Discourse Theory

Discourse Theory Student Name Institution Course Professor Date Introduction The social sciences have increasingly come to depend on the analytical force of discourse theory and humanities in discourse theory. Discourse theory developed in the later decades of the 20th century, especially from the wake of changes to society and politics, epitomized by May 1968 and aimed to undermine the rigidity of structuralist approaches to meaning as fluid and constructed. Post-structuralists and post-modernists heavily influence this approach to theoretical thinking and reject the strict division of language and society, concentrating on how power identity and even social norms are defined through discourse. Thus, the power to define and transform reality is a subject that discourse theory opens through a reshaping of analysis of power, identity, and social structures based on considering how language constructs and transforms social, political, and cultural realities. Discussion Origins and Theoretical Foundations The development of discourse theory in the late 1970s was a response to the inadequacies of the dominant social theories. Post-structuralists like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida inspired discourse theory, which disrupted and broke apart the fixed belief systems around structuralist theories of language and society (Heracleous, 2017). On the one side, structuralism highlights the regularity of linguistic systems. Simultaneously, discourse theory focuses on the arbitrariness of meanings and their negotiation through discourse. The theoretical framework posits that discourse is not simply a set of spoken or written texts but a practice that makes social reality come into being, modify, and change thereof by creating, upholding, and daring the accepted ways of living. In discourse theory, language is not just a tool of communication but also a form of power that determines how people relate and interact among themselves. Unlike conventional frameworks that treat social structures as frozen, discourse theorists state that language and discourse, which are negotiable and argued about continuously, are the ones that reproduce these structures and, thus, are the vehicles of their existence (Heracleous, 2017). Discourse theory opens up possibilities for researchers to investigate the underlying assumptions, interrogate the dominant narratives, and dive into the uncertain and volatile nature of social reality by emphasizing the role of language in constructing meaning. Key Achievements Among the most important achievements of discourse theory is to translate from a marginal intellectual pursuit to a respected and broadly used approach in social and political sciences. What was to start as a few scholars challenging the mainstream theoretical orthodoxy has turned into an influential movement with its own dedicated summer schools and conference panels in the fields of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) (Torfing, n.d.). The attractiveness of discourse theory lies in its ability to address a multitude of social and political phenomena in terms inconsistent with discursive processes constitutive of power relations, identity formation, and the constitutive...