Discursive Policy Analysis

The Meaning of Discursive Policy Analysis

The discursive analyst takes discussion as the object of analysis and then sets out to trace linguistic regularities within those debates. These linguistic regularities are generally called discourses. However, the term discourse is used in different ways, ranging from the speech–act theory to the “archeology” of Michel Foucault.

What the approaches share is an anti-essentialist ontology. Discursive analysis can be placed within the constructivist or interpretive tradition of the social sciences: It assumes that language is constitutive of social realities and takes a critical stance toward a singular notion of an objective “truth” waiting to be discovered. This is not to assume that phenomena exist only in language (as critics tend to state), but it does suppose that we can perceive phenomena only by linguistically making sense of them. This assumption of multiple social realities is of particular importance for the policy analyst, because, in the words of Carol Bacchi (2000),

Societal events are almost by definition ambiguous and so complex that they can never be fully described. Every description or narrative gives a particular perspective on the problem; indeed, the very perspective will determine whether a particular phenomenon will be seen at all as a problem that requires political action. Words, catchphrases, metaphors, and story lines frame societal problems, and as this framing influences our answer to the question, “Who gets (and who should get) what, when, and how?” it is inherently political.

As language is not transparent—we cannot “see through” it—there is a continuous interaction between the terms in which a policy is described and the way we think about it. In their famous [Page 687]book Metaphors We Live By (1980), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explained how describing something in terms of something else (what they call the “thisness of a that”) structures our thought processes. For instance, it matters whether we describe integration in terms of a melting pot, an invasion, or even a war, as the description will shape not only our understanding of what it is but also the ways we respond to it. Moreover, a particular policy will always come with categories and target groups and descriptions of deserving and undeserving people, thereby creating its own political reality. In the words of Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak

...