A short aside: What is a discourse?

Broadly, discourses can be seen as historically and culturally specific, emergent understandings on the basis of which people make sense of the world. Discourses are like conceptual lenses that lead us to see things in one way rather than another. In the words of Vivien Burr (2015), a discourse refers to

a particular picture that is painted of an event, person or class of persons, a particular way of representing it in a certain light. If we accept the view [...] that a multitude of alternative versions of events are potentially available through language, this means that, surrounding any one object, event, person, etc., there may be a variety of different discourses, each with a different story to tell about the object in question, a different way of representing it to the world. (p. 93)

In other words, each discourse draws attention to different aspects and raises different questions, consequently bearing different implications for action. What people say or write, then, can be seen as instances of discourses (Burr, 2015, p. 95). For example, a parent citing a discourse of adolescence as moral maturation might say things such as “Ben is 14 now, so I expect him to start showing more responsibility,” whereas saying things like “Ben is going through a lot, emotionally, so currently he’s having a hard time showing responsibility” can be seen as an instance of a discourse of adolescence as emotional upheaval. While both utterances may be inspired by the same behaviour, the reality of ‘being a teenager’ is considered against the backdrop of different frames of interpretation, creating different expectations, possibilities, and consequences.

Since the term discourse has been used in different ways depending on the research tradition and epistemological pre-suppositions, it is important to clarify my understanding in relation with alternative readings. In order to do so, I will borrow from Alastair Pennycook (1994), who discusses three opposing usages of the term.

In Applied Linguistics, as he explains, the term has been traditionally used to refer to language-in-use or to larger units of language that go beyond one sentence, such as paragraphs or conversations. The notion of discourse in this sense is helpful in that it draws attention to the need to see beyond the level of syntax if we want to understand how meaning is created through language in interaction. However, as Pennycook points out, this usage can be critiqued for casting a limited view on the context shaping language use, and by extension, on how social

realities are shaped through language in context: While contexts such as genre, a speakers’ intention, or general conversation rules are taken into account within this tradition, socio- political contexts – including ways in which language ties into power dynamics – are typically ignored. This first understanding of discourse has hence been criticized for positing a completely free-willed subject and language use that seems free of ideological conditions (p. 121).

Citing Fairclough (1989), Pennycook explains that by contrast, in the context of critical discourse analysis, discourse refers to “language as social practice” (p. 121). From this view point, social acts of language use are “not the individualistic acts of language users in cognitive isolation, but rather are determined by the larger social and ideological conditions of society” (p. 121). While this usage of the term acknowledges that language use and subjectivities are situated “within particular social and cultural contexts [...] in which ideological forms and social inequalities abound” (p. 123), Pennycook also points to limitations of this perspective: While it is granted that language is ideological, it is assumed that the ideological positions

misrepresent social reality. This is problematic, as he argues with reference to Fowler (1991),

insofar as anything that is uttered is always articulated from a specific ideological position. Vivien Burr (1995) addresses the same issue when problematizing the idea of “ideology as false consciousness” (p. 79). This version of ideology, she argues, enables a critical stance on discourses that prevail in society, but it also brings the following difficulty:

If we say that people are living in a false consciousness, we are assuming that there is a ‘reality’ [...] which lies outside of their understanding of the world, i.e. it is a version of events that is more valid [...]. But the idea that there is one version of events that is true (making all others false) is also in direct opposition to the central idea of social constructionism, i.e. that there exists not ‘truth’ but only numerous constructions of the world, and which ones receive the stamp of ‘truth’ depends upon culturally and historically specific factors. (p. 81)

Consequently, in the third usage of the term discourse that Pennycook discusses, the notion is used in a Foucauldian sense to refer to ways of organizing meaning. From this perspective, “Discourses are about the creation and limitation of possibilities, they are systems of power/knowledge (pouvoir/savoir) within which we take up subject positions” (Pennycook, 1994, p. 128, emphasis in original). Here, the term discourse comes to replace the notion of ideology as truth-obscuring, instead emphasizing how interpretations of reality are produced within discourses which are neither true nor false (p. 128).

My work is based on this last understanding, according to which a discourse refers to sets of ideas that shape what people consider possibilities of being, acting, and belonging – interpretational frames, against the backdrop of which people give meaning to themselves, events, and others. Informed by this understanding, I will now discuss how the HERITAGE LEARNER has been discursively constructed in the literature.