The

Dialectics
of
Discourse
By Norman Fairclough (1989)

Recontextualization, Rescaling and Emphasis

by Alelign Aschale
April 2013
Addis Ababa University

~일~
 Table of Contents

Contents Pages
1. DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL PRACTICES .................................................................................... 삼

2. ORDER OF DISCOURSE ................................................................................................................ 육

3. THE DIALECTICS OF DISCOURSE ............................................................................................ 칠

4. THE CENTRAL CONCEPT OF A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY AND KNOWLEDGE

SOCIETY .......................................................................................................................................... 칠

5. THE VIEW OF THE DIALECTICS OF DISCOURSE WITH RESPECT TO LANGUAGE IN

NEW CAPITALISM .................................................................................................................... 일일

5.1. NEW CAPITALISM .................................................................................................................... 일일

5.2. LANGUAGE IN NEW CAPITALISM ....................................................................................... 일삼

6. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 일오

~이~
 1. Discourse and Social Practices
 How are CDA & Semiosis related? Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth, CDA) is based
upon a view of semiosis as an irreducible element of all material social processes (Williams
1977).
 How do we see social life? We can see social life as interconnected networks of social
practices of diverse sorts (economic, political, cultural, family etc).
 Why? The reason for centering the concept of social practice is that it allows an oscillation
between the perspective of social structure and the perspective of social action and agency
both necessary perspectives in social research and analysis (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999).
 What is social practice? By social practice I mean a relatively stabilised form of social
activity (examples would be classroom teaching, television news, family meals, medical
consultations, etc).
 What is every practice? Every practice is an articulation of diverse social elements within a
relatively stable configuration, always including discourse.
 What does every practice include? Every practice includes at least the following elements:
 Activities
 Subjects, and their social relations
 Instruments
These elements are
dialectically related
 Objects (Harvey, 1996)
 Time and place
 Forms of consciousness
 Values
 Discourse

What does dialectically related mean? That is to say, they are different
elements, but not discrete, fully separate, elements.

 What is the sense? There is a sense in which each internalizes the others without being
reducible to them.
 What are the differences here? So for instance social relations, social identities, cultural
values and consciousness are in part semiotic, but that does not mean that we theorize and
research social relations for instance in the same way that we theorize and research language.

~삼~
 They have distinct properties, and researching them gives rise to distinct disciplines; though it
is possible and desirable to work across disciplines in a transdisciplinary way (Fairclough,
2000).

 So, what is CDA? CDA is analysis of the dialectical relationships between discourse
(including language but also other forms of semiosis, e.g. body language or visual images)
and other elements of social practices.
 What is the particular concern of CDA, in Fairclough’s Approach? Its particular concern
(in my own approach) is with the radical changes that are taking place in contemporary social
life, with how discourse figures within processes of change, and with shifts in the relationship
between semiosis and other social elements within networks of practices.
 Caution! We cannot take the role of discourse in social practices for granted, it has to be
established through analysis. And discourse may be more or less important and salient in one
practice or set of practices than in another, and may change in importance over time.
 How does Discourse Figures in Social Practices? Discourse figures in broadly three ways
in social practices.
 Discourse figures as a part of the social activity within a practice. For instance, part of
doing a job (for instance, being a shop assistant) is using language in a particular way; so
too is part of governing a country.
 Discourse figures in representations. Social actors within any practice produce
representations of other practices, as well as (reflexive) representations of their own
practice, in the course of their activity within the practice. They recontextualize other
practices (Bernstein 1990, Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999). That is, they incorporate them
into their own practice, and different social actors will represent them differently
according to how they are positioned within the practice. Representation is a process of
social construction of practices, including reflexive self-construction representations enter
and shape social processes and practices.
 Discourse Figures in the ways of being, in the Constitution of Identities. Discourse
figures in ways of being, in the constitution of identities for instance the identity of a
political leader such as Tony Blair in the UK, Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush and Barak Obama
in America, Nickolas Sarcozi in France, Ahmedin Nejad in Iran, Vladimir Putin in Russia,

~사~
 Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Biniam Netanyahu and Arial Sharon in Israel, Xi Jinping in
China, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and so forth, is partly a semiotically constituted
way of being.
 Discourse and Genres. Discourse as part of social activity constitutes genres. Genres are
diverse ways of acting, of producing social life, in the semiotic mode. Examples are: everyday
conversation, meetings in various types of organisation, political and other forms of interview,
and book reviews. It is a way of acting like the military, the family, the bank, the office, the
classroom, the court, the parliament, the conference/summit, the theatre, etc.
 Discourse and Representations. Discourse in the representation and self-representation of
social practices constitutes discourses (note the difference between discourse as an abstract
noun, and discourse(s) as a count noun). Discourses are diverse representations of social life
which are inherently positioned, differently positioned social actors see and represent social
life in different ways, different discourses.
 For instance, the lives of (the):
- Poor Such categories of “people” are represented
- Disadvantaged through different discourses in the social
- Immigrants practices of government, politics, medicine,
- Political prisoners and social science, and through different
- Females discourses within each of these practices
- Gays and Lesbians corresponding to different positions of
- Addicts social actors.
- The Mafia
- Spin and Strong groups, etc.
 Discourse and Style? Finally, discourse as part of ways of being constitutes styles for
instance the styles of business managers, or political leaders.

Social practices networked in a particular way constitute a social order for instance, the emergent
neo-liberal global order referred to above, or at more local level, the social order of education in a
particular society at a particular time.

~오~
 2. Order of Discourse
>>> The discourse/semiotic aspect of a social order is what we can call an order of discourse.
>>> It is the way in which diverse genres and discourses and styles are networked together.
>>>An order of discourse is a social structuring of semiotic difference - a particular social
ordering of relationships amongst different ways of making meaning, i.e. different discourse and
genres and styles.

What is the Dominance- No-dominance Continuum in the Order of Discourse?

One aspect of this ordering is dominance: some ways of making meaning are dominant or
mainstream in a particular order of discourse, others are marginal, or oppositional, or alternative.
For instance, there may be a dominant way to conduct a doctor-patient consultation in Britain;
But there are also various other ways, which may be adopted or developed to a greater or lesser
extent in opposition to the dominant way.
The dominant way probably still maintains social distance between doctors and patients, and the
authority of the doctor over the way interaction proceeds;
But there are others ways which are more democratic, in which doctors play down their
authority.

 WHAT IS THE HEGEMONY IN POLITICS AS ORDER OF DISCOURSE?

The political concept of hegemony can usefully be used in analyzing orders of discourse (Fairclough
1992, Laclau & Mouffe 1985) a particular social structuring of semiotic difference may become
hegemonic, become part of the legitimizing common sense which sustains relations of domination,
but hegemony will always be contested to a greater or lesser extent, in hegemonic struggle.
Note: An order of discourse is not a closed or rigid system, but rather an open system, which is put at
risk by what happens in actual interactions which finally will assume different shape/form.

~육~
 3. The Dialectics of Discourse
- I said above that the relationship between discourse and other elements of social practices is a
dialectical relationship.
- Discourse internalizes and is internalized by other elements without the different elements being
reducible to each other.
- They are different, but not discrete. If we think of the dialectics of discourse in historical terms, in
terms of processes of social change, the question that arises is the ways in which and the
conditions under which processes of internalization take place.

4. THE CENTRAL CONCEPT OF A KNOWLEDGE

ECONOMY AND KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
 What is knowledge-driven change? This suggests a qualitative change in economies and
societies such that economic and social processes are knowledge-driven change comes about, at
an increasingly rapid pace, through the generation, circulation, and operationalisation of
knowledges in economic and social processes. Of course knowledge (science, technology) have
long been significant factors in economic and social change; but what is being pointed to is a
dramatic increase in their significance.
Note: The relevance of these ideas here is that knowledge-driven amounts to discourse-driven:
o How do knowledge and discourse install in the society? Knowledges are generated and
circulate as discourses, and the process through which discourses become operationalised in
economies and societies is precisely the dialectics of discourse.
o Imaginaries (Representations) and Discourse. Discourses include representations of how things
are and have been, as well as imaginaries- representations of how things might or could or should
be.
o The „knowledges’ of the knowledge-economy and knowledge-society are imaginaries in this
sense - projections of possible states of affairs, possible worlds.

What is imagining? Why?

o In terms of the concept of social practice, they imagine possible social practices and networks of
social practices - possible syntheses of activities, subjects, social relations, instruments, objects,
space, times (Harvey 1996), values, forms of consciousness, etc.

~칠~
 How are Imaginaries Enacted?
o These imaginaries may be enacted as actual (networks of) practices - imagined activities, subjects,
social relations etc can become real activities, subjects, social relations etc. Such enactments
include materialisations of discourses - economic discourses become materialised for instance in
the instruments of economic production, including the hardware (plant, machinery, etc) and the
software (management systems, etc).
o How are discourses enacted, discoursal enactments? Such enactments are also in part
themselves discoursal / semiotic: discourses become enacted as genres. Consider for instance
new management discourses which imagine management systems based upon teamwork,
relatively non-hierarchical, networked, ways of managing organisations. They become enacted
discoursally as new genres, for instance genres for team meetings. Such specifically discoursal
enactments are embedded within their enactment as new ways of acting and interacting in
production processes, and possibly material enactments in new spaces (e.g. seminar rooms)
for team activities.

How are discourses as imaginaries inculcated?

- Discourses as imaginaries may also come to inculcated as new ways of being, new identities. It
is a commonplace that new economic and social formations depend upon new subjects; for
instance, Taylorism(Originated by Frederic Taylor-it is a specific scientific management that
breaks every action, job or task into small and simple segments which can be easily
analyzed…, as opposed to Fordiem( Originated by Henry Ford-which believed in mass,
bulky production) as a production and management system depended upon changes in the ways
of being, the identities, of workers (Gramsci, 1971).
- Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Kaizen, Performance Efficiency Measure, Capacity
Building Measure, Competency Measure, etc. are parts of such inculcation activities.
- The process of changing the subject can be thought of in terms of the inculcation of new
discourses (Taylorism would be an example).
- Inculcation is a matter of, in the current jargon, people coming to own discourses, to position
themselves inside them, to act and think and talk and see themselves in terms of new discourses.

~팔~
- Inculcation is a complex process, and probably less secure than enactment. A stage towards
inculcation is rhetorical deployment: people may learn new discourses and use them for certain
purposes while at the same time self-consciously keeping a distance from them.
Note: One of the mysteries of the dialectics of discourse is the process in which what begins as self-
conscious rhetorical deployment becomes ownership- how people become unconsciously positioned
within a discourse.
What are the material aspects Inculcation? They are:
- discourses are dialectically inculcated not only in styles, ways of using language,
- they are also materialised in bodies, postures, gestures, ways of moving, and so forth.

DISCOURSE DIALECTICS IS CYCLIC. How?

o The dialectical process does not end with enactment and inculcation. Social life is reflexive.
- People not only act and interact within networks of social practices,

- They also interpret and represent to themselves and each other what they do, and these

interpretations and representations shape and reshape what they do.

- If we are thinking specifically of economic practices in contemporary societies, people‟s

activities are constantly being interpreted and represented by others, including various

categories of experts (e.g. management consultants) and academic social scientists (including

discourse analysts).

- What this amounts to is that ways of (inter)acting and ways of being (including the discourse

aspects, genres and styles) are represented in discourses, which may contribute the production

of new imaginaries, which may in turn be enacted and inculcated.

- So it goes on, a dialectic which entails movements across diverse social elements, including

movements between the material and the non-material, and movements within discourse

between discourses, genres and styles.

- There is nothing inevitable about the dialectics of discourse as I have described it.

~구~
 - A new discourse may come into an institution or organisation without being enacted or

inculcated. It may be enacted, yet never be fully inculcated.

Examples abound. For instance, managerial discourses have been quite extensively enacted within
British universities (for instance as procedures of staff appraisal, including a new genre of „appraisal
interview‟), yet arguably the extent of inculcation is very limited; most academics do not own these
management discourses.

 What does Social Constructionism say related to the dialects of discourse?

We have to consider the conditions of possibility for, and the constraints upon, the dialectics of
discourse in particular cases. As this has a bearing on theories of social constructionism (Sayer
2000).
It is a commonplace in contemporary social science that social entities (institutions, organisations,
social agents etc) are or have been constituted through social processes, and a common
understanding of these processes highlights the effectivity of discourses, as I have done above:
social entities are in some sense effects of discourses.
Where social constructionism becomes problematic is where it disregards the relative solidity and
permanence of social entities, and their resistance to change.

Note: Even powerful discourses such as the new discourses of management may meet levels of
resistance which result in them being neither enacted nor inculcated to any degree. In using a
dialectical theory of discourse in social research, one needs to take account, case by case, of the
circumstances which condition whether and to what degree social entities are resistant to new
discourses.

~ 일영 ~
 5. The view of the dialectics of discourse
with respect to language in new
capitalism

5.1. New Capitalism

(By Bob Jessop, is taken from www.uoc.es/humfil/nlc/LNC-ENG/lnc-eng.html; see Jessop 2000).
 Why Capitalist Mode of Production? The capitalist mode of production is historically
distinctive not only for its crisis tendencies but also for its capacities to periodically renew the
bases of its economic expansion and, in so doing, to re-articulate and re-scale the relations
between the economic, political, and social.
 What is happening? Just such a renewal is occurring at present after the crisis of postwar
accumulation based on the dominance of Atlantic Fordism.
 How is Capitalism being Re-structured and Re-scaled? Capitalism is being restructured and
re-scaled on the basis of important new technologies, new modes of economic coordination, and
the increasing subsumption of extra-economic relations under the logic of capital accumulation.
 What are the buzzwords in capitalism? Buzzwords in this regard include: the information
economy, the knowledge-driven economy, globalization, the rise of regional economies,
entrepreneurial cities, the network economy, strategic alliances, government without governance,
turbo capitalism, space-time compression, flexibility, workfare, the learning economy, and the
enterprise culture.
 Governments & Capitalism. Governments on different scales and of quite varied political
complexions now take it as a mere fact of life (though a ‟fact‟ produced in part by inter-
governmental agreements) that all must bow to the emerging logic of a globalizing knowledge-
driven economy.
 What are the Responses to Capitalism? Responses to this emerging institutional and
operational logic vary but their dominant, if not hegemonic, form in the anglo-phone world is
neo-liberalism.
 So, what is Neo-Liberalism? This is a political project for the re-structuring and re-scaling of
social relations in accord with the demands of an unrestrained global capitalism (Bourdieu 1998).
 Why (and who) does Neo-Liberalism Placed at the top of the Global Agenda?

~ 일일 ~
 The dominance of American multinationals and the US imperialist state - backed by
international financial and industrial interests elsewhere and supported by the British
state - has placed neo-liberalism at the top of the global agenda.
Neo-liberalism has been imposed on the post-socialist economies as the (allegedly) best
means of rapid system transformation, economic renewal, and re-integration into the
global economy.
It has been embraced in most anglophone societies to replace the discredited mixed
economies and universal welfare states of postwar regimes based on an institutionalized
compromise between capital and labour.
And it is evident in neo-liberal policy adjustments in the more corporatist and étatiste
regimes of Continental Europe, East Asia, and Latin America.
In one or other form, it has been adopted in fact if not in theory by social democratic
as well as conservative political parties throughout the world.
With rare but important exceptions, neo-liberalism has come to dominate the political
scene - and has resulted in the disorientation and disarming of economic, political, and
social forces committed to radical alternatives.

H EN CE, N E O - L IBE R AL I SM H AS R ES UL TE D I N?
 This in turn has contributed to a closure of public debate and a weakening of democracy.
 States on different scales, from towns and cities through regional and national states to
supranational blocs such as the European Union, have been enrolled in managing and
promoting the insertion of their respective economic spaces into the emerging new world
order. New World Order? What is this? IT IS A NEW WORLD ORDER!
 I will come up with detailed explanations about the NOW some other time!
 This has reinforced economic and extra-economic pressures to restructure and rescale on
terms dictated by the allegedly impersonal forces of the market.
 It has led to radical attacks on universal social welfare as a cost of international production
and the reduction of the protections that welfare states provided for people against the effects
of markets.

~ 일이 ~
  It has also led to an increasing division between rich and poor, increasing economic
insecurity and stress even for the ‟new middle‟ classes, and an intensification of the
exploitation of labour.
 The unrestrained emphasis on growth also poses major threats to the environment.
 It has also produced a new imperialism, where international financial agencies under the
tutelage of the USA and its rich allies indiscriminately impose restructuring on less fortunate
countries, sometimes with disastrous consequences (e.g. Russia).
 It is not the impetus to increasing international economic integration that is the problem, but
the particular form in which this is being imposed, the particular consequences (e.g., in
terms of unequal distribution of wealth) which are being made to follow.

5.2. Language in new capitalism

 I suggested earlier that the idea of new capitalism as a ‘knowledge-based’ or ‘knowledge-
driven’ socio-economic order implies that it is also ‘discourse-driven’, suggesting that
language may have a more significant role in contemporary socioeconomic changes than
it has had in the past.
 If this is so, discourse analysis has an important contribution to make to research on the
transformations of capitalism.
 The significance of language in these transformations has not gone unnoticed by social
researchers. Bourdieu & Wacquant (2001) for instance point to a ‘new planetary vulgate,
which they characterise as a vocabulary:
 Globalization * New Economy
 Flexibility * Zero-Tolerance
 Governance * Multiculturalism
 Employability * Minority
 Exclusion * Identity
 Ethnicity * UN!?
 and so on and forth!!!
>>> which is „endowed with the performative power to bring into being the very realities it

~ 일삼 ~
 claims to describe’.
That is, the neo-liberal political project of removing obstacles to the new economic order is
discourse-driven.
But as well as indicating the significance of language in these socio-economic transformations,
Bourdieu & Wacquant‟s paper shows that social research needs the contribution of
discourse analysts.
It is not enough to characterise the „new planetary vulgate‟ as a list of words, a vocabulary,
we need to analyse texts and interactions to show how some of the effects which Bourdieu
& Wacquant identify are brought off.
For example:
1st . Making the socio-economic transformations of
Bourdieu & Wacquant’s
new capitalism and the policies of governments to account of the ‘effectivity’
facilitate them seem inevitable; of neoliberal discourse
exceeds the capacity of
2nd . Representing desires as facts, their sociological research
3rd . Representing the imaginaries of interested methods.
policies as the way the world actually is
But it is not only text and interactional analysis that
discourse analysts can bring to social research on the new capitalism, it is also the sort of
theorisation of the dialectics of discourse I have sketched out above.

>>> Text & Interactional Analysis + Theorisation of the dialectics of discourse.

If we think of the restructuring and rescaling which Jessop refers to as changes in the
networking of social practices, they are also a restructuring and rescaling of discourse,
restructuring and rescaling of orders of discourse.
Let us take these in turn.
The restructuring of orders of discourse is a matter of shifting relations, changes in the
networking, between the discourse elements of different (networks of) social practices.
A prime example is the way in which the discourse of management has colonised public
institutions and organisations such as universities-though we need to add at once that this
process is a colonization / appropriation dialectic, i.e. not only a matter of the entry of a
discourse into new domains, but the diverse ways in which it is received, appropriated,
recontextualised in different locales, and the ultimately unpredictable outcomes of this process.

~ 일사 ~
 The rescaling of orders of discourse is a matter of changes in the networking of the discourse
elements of social practices on different scales of social organization- global, regional,
national and local.
For instance, the enhanced and accelerated permeability of local social practices (local
government, small-scale industry, local media) in countries across the world to discourses
which are globally disseminated through organisations like the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank.
Incorporating Jessop‟s account of the transformation of capitalism into a dialectical theory of
discourse provides a theoretical framework for researching the global penetrative power of the
„new planetary vulgate‟ which Bourdieu & Wacquant allude to, as well as its limits.
It is also needed to research what Bourdieu & Wacquant call the „performative power‟ of the
„new planetary vulgate‟, its power to „bring into being the very realities it describes‟.
How does this discourse come to enacted in ways of acting and interacting (including genres),
and inculcated in ways of being (including styles)?
Researching this crucial issue requires detailed investigation of organisational and
institutional change on a comparative basis, such as the study by Salskov-Iversen et al (2000)
of the contrasting colonization / appropriation of the new „public management‟ discourse by
local authorities in Britain and Mexico, but working with the sort of dialectical theory of
discourse I have sketched out above (See also Iedema 1999).

6. Conclusion
Let me summarize the argument.
 First, language has a significance in contemporary socio-economic changes which is perhaps
qualitatively different from its significance in previous transformations.
 Second, although this has been recognised by social researchers, it has not been researched
because their theories and methods do not equip them to research it. In short, they need
discourse analysts.
 Third, if discourse analysts are to make this contribution, they need not only existing methods
of text analysis (which perhaps themselves need radical rethinking), but also the sort of
dialectical theory of discourse I have sketched out here.

~ 일오 ~