with the appreciation that the data is both co- constructed and influenced by the researcher and the participants, the analysis included an exploration of these effects on the study outcomes. The findings of this research are therefore always open to further interpretation and discussion.