Keynote Lectures
Four keynote lectures will be offered by our guests on
the first day of DeXus.
Puleng Hanong
Revisiting Ideology, Hegemony and Identity in Discourse: Evidence
from Institutional Discourse
In the lecture, I wish to revisit some of the main
research issues on discursive constructions of ideology, hegemony and
identity. I start from the premise of discourse as a social practice and
participants as social actors within a given social context. The social
context constructs, and is in turn, constructed by societal beliefs and
value systems in which it is embedded. I use, for illustrative purposes,
the analysis of a sample of institutional discourse data - judgements
from courtroom trials (1948 - 1980) - on the contravention of Section 16
of the Immorality Act of 1927 (and its subsequent amendments) in
Apartheid South Africa. I argue that social systems, constructed from
specific ideological positions establish dominant hegemonies which in
turn construct are constructed by dominant discourses regulating social
practices. I also examine how dominant hegemonies can be challenged by
the subjects, and in the process counter-discourses (e.g. contested
identities) are constructed.
Gunther Kress
Discourse and Multimodal Text: Looking at Ideology in the Banal Text
My engagement with the issues around change,
intervention and critique would be in relation to texts from pedagogic
environments - the kinds of things I have been working with/on over the
last 13 years; the questions of interaction and technology would be
addressed both through the mode and media dimensions of representation and
communication; and the last four terms - mediation, modality (in the sense
of multimodality), action and practice would constitute a means of
reflecting on pedagogic practices, both assessment and
learning. Of course I would reflect on this at a general level so
that people who are not working in a pedagogic context could relate this
to their interests.
Luisa Martin Rojo
Rethinking Analytical Practice: Conceptual, Methodological, and Political
Implications
This lecture focuses on the way the view of discourse
as social practice has led to a redefinition of the analytical task.
Discourse analysts reflexively bring critical aspects into their
analyses, turning the task itself into a social practice.
As a consequence, the study of the social effects of
discourses and the monitoring of the socio-discursive order (that is,
increasing discursive awareness and interest in discourse and its
effects, as well as intervening in the production, circulation, and
reception of discourses) are understood as goals of the analysis. These
goals seem to be inextricably bound to social reflexivity. However,
there is some controversy as to the concepts which guide this kind of
analysis. I will propose that "problematization" can be used
to clarify the objectives and procedures of the analysis. Starting from
this concept, I will reexamine some of our key concepts (including the
use of the term "critical" itself), some of the methodological
problems of analyses, and some of their political implications. In
relation to methodology, we will explore some of the weaknesses of the
work in critical discourse analysis, and the benefits of looking across
the plurality of disciplines, perspectives, and approaches, and to be
able too incorporate other methods (in particular, ethnographic
approaches). In relation to the political implications, we will examine
critically what it means to be critical from an academic position, and,
in particular, some of the paradoxical consequences of the appropriation
of the term "critical".
Ron Scollon
Discourse Analysis: Is It Useful; Is It Enough?
Six Areas of Development in Contemporary Discourse Analysis
Discourse Analysis was introduced by Zellig Harris in
an article in Language in 1952. With a major secondary impetus in the
writing of Michel Foucault in the late 1960's and 1970's, discourse
analysis has grown to be a large and complexly heterogeneous field of
study for scholars ranging from the firmly establish disciplines of
history, philosophy and politics to disciplines such as sociolinguistics
or cultural studies which had hardly been imagined at the time of
Harris's coinage. Over these 50 years discourse analysis has shifted
from an interest in the study of extended stretches of language, to a
focus on the analysis of language in use, and from there to using
discourse analysis as a way to position the researcher as an agent of
social change. This evolution of discourse analysis from primarily
linguistic/structural concerns to the analysis of and even participation
in social change opens the question I ask: Is discourse analysis is
useful, and is it sufficient for this program of social change?
I will argue that, even though discourse analysis
remains an important academic discipline in itself, there are reasons to
question its utility in projects of social change, at least within the
somewhat restricted disciplinary constraints of a primary focus on
language. From this point of view I will briefly point out six areas of
work in which our understanding of what discourse analysis is (or what
discourse analysis might become) is currently being transformed:
- Power
- Engagement
- Space & time
- Human psychology
- Modal complexity (multimodality)
- Representation & materialization (resemiotization)
My conclusion is simply that we have much to learn by
developing and integrating our knowledge of work being done somewhat
outside of our linguistic disciplinary traditions. I suggest that this
interdisciplinary integration may well be transforming discourse
analysis from what it has been for several decades into what it must
necessarily become if it is to be used within a program of social
change. I will conclude with a brief sketch of our own extension of
discourse analysis which we are calling 'nexus analysis'.
