Discourse analysis

27-28 October 2017

Jonathan Miaz, coordinateur du PDSPO

Lea Sgier, CEU (Budapest) et Université de Genève

Dr Lea Sgier, HETS et Université de Genève

This workshop aims to introduce the students to social science discourse analysis, and in particular to interpretive discourse analysis as a family of approaches that emphasise the constructed nature of politics and the importance of struggles over interpretive and definitory hegemony for political processes and for the definition of political “realities”. Such approaches have become popular in various fields of political science, including policy studies, social movement research, international relations, organisational studies, etc. They allow to raise research questions that ask how worldviews are constructed, how discourses emerge and change, and how they influence political processes.

The workshop provides an overview of the (rather disparate) field discourse analysis (including more positivist strands such as discursive institutionalist) before then zooming in more specifically on interpretive analysis (of post-structuralist inspiration): its epistemological bases, its various uses (such as the analysis of systems of meanings, discourses and counter-discourses, genealogical analysis, etc.). We will briefly look into the most important bases and methodological tools of this type of analysis (tools from linguistics, socio-linguistics and post-structuralism for instance), some of its more practically-oriented manifestations (such as critical frame analysis), and some more general methodological issues proper to qualitative-interpretive research.

Quite a large part of this workshop will be devoted to practice: in the form of exercises to be done in common, and – if relevant to and desired by the participants – in form of discussions around their own plans and materials. Participants who are already working discourse analytically, or who have concrete plans for the use of discourse analytic tools (regardless of which type of discourse analysis they plan to use), can send along a short descriptive of their plan before the workshop, and on this basis we can schedule time slots for them to present their ideas and submit them to discussion (cf. below).

By the end of the course, the participants should have gained some understanding of the importance of language in politics and of discourse analysis as a conceptual and methodological approach.

Bâtiment Uni-Mail, Salle M4020 (vendredi) et M3220 (samedi), Université de Genève

20