Discourse Analysis
- desk-based
- week-month timescale
- low resource requirement.
Discourse analysis is widely used in social science. It builds on concepts and approaches from linguistics, but these have been applied and extended with reference to psychological theories of human interaction and theories of political power and institutions developed in sociology, political science, geography and international relations, and a reasonably stable set of approaches are now well-understood and used across these disciplines.
- Should I use DA?
Discourse analysis is fundamentally interpretative – it seeks to use naturally occurring or ‘found’ data to inform a nuanced analysis of how different ideas come to shape politics and organizational practice. – constitutive nature of what can be said.
Discourse analysis can be applied at different scales. The main limit comes from the ability of the analyst to work with a finite number of texts and sources, but this also varies in relation to the breadth and complexity of the topic under examination. Unlike ‘live methods’ in social science, sources can be gathered and compared across locations that are relatively remote in time and space, e.g. produced over decades or in different national or institutional settings. Thus in sustainability research discourse analysis can be used to understand how ‘sustainability’ itself rises up policy agendas over decades, gathering momentum from discussion in the press or among lay publics or different expert communities.
- How do I use DA?
Discourse analysis would direct attention to the particular language used to help give a problem definition, and propose more or less explicit solutions. One might note the gradual extension of the topics to which ‘sustainability’ might be applied, from questions of ecosystems and agriculture, to pensions and social inequality. It would also identify particular narratives that create an underlying structure for more narrowly focused discussion. For example Hajer’s (1995) classic study of talk about environmental pollution in Europe noted the rise of what he called ‘ecological modernisation’ - the belief that there is a positive sum game where environmental management also promotes modernisation and innovation. More recent work suggests that this has now been replaced in many international organisations by talk of ‘decoupling’ economic development from unsustainable production and consumption (Fletcher and Rammelt 2017).
As well as the play of different normative claims, in discourse analysis we would typically ask questions about how authorship and credibility is asserted in different kinds of text, and what kinds of evidence as used. For example Merry (2017) has documented difficult discussions at the UN on how to measure development and wellbeing, but there are also tensions in fields like health, biodiversity and other fields on the value of evidence from experiments or trials, modelling or field studies. Projects might also address how local or national actors use evidence to shape goals and indicators as they are being drawn up (Riles 2001, Winickoff and Mondou 2017), and afterwards how the texts of SDGs become resources for activism or policy at a local level. Studying these issues involves reflexivity by the research team, who may be themselves seeking to enter this discursive space, and make claims about their work as a form of evidence.
The emphasis on language and ideas does not mean data is thought to float free of institutions. Indeed it would be important to carefully describe the relevant institutions and sites for the production and circulation of discourse, from NGO gatherings and the media to the highest levels of international organisations. Winickoff and Mondou on biofuels explore who makes policy-relevant science and how it has effects through ‘pluralistic, overlapping and fragmented regimes’ or ‘complex and distributed systems of global governance’. As part of these regimes, as both Riles and Winickoff show, NGOs have a part to play. History tells us that change often comes about through political struggle, and politics may be taken to require contestation - activists and social movements challenge the status quo and will try to use the SDGs to further their agendas. Efforts to understand the unwritten rules and routines of institutions are shared between academics, and activists, lobbyists or campaigners. Hajer (1995) proposed that one can map the evolution of ‘discourse coalitions’ between these and other groups around particular agendas in a specific policy subsystem or domain.
- Examples of DA in Sustainability Research
In the case of the SDGs one might of course identify competing discourses around different specific goals, or cross-cutting appeals to broader ideas, for example claims based on the legal concepts of ‘human rights’ or jurisdiction as well as economics. International governance may of course also serve as a venue for nation building (e.g. Jasanoff 2005, Hecht 1998 on nationalism in energy policy), or appeals to other normative commitments including religious or moral themes such as ‘stewardship’ or ‘Asian values’. Scholars of the SDGs have drawn attention not only to such contests, but how eventual texts reflect them in containing different kinds of language. For example Weber (2017) shows that other than the education SDGs, no other goals include text calling for universal entitlements e.g. on water, health, shelter and food, and several explicitly promote implementation of free trade law, trade liberalisation, and privatisation.
Jasanoff, S., 2005. In the democracies of DNA: ontological uncertainty and political order in three states. New Genetics and Society, 24(2), pp.139-156.
Hecht, G. (1998) The Radiance of France. Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- References and Resources
Cowan, J.K. & Billaud, J. (2017) The 'public' character of the Universal Periodic Review: contested concept and methodological challenge. In: Niezen, Ronald and Sapignoli, Maria (eds.) Palaces of hope: the anthropology of global organizations. Cambridge studies in law and society. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 106-126.
Riles, A. (2000) The Network Inside Out, University of Michigan Press, Michigan.
Merry, S. (2017). Expertise and Quantification in Global Institutions. Niezen, Ronald and Sapignoli, Maria (eds.) Palaces of hope: the anthropology of global organizations. Cambridge studies in law and society. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Winickoff, D. & Mondou, M. (2017) The problem of epistemic jurisdiction in global governance: The case of sustainability standards for biofuels. Social Studies of Science 47(1):7 – 32.
Hajer, M (1995) The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Fletcher, R. and Rammelt, C. (2017) Decoupling: key fantasy of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. Globalisations 14(3): 450-467.
- SSRP projects using Discourse Analysis
Suggested citation: Will, C. (2019). Discourse Analysis [online] Sussex Sustainability Research Programme Research Methods for Sustainability Catalogue. Available at: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/ssrp/resources/research-methods/discourse-analysis.