Discourse Analysis

3. Discourse Analysis.

Whereas constructivist methods tend to focus on the meaning making efforts of individuals, families, and small groups, social constructionist methods shift attention to the broader systems of languaging that characterize public speech, disciplinary discourse, or cultural contexts. Even when applied to individual language users, such methods tend to have a critical thrust, such as when careful deconstructive listening is used to bring to light the hidden assumptions that constrain a speaker’s view of what positions are permissible for self or others. Social constructionist methods are in this sense more radical than constructivist methods, attempting to uproot oppressive and marginalizing forms of thinking and speaking that have dehumanizing consequences.

An example of social constructionist methods is provided by discourse analysis, the critical evaluation of social texts to reveal their concealed constraints and contradictions. For example, analyses of published debates in the South African parliament in the early 1980s have elucidated the shared assumptions about the superiority of whites held by both liberal and conservative MPs. Likewise, feminist discourse of the 1970s has been deconstructed to expose the ways in which butch/femme lesbians were marginalized to support a politic that advocated lesbian androgyny. Interestingly, discourse analysts have been especially active in undermining traditional assumptions in psychology, such as the largely unexamined convictions that people ideally function as rational selves and that psychotherapy involves a move toward greater reality contact. As a method, discourse analysis appears to be more an art than a science, borrowing from deconstructive and critical literary theory in order to understand and resist dominant narratives that limit the terms of debate or the permissible range of human variation that is considered normal It is therefore sometimes used by psychotherapists concerned with helping clients free themselves from the oppressive narratives of their lives, and recover a sense of themselves as the authors of their experience. Related social constructionist methods include the analysis of rhetoric, the tropes or moves used to advance a persuasive argument, and textual analysis, which reveals the way in which authors skillfully position themselves and others within the moral discourse of an account, so as to present themselves to best advantage.

In summary, constructivist and social constructionist methods in psychology are multifaceted in form and diverse in application, but tend to express a shared commitment to revealing the structure of personal and collective meanings and the processes by which they are constructed. Given their convergence with postmodern trends in the human sciences, it is likely that their influence will continue to grow in the future.

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