Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis Research Articles

Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Elite Athletics: “There’s a Lot of Work Still Yet To Be Done”

Several female athletes have recently challenged the long-standing assumption that pregnancy/parenthood (particularly motherhood) and participation in elite-level sport are mutually exclusive. These women’s actions have elicited change across the elite athletics industry and have sparked a need for further research to understand how elite athlete-parents perceive these shifts. We used feminist poststructuralist theory, feminist participatory action research, and semistructured interviews to explore the perspectives of 21 pregnant and parenting elite/international and world-class athletes (11 women and 10 men) on the developing degree of acceptance of parenthood in elite athletics. Through feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, we identified that, despite considerable recent advancements, there is still a need for continued change in the degree to which pregnant/parenting elite athletes are accepted and supported within elite athletics.

Unmothering the Conversation on Gender in Academia

The number of academic women working in universities has increased significantly in Chile. This article analyzes discourses on gender in the Chilean higher education system coming from academics working as scholars in the educational field in private and public universities in three different regions of the country. Based on a large qualitative study on research policies, we revisited data from 43 semistructured interviews with feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA) to reflect the ways gender policies on research are being designed, justified, and resisted within academic spaces. The results show that the promotion of gender policies has been reduced to an idea of women as a homogeneous category, leaving aside a complex comprehension of politics of care and gender, without incorporating intersectionality in the discussion. This has an impact on the resistance to the advancement of gender policies in research and the perpetuation of sexism within academic spaces.

An exploration of how dominant discourses steer U.K. strength and conditioning coach education

ABSTRACT Psychosocial coaching competencies, including psychological, pedagogical, philosophical, and sociocultural aspects, which underpin an athlete-centred coaching approach, have been largely overlooked by the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA) coach education. It is possible to understand why psychosocial competencies have been disregarded by critiquing how stakeholders’ perceptions, such as board members, tutors, assessors, who are responsible for coach education, have been shaped by dominant discourses within sport culture. The purpose of this study is to understand and critique UKSCA stakeholders’ perceptions of psychosocial coaching practices through the lenses of dominant discourses in Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coaching. Thirty stakeholders took part in one-to-one semi-structured interviews. To prompt discussion for the interviews, they were shown video vignettes depicting psychosocial coaching competencies. The data were analysed in two phases. First, a thematic analysis deduced participants’ understandings of the competencies built into each vignette. Second, a poststructural discourse analysis critiqued how a performance-scientific coaching discourse and a discourse of orthodox masculinity impacted stakeholders’ perceptions. The results indicate that stakeholders’ perceptions of psychological and pedagogical effective coaching approaches focused on athletic performance, which disregarding the well-being and personal development of the athlete. Stakeholders also recognised overt sexist coaching practice, which suggest some appraisal of sociocultural and philosophical competencies. Yet, covert sexist microaggressions towards female coaches were often accepted as banter and female coaches’ emotional labour were not recognised. This study advances the literature by showing how the dominant culture of performance-scientific coaching and orthodox masculinity shape what is accepted as effective coaching practice. Such coaching practice de-emphasises psychosocial coaching competencies and limits the impact of equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) strategies, as well as the holistic development of both athletes and S&C coaches.

Trauma as the ‘Belief That the World is a Dangerous Place’: The Obfuscation of Systemic Violence in Social Work’s Discourses of Trauma

Abstract The concept of psychological trauma has been taken up widely in popular culture and in diverse academic fields including social work. In this work of poststructuralist discourse analysis, we used methods of close reading to examine a random sample of thirty social work articles on trauma (published 2010–2020). Our aim was not to refute the salience of the concept nor to establish its true meaning and correct usage, but to critically examine its discursive functions; what does ‘trauma’ do in social work? In our analysis, the progressive aims of the discourses of trauma—to counter pathologisation and confer legitimacy to harms that have been marginalised—are unrealised. ‘Trauma’ is deployed in multiple, often contradictory ways and the slippages between intent and function work to construct the trauma-laden as non-normative, damaged subjects, and legitimate objects, thus, of social work scrutiny and intervention. Social work’s discourses of trauma undermine their own efforts to centre a structural analysis. If ‘to perceive the world as a safe place’ is a signifier of normative, non-traumatised functioning, then what does ‘trauma’ do when applied to the racialised, gendered, colonised and marginalised, for whom the world is not a place of safety but of material and psychical violence?

Enabling multilingualism or disabling multilinguals? Interrogating linguistic discrimination in Swedish preschool policy

In this paper we conduct a poststructural discourse analysis inspired by Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (WRP) approach. We explore what kinds of problems are formulated in preschool educational policy on multilingualism, and what underlying assumptions underlie the dominant discourse on language proficiency in Sweden. Serving as a case to discuss how racism, ableism and childism intersect with linguicism, we examine the importance of shifting from a ‘children’s (special) needs’ discourse to a ‘children’s (language) rights’ discourse through a social justice education framework. We draw upon Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s understanding of childism, which refers to prejudice and discrimination against children based on beliefs about their inferiority to adults. The right to and rights in education are constituent upon linguistic rights, upon students learning to use their first language, whether that be minority, indigenous or sign language.

Discursive positioning of doctors and e‑patients in online medical consultations in China

Abstract This study investigates the identity positioning of doctors and e‑patients in online medical consultations (OMCs) in China from the perspective of poststructuralist discourse analysis. Adopting positioning theory as the analytical framework, the study examines 100 asynchronous text-based OMCs with the purpose of identifying the positions of the OMC participants and the pragmatic function of these positions. The study found that the identity of e‑patients and doctors reflects multiple positions that are constructed and negotiated in the OMC discourse, including the emotional support seeker/giver position, the online buyer/seller position, the peer position, and the ‘family member’ position. Taken together, these positions can help establish an affective relationality between doctors and e‑patients, which contributes to a positive image of the participants and to the empowerment of e‑patients in particular.

Metaphor as Invective in the Genre of Internet Commentary: A Focus on German Political Discourse

This article presents the results of a linguo-stylistic analysis of a Germanlanguage commentary within the context of public political internet discourse. The analysis aims to identify distinctive features specific to this genre. Empirical material consists of over 200 comments on internet posts made by the German political party “Alternative for Germany,” selected through random sampling. The study applies both general scientific and linguistic methods, such as discourse analysis and contextual analysis. The relevance of this chosen topic is justified by the need for research in the field of internet linguistics, particularly in addressing genre-related issues. The goal is to determine, identify, and describe the characteristic features of commentary as an internet text. The article thoroughly examines the approaches taken by German linguists to define the concept of “invective,” encompassing lexical-semantic perspectives, speech act theory, and post-structural discourse analysis. Additionally, the analysis of the material reveals that invective is a hallmark of German political internet discourse, with manifestations in both explicit and implicit forms. The article discusses implicatures, arising through irony and metaphorization. The author concludes that metaphor can serve as a tool of persuasion. Metaphor, as a persuasive device, involves the intentional alteration of the mental representation of a given object based on the metaphorical image imposed by the manipulator. This typically includes exaggeration in some aspects of the metaphorically represented phenomenon while diminishing others.

When Shutting the Door Won’t Do: Teaching With the Specter of Community Backlash and the Implications for Teacher Education

Recently, numerous news stories have detailed the ways teachers across the country have been disciplined for addressing issues of oppression and justice in their schools. This paper engages poststructural discourse analysis to consider data from a year-long study of recent graduates of a justice-oriented teacher education program during their first year teaching, examining the ways that stories of community backlash functioned to discipline early career teachers to behave in particular ways. I theorize that these stories serve to discourage teachers from pursuing justice-oriented work in the classroom and that such discourses must be addressed in teacher education programs to prepare preservice teachers for the political realities of entering classrooms in the United States in the current cultural moment.

The leader and the people

Abstract This paper examines the shifting boundaries in populist discourses in China, with a focus on how the political leader’s discourse socially constructs the people. By combining critical and post-structuralist discourse analysis, we argue firstly that prevalent Western-centric approaches to the study of populism only partially capture the notion of the people in contemporary China, the study of which requires a mixture of elements from these approaches. Secondly, that the image of a Chinese people embracing the Chinese Dream and the promise for a New China, is narrated in a context where the Chinese Communist Party infuses all levels of society with messages of development, prosperity, peace and freedom. And thirdly, that while previous leaders would normally address the people in a formal and detached way, the distance between leadership and the people has been reduced in the Xi Jinping era.

“They expect me to be caring”: the challenges of claiming an androgynous leadership approach

PurposeThis study aims to explore the experience of performing androgynous leadership approaches by New Zealand women leaders within the context of everyday conflict situations.Design/methodology/approachThe research question “How do women leaders experience gender in conflict situations?” was explored through the facilitation of 4 focus groups with 19 senior female leaders in New Zealand. Poststructural discourse analysis was used to explore how participants negotiated positions of power within their environments and in accordance with competing gendered discourses.FindingsParticipants described taking a flexible, balanced, androgynous leadership approach to managing conflict situations. While the expectations to be “empathetic”, “sympathetic”, “gentle”, “nurturing” and “caring” resonated with the participants preferred approach, they remained firm that if conflict persisted, they would “cross the line” and adopt stereotypically masculine behaviours to resolve the situation. However, participants describe that when perceived to be crossing the line from feminine to masculine approaches, they experienced significant backlash. This demonstrates the tensions between the approaches women leaders would like to take in managing conflict and the experiences of doing so within a prescriptively gendered organisational context.Originality/valueThis research contributes to a gap which exists in understanding how gender is experienced from the viewpoint of the woman leader. This research presents a nuanced view of gendered leadership as a contested ground, rather than a series of strategic choices. Despite an increase in the acceptance of women into leadership positions, the authors seemingly remain bound by what is considered a “feminine” leader.

Depoliticising democracy through discourse: Reading Russia’s descent into autocracy and war with Jacques Rancière’s political theory

This article investigates the role of discourses in processes of deepening authoritarianism and war. By bringing Jacques Rancière’s works on politics and depoliticisation into dialogue with poststructuralist discourse analysis, the article argues that discursive depoliticisation contributes towards authoritarian consolidation and shows how authoritarianism deepens in a co-dependent nexus of domestic and international politics. Focusing in particular on Rancière’s concept of gaps, the article argues that the core mechanism of depoliticisation is to neutralise the gap constitutive of politics proper and that this neutralisation unfolds in discourse, through the logics of archipolitics, parapolitics, metapolitics and ultrapolitics. The article (1) develops a framework for unpacking discursive depoliticisation empirically by conceptualising Rancière’s logics as ideal-typical depoliticising discourses and (2) applies that framework in an analysis of Russian official discourse in recent years (2015–2023). The article thereby explains how discursive constructions have strengthened Russian autocracy: entrenched depoliticising discourses, produced and reinforced in a co-constitutive internal/external sphere, made possible authoritarian consolidation in Russia under Putin and its war on Ukraine. The article puts forward the concept of discursive depoliticisation as a novel perspective on ‘hybrid’ and authoritarian regimes, as well as Russia’s intensified war on Ukraine and full-on autocracy from 2022 onwards.

Constructing mediator identities through questioning in Chinese televised mediation

This study, integrating poststructuralist discourse analysis and conversation analysis, analyzes how the question-answer sequences construct mediators’ dynamic identities during Chinese televised mediation. The research shows that different mediators in the team tend to employ different types of questions at varying stages; that questions serve not only to elicit information but also to manage the multilateral talk, to make assertions, to persuade, and to construct different identities; that different mediators’ identities include the manager, the reality tester, the moral educator, the facilitator, and the entertainer. Instead of remaining neutral, they might step out of the neutralistic circle and adhere to the golden mean. The complex representation of these identities is deeply rooted in China’s cultural and socioeconomic background. This study provides a thorough understanding of the interplay between questioning and identity in institutional contexts and the mechanism of Chinese televised mediation.

‘Joking aside’ The power of rejections in humour

Response is an effective tool for exercising power in humour, since it can make a person seem funny. In the same way, the lack of response can make a person seem unfunny. In this article I argue that failed jokes make a female skiing pundit on TV seem humourless and that this is due to the other interlocutors refraining from giving adequate responses. The material is from a sports programme about cross-country skiing on Swedish Television. The aim of the case study is to find out how power is exercised discursively in humour that fails and to discuss possible implications the rejections may have on notions of gender. The theoretical framework used is a feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis in combination with an analysis of internal and external control mechanisms. The discursive practice of repeated rejections of the female pundit may have consequences for her possibilities in seeming humorous.

Reading Focus Group Data Against the Grain

This article explores how reading focus group data ‘against the grain’ offers new insights into publics’, and especially marginalised groups’, negotiation of dominant discourses. Using data from a study with members of the UN Foundation’s Girl Up campaign in the UK, US and Malawi, I demonstrate that reading against the grain both across and within groups enabled me to explore the girls’ complex negotiations of girl power discourses in international development. I argue that reading focus group data against the grain involves paying attention both to wider social power relations, as is crucial to a poststructuralist discourse analysis, and to interactions between group members, a form of analysis more commonly associated with Conversation Analysis. This methodological strategy enabled me to explore the topic of girl power discourses in international development from a new perspective, moving beyond the abundance of critiques in the literature of dominant discourses emerging from powerful institutions. By focusing on the girls’ instances of resistance to, and critical engagement with, dominant discourses, I suggest that reading focus group data against the grain opens up the possibility of a rich new area of research for scholars and practitioners alike: one which goes beyond simplistic victim/agency binaries and explores the complexities of audiences’ readings of texts.

Fashioning groups that inhabit society’s fringes: the work of Australian VET research into disadvantage

ABSTRACT Describing various demographic characteristics of disadvantaged students, the programs they study and their employment outcomes is a significant area of research interest in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. This article offers a preliminary exploration of how groups are problematised and the consequent influence on VET research into disadvantage in Australia. Creating categories provides the historical and political contexts that allow specific practices and descriptors to become dominant. The major methodological approach used is a post-structuralist discourse analysis of policy documents, government VET reviews and published research into equity groups. It is argued that rather than envisaging VET research into disadvantage as a repetitious recounting of these groups’ lack of access to vocational education and training, other important agendas are being served by the continued inquiries into people that experience inequity. The influence of long-standing Australian discourses that valorise, mostly male, individual responsibility to be a self-regulating citizen who maintains ongoing employment ensures that policymakers require updated productive expert research into the population to support the specialist discourses of disadvantage.

Cultural Violence and Gender Identities: A Feminist Post-Structural Discourse Analysis of This House of Clay and Water

The present study explores the dialectic relation between gender, identity, violence, discourse and social practices, as portrayed in Mansab’s book This House of Clay and Water. Viewing gender as a biological trait determined at birth whereas all the social roles and identities are considered fixed is a prevalent social practice in countries like Pakistan. Proving that gender is a socio-cultural construct is the first step towards awareness that gender roles are not fixed and certain violent social norms can be transformed to help the marginalized groups like intersex/transgenders, and women. This study aims to show that certain forms of abuse, repression and cultural violence are normalized through the use of language and literary discourses, and the very same tools can be used to counter these structures. The theoretical insights for this research are drawn from Feminist post-structural discourse Analysis and Butler’s Queer theory. The qualitative analysis is based on the closed textual reading and discourse analysis within the parameters of the chosen framework. The significance of this study lies in the fact that it applies FPDA to study fictional characters who are a reflection of humans and social practices in general, and how they are forced to suffer and ultimately resist gender-based violence to co-construct their ever-shifting identities through discourse. Keywords: Gender; discourse; identity; social practice; cultural violence; FPDA; transformation

‘The mother of all nations’: gendered discourses in Ghana’s 2020 elections

ABSTRACT Gendered discourses in Ghana’s politics are not new. Unlike previous years, however, the gendered discourse in the 2020 election was different because the leading opposition party (NDC) selected a female running mate. Considering that the seat has been rotating between the NDC and NPP since 1992, Ghanaians foresaw a “real” possibility of having a female vice president. With data from online news articles and social media, this paper examines the nature of the gendered discourse that characterised Ghana’s 2020 election. We focus on stylistic devices and other linguistic strategies used with a view to understanding how gender either took a centre stage or “seeped” through the political discourse. Underpinned by Ambivalent Sexism Theory and Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis, findings indicate that although the running mate was sometimes represented in ways that challenge traditional gender stereotypes, she was largely represented in stereotypical ways, thereby corroborating findings from other parts of the world. These were done through devices like allusion, sarcasm, simile, metaphor and rhetorical questions. Findings also show that although it was the NDC that actively played the “gender card” to galvanise support, the NPP also played it to dissuade voters from voting for the NDC.

Gender, religion and identity: discursive constructions of ‘non-veiling’ among non-veiled Malaysian Muslim women

ABSTRACT This paper examines the link between language, identity, religion, and gender through a study of discursive identity construction among non-veiled Muslim women in Malaysia. Informed by Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), this paper further explores the ways through which these women attempt to negotiate and/or subvert their positions of powerful and powerless within interrelated religious and gendered Discourses, which are collectively grouped under the ‘Discourses of non-veiling’. As the veil is regarded as an important signifier of a Muslim woman’s identity, the discussions revolving around this symbolic piece of clothing and the identity of the wearer elicits responses that showcase a diversity of perspectives. By utilising a discursive and linguistic lens, this study therefore seeks to contribute to the emerging body of work on language, religion, and identity.

Taking Charge of the Menstrual Cycle: Discourses of Menstruation and the Menstruating Body in Self-Help Literature

Earlier research has shown that menstruation has often been constructed as a nuisance or a pathology in popular and medical texts. Drawing on poststructuralist discourse analysis of 10 contemporary self-help books on menstruation, 4 of which were chosen for further analysis, this article shows how approaches to menstruation in recent self-help texts diverge from these conceptions. Instead of portraying menstruation as something problematic, self-help texts represent the menstruating body as natural, manageable, and potentially empowering. However, by depicting relentless self-monitoring and self-care as routes to mandatory health and well-being, menstrual self-help texts also construct new norms of menstruating that contribute to individualized responsibility.

Applying discourse analysis to Australian national VET policy: more than one, less than many

ABSTRACT VET researchers and policy-makers have historically displayed a keen interest in the future. Two assumptions link VET to the future. The first is that there is a singular object called VET and, secondly, that it can influence a forthcoming state of reality. This relationship is investigated through a rarely utilised post-structuralist discourse analysis of Australia’s development of national vocational education and training policies. The performative language of policy-makers treats VET as a singular object and portrays the future as rational and predictable. By demonstrating that VET and potential realities exist in multiple forms, it might be possible to better utilise VET’s capacities to produce more desirable national futures. The findings suggest that despite continual reform of the sector, just three strategic positions and their supportive discourses have guided federated policy making. The first generally neglected technical and adult education, followed by the creation of a federally funded novel type of educational institution which eventually led to the establishment of VET quasi-markets. Each underpinning discourse exploited the productive power of language to give effect to governments’ desire to improve manifold futures by deploying alternative versions of VET.