Discourse and social practices
Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, CDA) is based upon a view of semiosis as an irreducible element of all material social processes (Williams 1977). We can see social life as interconnected networks of social practices of diverse sorts (economic, political, cultural, family etc). The reason for centering the concept of ‘social practice’ is that it allows an oscillation between the perspective of social structure and the perspective of social action and agency – both necessary perspectives in social research and analysis (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999). By ‘social practice’ I mean a relatively stabilised form of social activity (examples would be classroom teaching, television news, family meals, medical consultations). Every practice is an articulation of diverse social elements within a relatively stable configuration, always including discourse. Let us say that every practice includes the following elements:
Activities
Subjects, and their social relations
Instruments
Objects
Time and place
Forms of consciousness
Values
Discourse
These elements are dialectically related (Harvey 1996). That is to say, they are different elements but not discrete, fully separate, elements. There is a sense in which each ‘internalizes’ the others without being reducible to them. So for instance social relations, social identities, cultural values and consciousness are in part semiotic, but that does not mean that we theorize and research social relations for instance in the same way that we theorize and research language – they have distinct properties, and researching them gives rise to distinct disciplines. (Though it is possible and desirable to work across disciplines in a ‘transdisciplinary’ way – see Fairclough 2000.)
CDA is analysis of the dialectical relationships between discourse (including language but also other forms of semiosis, e.g. body language or visual images) and other elements of social practices. Its particular concern (in my own approach) is with the radical changes that are taking place in contemporary social life, with how discourse figures within processes of change, and with shifts in the relationship between semiosis and other social
elements within networks of practices. We cannot take the role of discourse in social practices for granted, it has to be established through analysis. And discourse may be more or less important and salient in one practice or set of practices than in another, and may change in importance over time.
Discourse figures in broadly three ways in social practices. First, it figures as a part of the social activity within a practice. For instance, part of doing a job (for istance being a shop assistant) is using language in a particular way; so too is part of governing a country.
Second, discourse figures in representations. Social actors within any practice produce representations of other practices, as well as (‘reflexive’) representations of their own practice, in the course of their activity within the practice.
Norman Fairclough