Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is both context-bound and a human activity, showing which aspects are needed in development of information products such as thesauri. Olsson (2004, 2) states, that

”- - - It is only through an understanding of people not simply as isolated intellects or rational decision-makers, but as social beings intimately connected to their life-world,

that we can hope to develop truly effective, guinely user-centred, information products and services.” (Ibid.)

Fairclough has presented his approach to discourse analysis and its use in investigating social changes, in his work Discourse and Social Change (1992). He pointed out some conditions that needed to be fulfilled in a useful study:

“Firstly, it would need to be a method for multidimensional analysis. --- Secondly, it would need to be a method for multifunctional analysis. --- Thirdly, it would need to be method for historical analysis. --- Fourthly, it would need to be a critical method.

Relationships between discursive, social and cultural change are typically not transparent for the people involved. ---” (Fairclough 1992, 8-9)

Fairclough (1992, 72) has also illustrated the concept of discourse as three-dimensional and thus attempted to bring together three analytical analyses, each of which, according to him, are indispensable for discourse analysis.

“These are the tradition of close textual and linguistic analysis within linguistics, the macrosociological tradition of analysing social practice in relation to social structures, and the interpretivist or microsociological tradition of seeing social practice as something which people actively produce and make sense of on the basis of shared commonsense procedures.” (Fairclough 1992, 72)

Figure 9: “Three-dimensional conception of discourse” (Source: Fairclough 1992, 73.) As stated earlier (in chapter 2), at a general level discourse can be defined to refer to language use in a social context (Pälli 2003, 22). It is also noteworthy to realise, that although discourse is a substantive, it also means doing something and is an active process (see Lehtonen 1994; Potter & Wetherell 1990; Pälli 2003).

In 1980 Busha and Harter (ibid, 171) stated, that many library science studies are focused on the users of various media of communication and less frequently are inquiries concerned with the actual content of the media. The tendency is still the same.

Discourse analytical methods have been scarce in the field of librarianship and information science research, although the interest has been growing (Hedemark,

Hedman & Sundin 2005, 17). The starting points of discourse analysis have been discussed in several articles, but it has seldom been used as a method for empirical studies (Talja 1998, 18). However, discourse analysis is a natural choice, when we think of the key element in our field – information. - Talja (1997, 70) describes information as being concerned with what people do with language and what language does to people.

Talja (1999, 460) says, that

“Discourse analysis studies practices of producing knowledge and meanings in concrete contexts and institutions – be they in library organizations, information studies, information society strategies, database interfaces, or the Dewey Decimal Classification. Discourse analysis systemizes different ways of talking in order to make visible the starting points on the basis of which knowledge and meanings are produced in a particular historical moment. It pays attention to the way in which discourses produce and transform social reality, and makes it possible to evaluate the practical consequences of different ways of approaching a particular phenomenon.”

(Ibid.)

It is not reasonable to characterise discourse analysis as a distinct research method, but more as a loose theoretical framework (Potter & Wetherell 1990; Suoninen 1992, 125) that allows different emphasises in focus and methodological applications (Jokinen

& al. 1993, 17-18).

The idea of dynamic equivalence and translation as an active decision-making process (see 3.4.2 Equivalence in communicative translation theories) corresponds well with discourse analysis. Potter (1997) states:

“DA [discourse analysis] has an analytical commitment to studying discourse as text and talk in social practices. That is, the focus is not on language as an abstract entity such as a lexicon and set of grammatical rules (in linguistics), a system of differences (in structuralism), a set of rules for transforming statements (in Foucauldian genealogies). Instead, it is the medium for interaction; analysis of discourse becomes, then, analysis of what people do. ---” (Ibid, 146)

Content analysis and semiotics can be seen as types of discourse analysis, the emphasis in this research being on semiotics. Slater (1998) describes the roots and use of the methods:

“Content analysis and semiotics represent two important attempts to introduce consistent methods to the interpretation of culture. Both are forms of textual analysis, aiming to provide convincing readings of cultural texts, and to draw various conclusions from them, by looking at texts themselves rather than at the ways in which people actually consume these texts. - - - Content analysis, as an old and rather positivist-inclined method, characteristic of mid-century American sociology, tends to fairly mechanistic readings and conclusions; semiotics, on the other hand, seeks to draw out the full complexity of textual meaning, as well as the act of reading texts, but with little rigour in a conventional sense.” (Slater 1998, 234)

“At bottom, content analysis simply measures frequency, and typical research questions might be: ‘how prevalent soap opera are sexist images of women?’ or ‘how often are women depicted in soap operas as mothers, as opposed to sex objects, workers or mainstains of the community?’ --- “ (Ibid, 234-235)

“A content analysis is rather like a social survey of a sample of images, rather than of people, using a tightly structured and closed questionnaire. The stages are much the same. Content analysis firstly involves suitably defining a population and drawing a sample from it. - - - The second major component of content analysis involves deciding on categories for coding the data and carrying out the coding. --- ” (Ibid. 235-236)

The discourse analytic approach offers a possibility to study differences and similarities both on the individualistic and community level. It also enables the use of several layers. An individual can be seen, for example, as a Finnish, as a social scientist and/or as an information seeker depending on the perspective and question. Pälli (2003, 18) points out that what is important is that the discourse analysis does not limit to only the linguistic structure, but takes into consideration also the social context of the language usage.

Slater (ibid.) further points out, that much of the apparent rigour of content analysis rests on the structure of categories used. The categories must follow the common guidelines of categorisation – they must be exhaustive and they must be mutually exclusive. “The development of coding frameworks like these involves hard conceptual work and usually a great deal of piloting or trial and error.” (Ibid. 236) To Slater semiotics

“- - - represents the exact opposite to content analysis along every dimension. It is closer to interpretive methodologies than to quantitative and survey methods and is utterly open-ended rather than closed in its questions and investigations. It is strong on rich interpretations of single texts or codes but offers almost no basis for rigorous generalization outwards to a population. It argues that elements of a text derive from their meaning from their interrelation within a code rather than looking at them as a discrete entities to be counted. Where content analysis is all method and no theory, hoping that theory will emerge from observation, semiotics is all theory and very few practical guidelines for rigorously employing it. Above all, semiotics is essentially preoccupied with precisely that cultural feature which content analysis treats as a barrier to objectivity and seeks to avoid: the process of interpretation.” (Ibid. 237-238)