Topic 8

discourse and Institution

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INTRODUCTION TO DISCOURSE
STUDIES
Discourse and Institution
 
Discourse and Social Institutions.
·       What is Discourse?

·        What are Institutions?

 
·        What is Institutional Discourse?
 
·        How does it work?

What does it do?

How does it do it?
 
• Power and Intertextuality.
 So What is ‘Discourse’?
not an easy term to get to grips with, partly because it is used
differently in different subject areas. However there are
Two Broad (overlapping) ways of conceiving ‘discourse’

1. The Analysis of Discourse (language)

primarily concerned with examining the discursive construction of text, spoken
and written

2. The Analysis of the Discourse of Institutions

Primarily concerned with tracing the institutional discourse (discourses) and the
way they organize, constrain, legitimate and promote the institution.
In linguistics the term Discourse is commonly used to refer to an
utterance larger than a single sentence

In Communication, analysis of Discourse examines the verbal and non-verbal

rules and conventions that are used, as well as the context in which the
interaction takes place, the content of the utterances etc.
i.e., it is primarily an analysis of spoken LANGUAGE as TEXT
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS LANGUAGE

Discourse = actual instances of communication in the medium of language

Examines aspects of the structure and function of language in use

Discourse Analysis goes beyond examining language as structure to explore

use, construction, purpose, formation, action
• How Discourse is shaped by the world and shapes the world
(interpretation)

• How Discourse is shaped by language and shapes language (we can only
say what is already said)
• How Discourse is shaped by participants and shapes participants
(identity and recipient design)

• How discourse is shaped by prior discourse and shapes the possibilities

of future discourse

(lectures look and sound like this)

• How Discourse is shaped by the medium and shapes the medium

(How discourse is presented in texts reflects media used)

• How Discourse is shaped by purpose and purpose shapes discourse.

(who says what and why, to what end?)

The discourse of Institutions (Foucault)

• concerned with the meanings of language codes,

• focus is primarily on the power relationships embodied in those

codes.

•they are always subject to the historical and social context of the
time and prevailing power relationships and conflicts,

•each discourse contains a limited range of possible statements, by

that very limitation defining what it is possible and not possible to say.
Cont’….

Some discourses are considered more legitimate than others,

There are the discourses of radio and television news, the discourses of medicine,
science, academia, family etc.

Discourses are ways of speaking/writing and operate according to rules, and

these rules articulate with socio-historical arrangements and circumstances
(Cuff, et al. 261)

There is a constant ideological struggle between discourses; for example, the

discourse of free-market capitalism is now dominant, hegemonic, whereas the
discourse of Marxism is defined as irrelevant
Thus…

Discourse is a language or system of representation that has developed

socially in order to make and circulate a coherent set of meanings
about a topic area.
These meanings serve the interests of that section of society within
which the discourse originates and which works ideologically to
naturalize those meanings into, as encountered as, common sense. ....

Discourse is thus a social act which may promote or oppose the dominant
ideology, and is thus often referred to as a 'discursive practice'. In this
approach any account of a discourse or discursive practice must include its
topic area, its social origin and its ideological work:
·        The Discourse of Institutions –

‘medical discourse’, ‘family discourse’, ‘political discourse’, ‘media

discourse’.

·  It is the particular mode of textuality of an institution.

I.e., It is the set of textual arrangements which work to organize and co-
ordinate the actions, positions and identities of the people who inhabit
them (Thwaites et al)
i.e., the institution characterizes the way we talk, the
language we use and expectations we have concerning the
language, talk or text we see or hear within a given
context/ institution
 
 So, What is an Institution?
 

A relatively stable set of social arrangements and relationships, which provides a

structure of ‘roles’, relationships and functions for those who inhabit it. (Talcott
Parsons, 1937)

1) Adaption - organize and mobilize action for resources

|
Environment
|
2) Goal Attainment - having things to do and being successful in fulfilment of those
goals. Within and between institutions.

3) Pattern Maintenance and tension management –

Loyalty, motivation, R&R - stress management

4) Integration - Regulated relations between individuals and sub groups

2 conditions of survival for institutions (units)
 

1) Effectively relate to its environment (institutions around it, useful to

others, within relations of Power…. Truth, etc)

2) Must be able to maintain internal integrity. Distinct from other

institutions through practice, convention, knowledge.
Characteristics of an institution are….

• ‘Roles’ for those who participate in it

(functions of address) ‘husband/wife’

• Power relations carried in those roles

(you do the washing up)

• Familiar and routine topics

(washing up, child care, sex, money, purchases, holidays mother
–in laws, staying out late)

• Hierarchy of ‘roles’
(I earn the most money so I’m the head of the household)
So, What is ‘institutional’ discourse?
 
• The ways of doing stuff within a bounded context or organisation.

• We are able to move from context to context, adjusting our

behavior according to our environment.

• The environment we are in is one full of routine ways of doing things

that make sense in context.

• Ways of talking at home and ways of talking at work, or at university

are different.
An institutional discourse is the sum of those familiar ways of doing
things, the sum of expectations and appropriate practices of the
institution.
 

•       Each has a different set of practices

•        Each has a distinctive discourse.

Each has power relations within it.

 Institutional Power (1) relations are exercised
through discourse.
 
We self regulate, exercise power through ‘legitimate’, accepted
unconscious micro-capillary, or bio, power.

The Discourse shapes, maintains and embodies the institution.

 
how do we know it is a medical drama?
not only the props but the language and texts of ‘Hospital’, or police doing
arresting, investigating.

‘Order in Court’

(Humor often works by changing the discourse for comic effect.)

Each Institution produces and controls

…appropriate discourse
 
to analyse the construction of identity through…..

…..appropriate topics
 
semiotics, identity, everyday life

…..appropriate communication channels

 
journals, books, lectures, essays, reviews
Institutional Discourse is thus…  
the characteristic ways of interacting within a particular institution and
through which institutions are construct and identified.
 
There are…..
•        Rules of interaction,
  what can be said, by whom, when and to whom. Institutions structure
the interactional relationships between members within the
institution.
•        Institutions consist of a number of social identities,
 
student, researcher, lecturer, writer, tutor, supervisor, secretary

 
•There is Hierarchy within institutions
 
Who can/should tell whom to do what and in what way.

Institutional discourse thus entails specialist knowledge, controlled and

policed, in the sense that one must know the discourse and be seen to be
part of the institution (embody, felicitous conditions).
‘Power/knowledge’.
Institutional discourse gives the ability to define or construct an object,
control that object, and mediate it for others.

What is ‘news’? - Media Discourse –

What is ‘multiple personality disorder’ - Medical Discourse,
How to get an extension for your essay- Choose either….
Family?
Medical?
Work?
What is ‘a ‘good’ education’? – Education discourse
Institutions are not self enclosed but interact with each other.
Institutions have a purpose and so must interact with other institutions
whilst maintaining their coherence and structure.

Boundary Maintenance – (adaptation)

 Within institutions members may push the boundaries of their
institutional identity – the child refusing to wash, the wife/husband
flirting with the post-man, the husband doing the shopping, the student
not wearing their regulation hat,
 
Loafing, whistleblowing, maverick cops, leaving early, starting early

These play out within the institution as boundary maintenance –

keeping the institution adapting, evolving and surviving through
testing, challenging and innovation.
The inside and outside of institutional discourse

Institutional Discourse is both outside, what we see, the institutional product, -

YOU and RESEARCH - and inside, what we don’t see, how the institution produces
what it does. Administration and organisation

Inside the institution.

How did this course get to be here?
What had to happen in order for all the bits to come together – idea, proposal,
acceptance, planning, resources, adaptation, and execution, and constant
maintenance and evolution.
Thus….
 

Institutions are not simply groups of people who live or work together,
interacting according to the rules and conventions they also include all the
texts and genres through which interactions take place and whereby the rules
and conventions are written down or recorded in some way.
Institutional practice as institutional discourse
       
Within any institution, institutional identities confer ways of
appropriate behavior and also how to get things done.
So not only do we learn how to act and speak and interact according to
the context we are in but also how to move information about. How to
make requests, get promotion, submit assignments, get the resources
we need, provide information.     

Moreover, each context or institution requires its own set of

interactional practices and conventions.
Particular institutions goals and practices may have similarities and
familiarities with other institutions (commercial child care and family,
Health and advertising health products), some institutions remain
distinct in their discourse and practice (religion and science).
      Some, of course, interpenetrate to such an extent as to challenge other
institutions and their discourse.
From the hallowed halls of quiet contemplation and study, where financial
matters are relegated to paying the staff bar tab. Where students and lecturers
engage in thoughtful debate and academic pursuits.
To one of output, customers, league tables, profit, graduate attributes,
what kind of job can I get? ‘outcomes’.

Marketing discourse in Higher Education.

•  Evaluation
•     Productivity
•     Customers
•     Output
•     Image
•     Advertising
• Marketing
All institutions interact with others…
All institutions engage in power relations with other institutions as
they struggle for legitimacy (Foucault – the rise of Psychiatry and
the birth of the clinic), resources, (money, raw materials students,) and
power (more important than other institutions) (University, Sandstone,
Regional, and TAFE, GO8).

Institutions are ‘Greedy’.

They are driven to expand and secure resources for ‘itself’. The institution
becomes an object with the subjects (people in the institutions) merely
roles rather than individuals (Weber’s iron cage of bureaucracy)
Institutions then create a de-centering of the subject. (Or the subject as a
particular institutional object).
The way of talking and acting, of discourse, sets up a particular
position of addresser and addressee –
No longer are you people within an education environment here to develop
yourself and expand your mind in preparation for life. Higher education as
business: we sell Higher Education, which means you are
positioned/constructed addressed as customer, consumers, you are here
for a service, a service that is paid for and can be measured by output,

•Employability,
•Graduate attributes
•Evaluation of methods (teaching).
•Rating of institutions.

•And of course – the customer must want the product

The ‘discourse of recruitment in higher education’.

UQ adverts – job, students – both adverts (media discourse) yet

constructed in different ways and placed in different locations.

Discourses from the institution –

Note; how they are constructed, (pictures, text, layout etc) and where
they would be found – glossy magazine, promotional output.
As opposed to (logo, text, formal language, layout) found in jobs pages,
sections of the web for recruitment.)
Same institution but constructing the addressee differently, both are
adverts and so both involve mediation.
Summary

Discourse,

Discourse analysis language

Analysis of institutional discourse

The Agent Client Approach

Role behaviors

Differentiation trends

Institutional power
The Agent-client approach ; can be viewed as the
mediator between individual an society as a
whole
1. ROLE BEHAVIOUR; Institution regulate
individual behavior through a system of social
roles that participant must fill
2. DIFFERENTIATION TRENDS; That institution
specify their areas more and more precisely
3. INSTITUTIONAL POWER; the power aspect also
includes the tendency toward domain
 Politic

The need for modification

The need for persuasion

Politic ; in political discourse it is more significant
1. THE NEED FOR MODIFICATION ;
a) Hedging Strategy = reveal the degree of ambiguity
about a given preposition
b) Euphemism = most critized in political language
unpleasant things politicians try to soften the
content
c) Strategy Ambiguous = the context provides enough
information on whether for example “John saw the
man with the binocular” John had
2. THE NEED FOR PERSUASION ;
Politian has been said are eager to change meanings
or illocutions in their manipulation of the content of
a message for example from a Dutch parliamentary
 Law

Characteristic of judicial interaction

Legal document and generic integrity

Forensic Linguistic
Law; the discourse that is concerning the
administration of justice
1) CHARACTERISTIC OF JUDICIAL INTERACTION ; a
current approach to analyzing institutional forms of
interaction, like the judicial one
2) LEGAL DOCUMENTSAND GENERIC INTEGRITY; the
function of that should be provide waterproof and
airtight formulations concerning right and duties, which
may be odds with criteria for comprehensibility
3) FORENSIC LINGUISTIC; Discourse specialists to a make
decision are consulted in legal matter, this consultancy
has led to a new branch of linguistic: forensic linguistic.
Characteristics of legal English
 Specialized discourse
Ever greater interest by linguists in distinguishing the
characteristics of the various genres which make up a
language.
Specialized discourse (SD) is concerned predominantly
with the language used in professional and institutional
settings, e.g. in business, hospitals, schools, universities,
the courts etc.
The major distinguishing feature of SD (with respect to
general discourse) is its lexicon, i.e. the large number of
specialized lexical items pertaining to a particular genre
The equivalent of SD in Italian is linguaggi settoriali
 Different
The legal types of legal discourse
discourse community is made up of lawyers,
judges, and all those involved in drafting laws. The
‘insiders’.
There are different types of legal discourse (subgenres):
e.g. the language used between lawyer and client or
between two lawyers; the language of the courts (much
of which is oral); the language of law reports and
academic texts on legal matters; the language of legal
documents.
‘Legal language’ covers any sort of discourse which is
concerned with legal matters (descriptive and
prescriptive), whereas ‘the language of the law’ is
concerned with prescriptive legal discourse.
 Archaic or rarely used words and expressions
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the consent of the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this
present Parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same, as follows:
NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the
foregoing and the respective representations,
warranties, covenants and agreements set forth in
this Agreement and intending to be legally bound
hereby, the parties hereto agree as follows:
 Binomials and trinomials
… the terms and conditions set forth in this agreement
…
This is the last will and testament of me …
I give, devise and bequest all my property of every
nature and kind …
… the same may be amended, supplemented or
modified in accordance with the terms hereof …
 Formulaic expressions
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth?
Now, therefore, the parties agree as follows:
I, ____, of ____ being of sound and disposing mind,
do hereby make, publish and declare the following to
be my Last Will and Testament …
 Foreign words and Latinisms
“The defense was that the plaintiff was not a de jure
officer and that a de facto officer is not entitled to a
salary.”

“If in case B a court with power to overrule case A says

that case A is overruled, the ratio decidendi of case A
ceases altogether to have any authority so far as the
doctrine of precedent is concerned.”

“The Czech Republic shall remove trade barriers in

the coal market with the acquis by accession …”
 Frequent repetition of particular words, expressions and
structures
Powers of vice-chair 11. Where (a) a member of a Board
is appointed to be vice-chair either by the Assembly
or under regulation 10, and (b) the chair of the Board
has died or has ceased to hold office, or is unable to
perform the duties of chair owing to illness, absence
from England and Wales or any other cause, the vice-
chair shall act as chair until a new chair is appointed
or the existing chair resumes the duties of chair, as
the case may be; and references to the chair in
Schedule 3 shall, so long as there is no chair able to
perform the duties of chair, be taken to include
references to the vice-chair.
 Long complex sentences with intricate
coordination and subordination
Resolution 1786 (2007)
Adopted by the Security Council at its 5785th meeting, on 28 November
2007
 The Security Council,
 Recalling its resolution 1775 (2007) of 14 September 2007,
 Having regard to Article 16 (4) of the Statute of the International Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia,
 Having considered the nomination by the Secretary-General of Mr. Serge Brammertz for
the position of Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(S/2007/678),
 Recalling that resolution 1503 (2003) of 28 August 2003 called upon the International
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to take all possible measures to complete all trial
activities at first instance by the end of 2008, and to complete all work in 2010 (ICTY
completion strategy),
 Decides to appoint Mr. Serge Brammertz as Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia with effect from 1 January 2008 for a four-year term, which is
subject to an earlier termination by the Security Council upon completion of the work
of the International Tribunal.
 Syntactic discontinuities
If, after informing the supervisory authority concerned under
subsection (3), any measures taken by the supervisory
authority against the insurance undertaking are, in the
opinion of the regulatory authority, not adequate and the
undertaking continues to contravene this Act, the regulatory
authority may, after informing the supervisory authority of its
intention, apply to the High Court for such an order …
Developed country Members shall, if requested by other
Members, provide copies of the documents or, in case of
voluminous documents, summaries of the documents covered
by a specific notification in English, French or Spanish.
 Widespread use of the passive
The acronym EURES shall be used exclusively for activities
within EURES. It shall be illustrated by a standard logo,
defined by a graphic design scheme. The logo shall be
registered as a Community trade mark at the Office for
Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM). It may be
used by the EURES members and partners.
If any term or provision of this Agreement shall be deemed
prohibited by or invalid under any applicable law, such
provision shall be invalidated without affecting the
remaining provisions of this Agreement, the Original
Agreement or the Loan Documents.
 Impersonal style
No one may be subjected to slavery, servitude or forced labour.
Everyone has the right of access to a) any information held by
the state and b) any information that is held by another person
and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights.
When a prisoner is found guilty of an infraction of the laws of
this state or the rules of the department, gain-time may be
forfeited according to law.
Members shall ensure that their sanitary or phytosanitary
measures are adapted to the sanitary or phytosanitary
characteristics of the area – whether all of a country, part of a
country, or all or parts of several countries – from which the
product originated and to which the product is destined.
Long lists can Long
be typically
lists found in definition
provisions, e.g.
"Governmental Rule" means any statute, law,
treaty, rule, code, ordinance, regulation, license,
permit, certificate or order of any Governmental
Authority or any judgment, decree, injunction,
writ, order or like action of any court or other
judicial or quasijudicial tribunal.
"Person" means an individual, corporation,
limited liability company, partnership (limited,
general or otherwise), association, trust, business
trust, unincorporated organization, or other
entity or group.
Nominalization is theNominalization
process by which a grammatical
expression (very often a verb phrase) is turned into a noun
phrase, e.g. to apply = to make an application
An amendment to the Constitution of Canada may be made
by proclamation issued by the Governor General …
No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of these rights
other than those imposed in conformity with the law …
In the preparation and application of sanitary or
phytosanitary measures, Members shall take account of the
special needs of developing country Members, and in
particular of the least-developed country Members.
 Bureaucracy
Research on effective governmental document

Research on governmental image

Bureaucracy; is system in government that can be
perceived as being ruled by principles concerning
cooperation, relevance and politeness
1) RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE GOVERMENTAL
DOCUMENT ; used to obtain information are a
text type that pre eminently indicates the
irregularity in the relation between government
and citizen.
2) RESEARCH ON GOVERNMENT IMAGE; it
about the effect of image , even the government
succeeds in high standard document design this
is no guarantee that citizen will cooperate with
big brother (Client)
 Media

Production of news

The perception of news

Media ; can be seen as a special branch within study of
mass communication (television radio and internet)

1) THE PRODUCTION OF NEWS; systematically report

in the newspaper, TV and internet. In this approach
all kind of analysis were carried out from theme
analysis to lexical choices
2) THE PERCEPTION OF NEWS; news perception plays
an important role. Besides the different in reporting
influence the reader’s attitude (journalist)
 Health Care
Stylistic analysis of therapeutic discourse

Power relation in doctor patient interaction

Health Care; The aim was to explain why sequences of
utterances that are at the first sight non coherent do
make sense to the participant
1) STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THERAPEUTIC
DISCOURSE; showed that the first session,
formulation were given in which description of
feelings were choked off and words were chosen
that were more rational.
2) POWER RELATIONS IN DOCTOR-PATIENT
INTERACTION; about the discourse pattern that
can identified in doctor-patient identification.
that are focus on speech act,