New Developments in Discourse Analysis: Discourse as Social Practice

Abstract

This paper presents a reflection on current approaches to discourse. As a starting point, I consider the emergence and transformation of this field, as a result of and also as a contribution to two consecutive and linked movements in western thinking: the 'linguistic turn', and social reflexivity'. Among their implications, I study the emergence of a three-dimensional concept of discourse, shared by current trends in DA, in particular, by Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis, Sociolinguistic Ethnography and Interactional Sociolinguistics, Discursive Social Psychology, and Critical Discourse Analysis. For all these trends, this new complex view of discourse always encompasses the conceptualisation of discourse as a social practice. However, some differences can be detected among them; these are related to: i) the context they consider relevant for the analysis; ii) the kind of relations they claim between the discursive practices and other social practices, and iii), finally, the role they attribute to discourse in the production of knowledge and in the exercise of power. At the end of the paper, I consider how, in critical discourse analyses (CDA, including CL), the view of discourse as social practice has led to a redefinition of the analytical task, deliberately turning the analysis itself into a social practice. As a result of this, the analysis has two aims: to explore the social effects of discourses, in the performance but also in the representation of social practices; and to intervene in the present socio-discursive order - that is to intervene in the production, circulation, and reception of discourses. I present this both as related to the reflexive turn, and also to the positions adopted in the debates previously analysed.