Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is a general term for analyzing written or spoken use of a language. Developed by Zellig Harris in 1952, discourse analysis first looked at formal equivalence relations among sentences of a discourse, where equivalent units of information appear together. Discourse in linguistics is defined as “language in use” or “socially situated text and talk.” In other disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, communication studies, and marketing, discourse is seen as a system of power and knowledge situated in a specific time and space. Discourse analysis in consumer culture refers to an analysis of oral and written speech of consumers (and producers) in order to understand related meanings, cultures, and practices in making theoretical explanations. The outcome of discourse analysis might be a different reading of the same text and an awareness of powerful and weak points of a particular statement, research method, or interpretation.

Although discourse analysis is a methodological orientation, it does not provide a particular method of collecting or analyzing data but rather provides a method of approaching a research question. In consumer-behavior studies, as well as in many other disciplines, it is characterized by deconstructive reading and interpretation of written or oral texts, assuming that every text is conditioned in a discourse. A careful and sensitive reading of a text would unravel tight systematic structures and reveal what runs counter to apparent meanings, and thus demonstrate subtle and sometimes hidden meanings. Discourse analysis reads beyond the text per se and tries to understand the underlying conditions behind the problem by extending the perspective of inquiry.

Discourse analysis focuses on language use in the form of sentences, phrases, and words that are used in communicating with others. These sentences, which constitute both spoken and written text, are assumed to affect relationships among people and be affected by participants who use them. In other words, discourse analysis focuses on relationships between linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior. It draws from the idea that particular phrases in language are specific to particular situations. The primary purpose is to focus on this relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used, as well as understand how language becomes meaningful to participants at that specific context. For instance, when an instructor says “class is full,” a university student may easily understand that it means all students who take the course are present when the class starts, while another person may think that the classroom is full of people, or a nonnative English speaker may not even capture the meaning of this sentence. Discourse analysis, in its simplest sense, tries to understand this relationship between sentences and people who use those sentences.

Related to the concept of discourse, the notion of pragmatics involves what people mean by those [Page 462]sentences in the real world. For example, the phrase “class is full” may actually mean “we do not need to take attendance” or “we can start the class” rather than just a statement of the fact that all students are present. Another related method is called conversation analysis, which looks at casual conversations and focuses on pauses, overlaps, and voice changes in trying to understand the meanings in a particular situation. Conversation analysts are often reluctant to utilize predetermined categories and thus follow an inductive approach in their analyses. In this way, one can understand a culture more deeply, which arises from the idea that the same sentence can mean different things in different cultures. This is referred to as ethnomethodology, which gives utmost importance to the observability of social activities in everyday life so that the researcher fully grasps knowledge of what is happening in a social setting.

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