3.8 Explaining ideological collocation
3.8.2 Interdiscursive co n tex t
Here, I introduce the concept o f ‘interdi-scursivity’ as being a crucial part o f the social context of meta-W ahhabi discourse. The term interdiscursivity can be used to describe an abstract state where different discourses interconnect, and this may be m aterially realized in text. This meaning o f interdiscursivity was influentially introduced by Foucault when he referred to
‘discursive form ations’ (Foucault 1972). Fairclough (1992) elaborates on this point:
-110-Foucault is suggesting [...] that a discursive formation constitutes objects in ways w hich are highly constrained, where the constraints on what happens
‘inside’ a discursive formation are a function o f the interdiscursive relations
between discursive formations. (Fairclough 1992: 42f)
Based on Fairclough’s argument, if we think o f Wahhabi Islam or W ahhabism as an object that has been constituted by m any discursive formations, the interdiscursive relations potentially holding between these discursive formations would be particularly significant.
Note, however, that Pecheux (1982) also importantly brings in the concept o f ‘discursive form ation’ in a slightly different, albeit useful, vein. To him, a discursive formation is a medium in w hich ‘an ideological formation [...] determines “w hat can and should he s a id ” (Pecheux 1982: 111). This nicely dovetails with the possibility that different discourses may potentially intersect as hybridized formations, so that they can ideologically constitute concepts, events, or (if we use F oucault’s term) ‘objects’.
In this way, we can conceive o f the ‘object’ Wahhabi Islam as being interdiscursively constituted. O f course, this does not take away the fact that there could well be other discursive formations that interconnect with the ideological purpose o f dismantling the same object ( Wahhabi Islam). This may explain how new ‘orders o f discourse’ are dynamically changing. Fairclough (1992) uses the term ‘orders o f discourse’ in its Foucaldian sense to refer to ‘the totality o f discursive practices within an institution or society, and the relationships between them ’ (Fairclough 1992: 43). In the present interdiscursive context of meta-Wahhabi discourse, our focus is on collocations as either an anti-W ahhabi discursive practice or a pro-W ahhabi one in the textual data (Schwartz vs. D eLong-Bas). The question now is ‘how can collocations be amenable to interdiscursive analysis w ithin the social context of meta-W ahhabi discourse?’.
This question can be answered if we restrict the definition o f discourse to the principle o f topicality; that is, ‘[i]f we define discourse as prim arily topic-related, that is a discourse on X, then a discourse on un/em ploym ent often refers for example to topics or subtopics o f other discourses, such as gender or racism ’ (W odak 2008: 3). W odak (ib id ) enlists this definition o f discourse as a way o f showing how discourses ‘are linked to each other’. Actually, this understanding o f interdiscursivity is helpful at the lexical level o f analyzing collocations within its w ider context o f discourse. As will be shown in Chapter 8 (Subsection 8.4.2), the collocates o f a node w ord may typically associate w ith different discourses in a way that reveals the different discursive formations that ideologically support or resist a certain discourse topic (or ‘object’) w ithin meta-W ahhabi discourse.
Even so, mne caveat should be voiced here: the interdiscursive context is only a tiny fraction o f the broad social context o f meta-W ahhabi discourse at the level o f explaining ideological collocations used by Schwartz and DeLong-Bas. The overall contextual picture consists o f the meta-W ahhabi discourse processes o f production (including the biographical and institutional elements), interpretation (comprising the cognitive elem ent o f discursive competence), and explanation (involving symbolic power and interdiscursivity) (see Sections 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 respectively). Overall, then, the context o f meta-W ahhabi discourse should be understood in a broad social sense, as comprising
the participants o f a com municative exchange [or event], their physical and psychological dispositions and the specific knowledge or assumptions about the persons involved, the knowledge o f the language and the conventions regarding appropriate use o f language, the knowledge o f activity-types including communicative intentions and goals, and general background
knowledge. (Fetzer 2007: 14)
Thus, in this way, ihe collocations used by Schwartz and DeLong-Bas are textual cues that are predicated on a broader interdiscursive context o f many and various discursive formations,
-112-which are ideologically intended either to defend or to attack W ahhabi Islam, or what is known in the W est as 'W ahhabism ’.
3.9 Conclusion
In this notably short conclusion, I w ould want to recapitulate the structure o f this chapter. The chapter has undertaken the overall theoretical framework proposed in this study. A t the outset, a distinction has been made between the locally descriptive and the globally critical approaches towards collocability and collocation. The theoretical fram ew ork discussed in this chapter can be summarized here.
The first stage focuses on identifying collocations that are ‘peculiar’ to the research data; this necessitates a corpus-based approach towards the phenom enon o f collocation.
Hence, as it will be shown in Chapter 4, the need for intersecting the MI and t scores. The second stage is concerned w ith describing ideological collocation via a semantic-rhetorical toolkit that is predicated on textual synonymy and oppositional paradigm s on the one hand and pragmatic fallacies on the other (Section 3.5). (Hopefully, the present model of description may assure the role o f collocation in partly making up what Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: x) refer to as the ‘rhetorical-relational organisation in the discourse semantics’.) The first two stages can0be integrated under the m ethodological procedure of micro analysis (see Chapter 4). The third stage tackles aspects that relate to the text producer of ideological collocations in terms o f two aspects: 1) the interplay o f evaluation, text production and lexis, and 2) the potentially problematic position o f the text producer in terms of contents, relations and subjects (Section 3.6). The fourth stage introduces an interpretative model that is focused on the concept o f discursive competence and its dual structure, ideological coherence and schemas, which explains how members o f the same discourse community are pre-cquipped to consume textual practices (Section 3.7). The last stage offers
an explanatory model of the social context that shapes and is shaped by textual practices; this social-semiotic model rests on two important elements that can explain the ideological status o f collocations in meta-W ahhabi discourse (anti- and pro-W ahhabi discourses): first, the semiotic activity o f collocations as signs; and second, the interdiscursive context of the collocating items in the texts under analysis.
Now, having proposed the overall theoretical framework that will be used in analyzing the research data, it is time we demonstrated how this framework will be methodologically operationalized; also, we need to closely recognize the present research data. These two aspects w ill be the focus o f the next chapter (Chapter 4).