Discourse Structure and News Reports

1. Discourse as Communicative Event

[T]he analysis of text and dialogues, both within and outside of discourse analysis, varies relative to different theories, methods, schools, or even individual (p. 8).

We have mentioned earlier that discourse, in a wider sense, is a complex unit of linguistic form, meaning, and action that might best be captured under the notion of a communicative event or communicative act. The advantage of such a conception is that discourse, unlike more intuitive and linguistic approaches, is not limited to the actual verbal utterance, that is, to the text or dialogue itself. Especially for the analysis of talk, it is obvious that the speaker and the hearer, their personal and social properties, and other aspects of the social situation belong to this event. In this sense, a conversation, a meeting, a courtroom session of a trial, or a classroom lesson are all examples of such complex communicative events (pp. 8-9).

...In that case, shared meanings, knowledge of the language, knowledge of the world, and other beliefs must be taken into account in such a characterization of discourse meanings (p. 9).

In our study, we focus on the textual structure of news reports and only occasionally relate them with their cognitive, social, or political contexts, which have received most attention in other work on news and the news media (Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978; Fishman, 1980) (p. 9).

2. Grammatical Analysis

A headline like "Police kills demonstrator" puts police in first, subject position, and expresses that the police has agent role. In the passive sentence "Demonstrater killed by police," the police is also agent, but in this case, the phrases referring to the demonstrator is in first, subject position, which means that police is assigned a less prominent role (p. 11).

3. Discourse as Coherent Sequence of Sentences
The ideologically-based point of view is expressed not only by sentence structure but also by a textual dependence of syntax and semantics (p. 12)
e.g. 1) "We went to the beach yesterday. We did a lot of surfing." - coherent
2) "We went to the beach yesterday. The Price of the dollar dropped by 10% last year." - not coherent (incoherent)

4. The Role of Knowledge in Interpretation
As with any other discourse type, the media rely heavily on such socially shared knowledge and beliefs in the coherent and comprehensible account of social events that require knowledge or beliefs organized in scripts, for example about civil war, terrorist attack, political meeting, voting, or 'revolution' (p. 13).

5. Macrostructures
The theoretical term semantic macrostructure was introduced to capture that important aspect of discourse and discourse processing: It makes explicit the overall topics or themes of a text and at the same time defines what we could call the overall coherence of a text as well as its upshot or gist (van Dijk, 1980a)...
They (macrostructure) explain how newsmakers continuously and routinely summarize the myriad of source texts (other media messages, wires, interviews, reports, or press conferences) that are used in the production of specific news report... And finally, macrostructures explain why most readers usually only remember the main topics, that is, the higher levels of the macrostructure of a news report (pp. 13-14).

6. Superstructures and News Schemata
Without macrostructures and superstructures, we would have to interpret and establish coherence only at the microlevel and construe ad hoc level structures. Experimental research has shown that this is very difficult if not impossible for language users. Hence, global structures, both those of thematic content as well as those of schematic form, are crucial for theoretical analysis and for the actual production and understanding of a text (pp. 14-15).
This is particularly obvious in news reports in the press but more generally also holds for television news programs, which usually only express the higher level macrostructures of a news story. Indeed, TV news may be seen as a summary or abstract of the news reports that appear in the press (p. 15).

7. Relevance Structuring
e.g.) important information come first

8. Rhetorical Structures
Well known are phonological operations such as rhyme or assonance, syntactic operations such as parallelisms, and semantic operations such as comparisons or metaphors. Similarly, news reports may use words that function as hyperboles (overstatements, exaggerations) or understatements, or word and sentence meanings that establish contrast or build a climax (p. 16).


Van Dijk, Teun A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum.

The Development of Discourse Analysis

Structuralism, Semiotics, Narrative Analysis, and Ethonography
Conversational Analysis (in microsociology)
Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics
Text Processing in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence
Text Linguistics
Integration of Discourse Analysis as New Cross-Discipline

Discourse and Text; Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis

Bridge the well-known gap between micro- and macroanalyses of social phenomena especially on the complex relationships between structures or strategies of discourse and both the local and global, social and political context,' and that 'both text and context on serious methods and theories' (1990: 8, 14). A later statement on 'preferred papers' for the journal states that 'analysis should be as detailed, explicit, and systematic as possible, that is, be guided by theoretical concept, and not be limited to mere paraphrases or quotations' (supplement to Discourses and Society 2(2) 1991) (p. 187).

I understand textual analysis to necessarily involve analysis of the form or organization of texts - of what one might call, after Holliday and Hasan (1976), their 'texture.'
...
I regard textual analysis as subsuming two complementary types of analysis: linguistic analysis and intertextual analysis (p. 188).
...
Whereas linguistic analysis shows how texts selectively draw upon linguistic systems (again, in an extended sense), intertextual analysis shows how texts selectively draw upon orders of discourse - the particular configurations of conventionalized practices (genres, discourses, narratives, etc) which are available to text producers and interpreters in particular social circumstances (on orders of discourse in this sense, see Fairclough, 1989, 1992a).
...
[I]ntertextual analysis crucially mediates the connection between language and social contexts and facilitates more satisfactory bridging of the gap between texts and contexts... (pp. 188-189).

To include textual analysis of translated data as part of the analysis of a discursive event, as these papers do, strikes me as a procedure which is open to serious objections... In my opinion, discourse analysis papers should reproduce and analyse textual samples in the original language, despite the added difficulty for readers (pp. 189-190).

Examples of Analysis
recurrent patterns in form - the discourse structure
intertextual and linguistic heterogeneity

Norman (1992) Discourse and Text; Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse and Society Discourse & Society, Vol. 3, No. 2, 193-217 (1992)

Discourse Representation in Media Discourse

Tendencies in Discourse Representation

1. MODE (DD, ID, UNSIG)
2. BOUNDARY Maintenance (incorporation, dissemination)
3. STYLISTICITY AND SITUATIONALITY
4. SETTING

Tendencies
1. low demarcation between primary and secondary discourse
2. focus upon representation of the ideational meaning of the words used

Tendency 1

Hall et al. (1978: 61) have referred to a trend in media towards 'the translation of official viewpoints into a public idiom' which not only 'makes the former more "available" to the uninitiated,' but also 'invests them with popular force and resonance, naturalizing them within the horizon of understanding of the various public' (p. 61).

Goffman (181: 144) has suggested that what we normally think of as imply the role of 'speaker' or 'writer' in fact conflates three roles: animator - the person who is actually making the sounds, or the marks on paper; author - the one who put the words together; and principal, the one whose position is represented by the words. Newsgivers are at least animators. Sometimes they are authors; but sometimes they act as if they were authors, or indeed principals, when they are not. We can relate this later tendency to the mediator role: if one is a mediator, one cannot come across as if they were animator or mouthpiece, there is pressure to put one's own position on the line. The mediator can affect a degree of commitment by simulating authorship, which is often innocent enough. But the status of principal is more complicated. The mediator cannot be seen as speaking or writing simply on her or his own behalf, and yet needs to appear committed. One 'solution' is the audience/mediator as principals. Since actual principals will often be other than the mediator or audience - others in media organizations, or ' sources' in public life - a degree of mystification of principalship is common. This is where two other elements of tendency 1 come in: ambivalence of mode and dissemination, where authorship or principalship which originate in secondary discourse appear to attach to primary discourse (p. 62).

Primary Discourse and Secondary Discourse
Representation of Discourse


In so far as principalship is mystified, the news media can be regarded as covertly transmitting the voices of social power-holders. And the final element of tendency 1, setting, gives the possibility of control of the reception of pieces of represented discourse through the adjustment of their primary discourse context.
It is not necessary to see these transformation of secondary discourse as always or generally conscious distortion or manipulation; they can perhaps rather be regarded as built into common-sense professional practices. But whatever the motivations of media personnel, the social function of the media in effecting such transformations as a part of the trend identified by Hall et al. is thus possible to trace links between structural properties of the system of social relationships, and the favoring of particular forms of discourse representation (p. 63).

Tendency 2
The assumption is that the words themselves are ideationally transparent. We can regard this as an ideological representation of language which underlies tendency 2, and which seems to be characteristic of what is generally regarded as within the 'public' domain as opposed to the 'private' domain. There is also a system of values here: the 'public' has greater prestige than the 'private,' and implicitly those aspects of discourse which merit public representation - the ideational aspects - are ascribed greater import than those which are of merely private significance (P. 65).

Another related explanation for tendency 2 is the myth that the media are a 'mirror' to reality... but it would be quite impossible to sustain the same claim about interpersonal meanings, which so obviously depend upon discourse situation and wider social context, and which so obviously need to be interpreted and represented (p. 65).

Discourse Representation in media discourse

Discourse Representation



Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.

Computational Paradigm

I referred in section 3.1 to the 'cognitive' conception of interaction which is implicit in the concept of BGK. Interest in cognitive theories of language and discourse is on the increase, at least in part because of their 'computer-friendliness'; Winograd (1982) presets a 'computational paradigm' as a new synthesis of the work of linguists, psychologists, students of artificial intelligence and others, around a computer-friendly cognitive theory of language. Winograd's proposals have much in common with what I have called the 'descriptive approach,' including a speaker-goal model, and local goals. I suspect that the current computational explosion might make this an increasingly attractive direction for discourse analysis, which will no doubt produce significant advance in certain directions, much as transformational-generative grammar did, and at much the same cost in terms of the desocialization of language and discourse (p. 49).

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.

Critical and Descriptive Goals in Discourse Analysis

1. Introduction: Orderliness and Naturalization

Orderliness and naturalization
BGK: Background Knowledge
implicit (explicit) ideological proposition

language and knowledge base
1. knowledge of language codes
2. knowledge of principles and norms of language use
3. knowledge of situation, and
4. knowledge of the world

IDF: Ideological Discursive Formation

2. Social Institutions and Critical Analysis

A social institution is (amongst other things) an apparatus of verbal interaction, or an 'order of discourse'. (I suggest later in this section that this property only appears to belong to the institution itself.) In this perspective, we may regard an institution as a sort of 'speech community,' with its own particular repertoire of speech events, describable in terms of the sorts of 'components' which ethnographic work on speaking has differentiated - settings, participants (their identities and relationships), goals, topics, and so forth (Hymes (1972)) (p. 38).

Ideological and Discursive orders
For instance, to become a teacher, one must master the discursive and ideological norms which the school attaches to the subject position- one must learn to talk like a teacher and 'see things' (i.e. things such as learning and teaching) like a teacher (p. 39).

naturalization of ideologies

3. Critical and Descriptive Goals

[A]lthough 'locally' explanatory descriptive work may seek to identify at least local determinants of features of particular discourses, descriptive work generally has been little concerned with the effects of discourse. And it has certainly not concerned itself with effects which go beyond the immediate situation. For critical discourse analysis, on the other hand, the question of how discourse cumulatively contributes to the reproduction of macro structures is at the heart of the explanatory endeavor (p. 43).

[I]deology, as I argued above, involves the representation of 'the world' from the perspective of a particular interest, so that the relationship between proposition and fact is not transparent, but mediated by representational activity. So ideology cannot be reduced to 'knowledge' without distortion (p. 44).

I am not of course suggesting that descriptive discourse analysts are consciously conspiring to give social scientific credence to ideological effects. The point is rather that unless the analyst differentiates ideology from knowledge, i.e. unless s/he is aware of the ideological dimensions of discourse, the chances are that s/he will be unconsciously implicated in the reproduction of ideologies, much as the lay subject is (p. 45).

I have suggested that from the at best 'locally' explanatory goals of the descriptive approach there follow certain other characteristics - its conception of BGK and its 'complicity' in certain ideological effects, its interest in goal-driven models and its image of subjects in conscious control of interactions, the absence of serious explanatory work on norms and the neglect of power and status (pp. 48-49).

Any such development must however come to terms with what would see as a major problem for non-critical discourse analysis, that of what I shall call the rationality of its research programme (p. 49).

A principled basis for sampling requires minimally (a) a sociological account of the institution under study, its relationship to other institutions in the social formation, and relationship between forces within it; (b) an account of the 'order of discourse' of the institution, of its IDFs and the dominance realtionships among them, with links between (a) and (b); (c) an ethnographic account of each IDF (p. 49).

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.

General Introcution - Fairclough

A text is traditionally understood to be a piece of written language - a whole 'work' such as poem or a novel, or a relatively discrete part of a work such as chapter. A rather broader conception has become common within discourse analysis, where a text may be either written or spoken discourse, so that, for example, the words used in a conversation (or their written transcription) constitute a text...
In cultural analysis, by contrast, texts do not need to be linguistic at all; any cultural artefact - a picture, a building... A strong argument for doing so is that texts in contemporary society are increasingly combine language with other semiotic forms. Television is the most obvious example, combining language with visual images, music, and sound effects (p. 4).

Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognition and representation of the world, and social interaction. A multifunctional view of text is therefore essential (p. 6)

Textual analysis demands diversity of focus not only with respect to functions but also with respect to levels of analysis. Let me stress that discourse analysis itself is not here taken to be a particular level of analysis. For some linguists, it is: 'discourse analysis is analysis of text structure above the sentence' (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975). My view is that 'discourse' is use of language seen as a form of social practice, and discourse analysis of how texts work within sociocultural practice (p. 7).

In the three-dimensional framework for CDA I referred to earlier (text, discourse practice, sociocultural practice), the analysis of discourse analysis involves attention to processes of text production, distribution, and consumption...This principle would mean for instnace that in analyzing the text of a TV program one should also have regard to the routines and processes of program production, and the circumstances and practices of audience reception (p. 9)

[T]he two major centripetal forces in any discursive event are the language and the order of discourse. Discursive events are, on the one hand, dependent upon and shaped by them, but on the other hand cumulatively restructure them. Intertextual analysis links the text and discourse practice dimensions of the framework, and shows where a text is located with respect to the social network of orders of discourse - how a text actualizes and extends the potential within orders of discourse (p. 10).

[D]iscourse practice ensures attention to the historicity of discursive events by showing both their continuity with the past (their dependence upon given orders of discourse) and their involvement in making history (their remaking of orders of discourse) (p. 11).

I have adapted the concept of order of discourse from Foucault (1981) to refer to the ordered set of discursive practices associated with a particular social domain or institution (e.g. the lecture, the seminar, counselling, and informal conversation, in an academic institution), and boundaries and relationship between them (p. 12).

I regard a genre as a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity (e.g. interview, narrative, exposition)... Rather than using 'field' we can use 'discourse'; a discourse is a way of signifying a particular domain of social practice from a particular perspective, and a genre may predictably draw upon a particular range of discourses, though a given discourse may be drawn upon in various genres (p. 14).

In tying ideology to social relations of power, I am alluding to asymmetrical relations of power, to domination. Foucault's work in particular has popularized a different understanding of power as a ubiquitous property of the technologies which structure modern institutions, not possessed by or attached to any particular social class, stratum, or group (Foucault 1979) (P. 17).

Of course, discourse analysis cannot per se judge the truth or well-groundedness of a proposition, but then critical discourse analysis is just one method to be used within wider critical projects. Judgements of truth and well-groundedness are not just a prerogative arrogantly claimed by intellectuals, they are a constant and necessary part of social life for everyone, including Foucaultians (Dews 1988)...Intellectuals should not be embarrassed about making judgements of truth; on the contrary, like other social groups, they have a responsibility to bring the particular perspective they can contribute into the public domain in debates over the great social and political issues (Norris 1992) (pp. 18-19).

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.

Norman Fairclough's Research Interest

Since the early 1980s, my research has focused on critical discourse analysis - including the place of language in social relations of power and ideology, and how language figures in processes of social change. My main current interest is in language (discourse) as an element in contemporary social changes which are referred to as 'globalisation', 'neo-liberalism', 'new capitalism', the 'knowledge economy' and so forth. Over the past three years I have been working specifically on aspects of 'transition' in Central and Eastern Europe , especially Romania , from a discourse analytical perspective.

This research is based upon the theoretical claim that discourse is an element of social life which is dialectically interconnected with other elements, and may have constructive and transformative effects on other elements. It also makes the claim that discourse has in many ways become a more salient and potent element of social life in the contemporary world, and that more general processes of current social change often seem to be initiated and driven by changes in discourse. Discourse analysis, including linguistic analysis, therefore has a great deal more to contribute to social research than has generally been recognised, especially when integrated into interdisciplinary research projects.

My own recent contribution to this research has included three main elements:

* Theoretical development of critical discourse analysis to enhance its capacity to contribute to this area of social research (eg Fairclough 1992, Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999, Fairclough 2001, Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer 2004);
* Developing approaches to linguistic analysis of texts and interactions which are adapted to social research (eg Fairclough 2003a, 2004a)
* Application of this theory and method in researching aspects of contemporary social change (eg Fairclough 1995a/b, Fairclough 2000, Chiapello & Fairclough 2002, Fairclough 2006a)

I have maintained research contacts with Lancaster since my retirement through collaborative projects in the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Linguistics department on the 'knowledge-based economy', the Bologna reforms of higher education in Europe , and 'moral economy'.

from his self-introduction on the webpage of the department he works for

Whom its results will be relevant and useful - van Dijk

There is a good deal of so called critical analysis going on which removes texts (usually portable and written) from their conditions of production and reception in particular sites and on the basis of rather superficial linguistic and content analysis makes too large a leap to the macro (p. ix).

There was no doubt, then, that the opportunity to publish a collection of Norman Fairclough's key papers from the period of 1983 to 1993, some published and some written for this collection, would offers readers of the Language in Social Life Series a means themselves of engaging with these concerns. Four themes structure the collection:

* the relationship between language, ideology, and power
* the relationship between discourse and sociocultural change
* the centrality of textual analysis to social research
* the principles and practice of critical awareness

Crossing these governing themes of Fairclough's research we can identify three central constructs of critical discourse analysis:

* text and the study of 'texture'
* discoursal practices and the concept 'orders of discourse'
* sociocultural practices and the concept of 'culture'

from General Editor's Preface written by Professor Christopher N. Candlin, Macquarie University, Sydney

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. New York: Longman.

Classes based Chosun Dynasty and external delimitation

Social structure
class based
women domesticated
occupations categorized and interconnected with classes respectively
communication centralized
the presence of formidable force from outside
reliance on China and Chinese culture

Foucaultian theory of 'control of discourse,' or biopower
rules of exclusion
internal systems of control and delimitations of discourse
conditions under which discourse can be employed
philosophical themes conforming to & reinforcing the activity of limitation and exclusion...

This might be a plausible research project that will investigate the historical, social conditions of the Dynasty and further shed light on understanding the immanent social hiatuses of the South Korean society.

Discourse

A specific assembly of categorizations, concepts, and ideas that is produced, reproduced, performed, and transformed in a particular set of practices. Discourses must be embedded within institutions and subjects, regulated with reference to a particular ‘regime of truth’, and situated within particular assemblages of knowledge and power, yet be open to dispute. They are concerned with meaning and context as well as content and the practices of many authors, using many, and varied types of, sources. They help us to understand how people interpret and create reality, and to be aware of ‘how what is said fits into a network that has its own history and conditions of existence’ (M. Barrett 1992 The Politics of Truth).

Archaeology Dictionary: discourse

The context, environment, and conditions within which a defined knowledge is produced and made accessible to others. Discourse is not simply the content of what is said or shown (a printed text, lecture, museum display, TV programme, and so on), it also includes the conceptual, social, and historical conditions behind the statements made. Discourse brings in people, buildings, institutions, rules, values, desires, concepts, machines, instruments, and anything else that could have played a part in the construction of knowledge. The idea of discourse also carries with it the notion of inclusion and exclusion; statements are arranged according to systems whereby some people are admitted, others excluded, and contributions from some people are endorsed as legitimate candidates for assessment, while others are judged as not worthy of comment.

Philosophy Dictionary: discourse

(Latin, discursus, a running from one place to another) A continuous stretch of language containing more than one sentence: conversations, narratives, arguments, speeches. Discourse analysis is the social and linguistic description of norms governing such productions, and may include (in critical linguistics) focus upon the social and political determinants of the form discourse takes; for instance, the hidden presuppositions that the persons addressed are of a certain class, race, or gender.


The Social Conception of Discourse

In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech"—or possible truth. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself.

http://www.answers.com/topic/discourse

The Discourse on Language

I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is "to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality. In a society such as our own we all know the rules of exclusion. The most obvious and familiar of these concerns what is prohibited....We have three types of prohibition, covering objects, rule with its surrounding circumstances, the privileged or exclusive right to speak of a particular subjects; these prohibitions interrelate, reinforce and complement each other, forming a complex web, continually subject to modification.I will note simply that the areas where this web is most tightly woven today, where the danger spots are most numerous, are those dealing with politics and sexuality (p. 216).

Speech is not merely the medium which manifests - or dissembles - desire; it is also the object of desire (p. 216).

But our society possesses yet another principle of exclusion; not another prohibition, but a division and a rejection. I have in mind the opposition: reason and folly (p. 216).

No doctor before the end of the eighteenth century had ever thought of listening to the content - how it was said and why - of these words; and yet it was these which signalled the difference between reason and madness.... Even when the role of the doctor consists of lending an ear to this finally liberated speech, this procedure still takes place in the context of a hiatus between listener and speaker (p. 217).

It is perhaps a little risky to speak of the opposition between true and false as a third system of exclusion, along with those I have mentioned already. How could one reasonably compare the constraints of truth with those other division, arbitrary in origin if not developing out of historical contingency - not merely modifiable but in a state of continual flux, supported by a system of institutions imposing and manipulating them, acting not without constraint, nor without an element, at least, of violence (pp. 217-218)?

I believe that this will to knowledge, thus reliant upon institutional support and distribution, tends to exercise a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other forms of discourse - I am speaking of our own society...I am thinking, too, of the way economic practices, codified into precepts and recipes - as morality, too - have sought, since the eighteenth century, to found themselves, to rationalize and justify their currency, in a theory of wealth and production; I am thinking, again of the manner in which such prescriptive ensembles as the Penal Code started out their bases of justification (p. 219).

Also, refer to a summary from the English Department in Block University, Canada.

from Foucault Dictionary

Archaeology

"[The] archaeological level -- the level of what made [an event or a situation] possible" (The Order of Things, p.31). Strict analysis of discourse (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.104). Archaeology and genealogy alternate and support each other (Dreyfus & Rabinow, p.105). Archaeology is structuralist. It tries to take an objective neutral position and it avoids causal theories of change.

Discourse formation

This concept is the subject of chapter 2 of Archaeology of Knowledge.
He begins with a criticism of the concept that everything with the same label is not the same thing and that the difference between differently labeled things may be a habit of thought.
Suppose a society called everything slightly red "red" and grouped purple along along with red in the process. And compare this to a society that called everything slightly orange "orange," included red (but not purple) under the category, but also yellow. How would these two societies be able to talk about the color of things? They would be using different language maps to organize colors and a simple translation from one to the other appears simply impossible.
The problem is that within our own language community we fail to notice the way in which we are constituting what we talk about by such arbitrary language practices that have become second nature to us. Studying these discourse formations (or discursive formations) is "archaeology." We will try to grasp the implicit rules we use that work together to form this map of the world around us.
Without knowing it, we group distinguishable objects into unities and thus constitute our objects. An object is constituted like this by a "unity of discourse". In Wittgensteinian terms, this might mean by a language game.) The unity of discourse on a particular topic (or object) "would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence (Archaeology of Knowledge, p.33). For example, we constitute the object of "marriage" by a set of rules that allows us to say that we are "married" together with the interplay of rules that defines the marriage as dissolved (annulled, divorced, non-valid). Foucault suggests that an archaeology should examine the way this works, how we control our mental taxonomy through language practices.

Foucault Dictionary by Lois Shawver

The Archaeology of Knowledge

The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this 'not-said' is a hollow that undermines from within all that is said (p. 25).

Whenever one can describe. between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functions, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation - thus avoiding words that are already overladen with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion, such as 'science,' 'ideology,' 'theory,' or 'domain of objectivity' (p. 38).

Let us generalize: in the nineteenth century, psychiatric discourse is characterized not by privileged objects, but by the way in which it forms objects that are in fact highly dispersed. This formation is made possible by a group of relations established between authorities of emergence, delimitation, and specification. One might say, then, that a discursive formation is defined (as far as its objects are concerned, at least) if one can establish such a group; if one can show how any particular object of discourse finds in it its place and law of emergence; if one can show that it may give birth simultaneously or successively to mutually exclusive objects, without having to modify itself (p. 44).

'Words and things' is the entirely serious title of a problem; it is the ironic title of a work that modifies its own form, displaces its own data and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consists of not - of no longer - treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is this 'more' that we must reveal and describe (p. 49).

Discourse
Practices obeying certain rules: "Archaeology tries to define not the thoughts, representations, images, themes, preoccupations that are concealed or revealed in discourses; but those discourses themselves, those discourses as practices obeying certain rules". It does not treat discourse as document, as a sign of something else, as an element often to be pierced if one is to reach at last the depth of the essential in the place in which it is held in reserve; it is concerned with discourse in its own volume, as a monument. It is not an interpretive discipline: it does not seek another, better-hidden discourse. It refuses to be 'allegorical' (pp. 138-139).

Foucault, M. (1969) The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.

Capitalizing Alternatives

'We are the leader in online news because in the last ten years, we have focused only on being the best online,' maintained Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com, in the lead-up to the site's tenth anniversary in July 2006... One such award was conferred by OMMA Magazine, which credited MSNBC.com with being the best news and information site in the US; 'Online founrlaims doesn't get much better or more real-time than here,' it declarred in its February 2006 issue. Im sharp contrast with its commerical rivals, OMMA's Stever Smith (2006) observes, MSNBC.com 'grew up online,' and therefore appears to possess a firmer understanding of how the web acutally works.

This example of how a major commercial news site capitalizes - in every sense of the word - in the active participation of 'amature newshounds' underscores yet again how certain 'old media' institutions are looking to the alteranative, openly expreimental forms of journalism developed by sites such as IndyMedia, OhmyNews, and Wikinews for ways to enhance their connectivity with users (pp. 140-141).

Allen, S. (2006). Online News. New York: Open University Press.

An Olympic Cyclist’s Levelheaded Advice

Sourece: NYTimes

FIRST, SPEND WISELY

“If you want to race, you will have to spring for a $1,500 to $2,000” road racing bicycle, said Jonathan Vaughters, the manager for Mr. Vande Velde’s cycling team, which added a sponsor this week and is now called Team Garmin/Chipotle with H3O.

But don’t feel pressured to overbuy, Mr. Vaughters said. “The difference between a $500 bike and a $1,500 bike is huge,” he said. “The difference between a $1,500 bike and an $8,000 bike is very small.” Invest the saving in good-quality bike shorts with a firm, thick pad and a price tag north of $75. “That may be the best thing you can buy, in terms of comfort,” Mr. Vaughters said.

POWER OUTPUT

Until the last five years or so, Mr. Vande Velde said, serious cyclists typically used the heart rate or a cadence — the number of times the pedal cranks rotate per minute — to gauge effort. But now, cycling professionals and a growing number of serious amateur riders rely on watts, or power readings.

Watts are a measurement of energy output, the amount of energy that a rider applies to the pedal. On a bike, that figure is determined by a meter integrated into the rear hub.

The meter also records a rider’s speed and the time and distance of the ride (as well as heart rate and calories burned per hour), using this data to determine the rider’s watts at any given moment. That number, which changes constantly, is visible on a small screen on the handlebars, and the files can be uploaded to a computer. “Watts is the most reliable way to gauge effort on a bike,” Mr. Vaughters said. “It’s the best way to track your progress from day to day, and also to set training parameters.”

HOW TO HEAD DOWNHILL FAST

Descending a steep road at 40 to 50 miles an hour, especially in a pack of riders, “never stops being terrifying,” Mr. Vande Velde said. But few rides and even fewer races have no descents, so a rider should know how to make a safe descent.

“Relax, shift your weight back,” Mr. Vaughters said. “Most riders put too much weight on the handlebars.”

Mr. Vande Velde said, “Do not look at the wheel of the rider in front of you,” or stare down at the road. “Scan far ahead for any obstacles,” he said, because they’ll arrive very rapidly, and then quickly glance at the road just ahead. “Your eyes should always be moving.”

When negotiating curves, he said, position your feet so that the pedal on the inside of the curve is up, with the outside pedal down (which keeps your weight balanced). “Don’t throw your bike from one corner to another,” he said. “Brake before the turn, and turn gradually, aiming for the apex.”

Acclimate yourself to the feeling of other bicycles pressing close, Mr. Vande Velde said. He added that the team has set up stationary bicycles with the wheels practically touching each other. “It’s a good, safe way to get used to being right on someone’s wheel,” he said.

"An Olympic Cyclist’s Levelheaded Advice," Published: June 19, 2008

GRETCHEN REYNOLDS, NYTimes

Labor

One of the obvious danger signs that we may be on our way to bring into existence the ideal of the animal laborans is the extent to which our whole economy has become a waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appreared in the world, if the process itself is not to become to a sudden catastrophic end. But if the ideal were alreday in existence and we were truly nothing but members of a consumers' society, we would no longer live in a world at all but simply be driven by a process in whose ever-recurring cycles things appear and disappear, manifest themselves and vanish, never to last long enough to surround the life process in their midst...

The easier that life has become in a consumers' or laborers' society, the more difficult it will be to remain aware of the urges of necessity by which it is driven, even when pain and effort, the outward manifestations of necessity, are hardly noticeable at all. The danger is that such a society, dazzled by the abundance of its growing fertility and caught in the smooth functioning of a never ending process, would no longer be able to recognize itself in any permanent subject which endures after [its] labor is past (pp. 134-135).

Arendt, H. (1958). Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

I think THEREFORE I tickle

Article written by JOSE KLEIN and published in Salon.com

Zizek's hatchet man is the Cartesian subject, the embodiment of Rene Descartes' notion that rational thought defines human existence. Zizek's championing of Mr. Cogito Ergo Sum seems peculiar, given how many currently fashionable philosophical schools have declared him already dead. Multiculturalism, for instance, argues that no one seminal criterion can explain what it is to be alive, but that the condition of being human depends on the culture from which the person comes. Consequently, the logic of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" may reflect only a narrow, Occidental mode of being.

In his introduction, Zizek acknowledges a laundry list of other schools "united in the rejection of the Cartesian subject": the New Age obscurantist, the postmodern deconstructionist, the Habermasian, the Heideggerian, the cognitive scientist, the Deep Ecologist, the critical (post-)Marxist, and the feminist. Zizek concludes that it's high time for someone to defend the view that so many scholars argue vehemently against. He sets out to do this by positing a universal selfhood, seen through the scrim of leftist political theory. What he drafts, however, is not the typical cold-blooded, rational Cartesian subject; rather he formulates an original reading of the self, one that with all its contingency still possesses a paradoxical freedom to move us "from subjection to subjective destitution." That is to say, from enslavement by our circumstance to self-determination, albeit limited.

Right, sure, but just what does Zizek's search to define the universal self have to do with you? Everything. If you have ever wondered to what extent your life lies within your own power, or to what extent your experience is determined by influences -- culture, class, sex, class, history -- hopelessly beyond your control, you are none other than the ticklish subject.

What's amazing about Zizek is that he paints such a broad canvas. He divides the book into three parts, gradually building a dialectical portrait of the individual dwelling within a politicized world. The first presents us with the solitary individual -- rather akin to the atomized psychological self -- whose imagination naturally breaks apart totalities into a horrific multitude of shattered images. He quotes from Hegel: "Here shoots a bloody head -- there another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears." In the second part, he places the individual back in a sociopolitical context. In the third part, we return to the reflective consciousness of the single individual, who must think and act in the complexity of the world. Through this journey from self to other and then on to a new self, Zizek sets out to measure the scope of our personal and political agency, and the hopes, fears and limitations that define that scope.

What springs from this and so many other moments in "The Ticklish Subject" is a passionate search for what Zizek aptly calls a "miracle" -- the political act that undermines the structures of global capitalism. For Zizek, miracles occur at the moment when multitudes of individual Cartesian wills come together to achieve what had seemed like a political impossibility. For example, in Italy in the 1970s, a referendum on divorce was held. Members of the left, who supported the freedom to choose divorce, thought that people weren't "mature enough, that they would be frightened by the intense Catholic propaganda." And yet, inexplicably, when the moment came, over 60 percent of the country voted for the right to divorce.

Zizek concludes his book with the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, the 36-year-old schoolteacher who had an affair with one of her sixth-grade pupils. In the public debate over the incident, two ideological camps formed. The first condemned her as evil. The other, which included Mary Kay's own defense team, diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. They claimed that the manic states, which the illness induces, suspended her ability to use proper judgment. Rather than be punished, they argued, she should be treated medically. This leads Zizek to ask, "Is not such a suspension [of good judgment], however, one of the constituents of the notion of the authentic act of being in love?" The mania they describe, then, is love itself. And so, confronted by a society that sees love as a mental illness which medication can cure, Zizek offers his own prescription. Like a sublime, intellectual self-help guru, he "exhorts you to dare," to discover the freedom that can only come from obeying your deepest desires.

Emmanuel Levinas

Emmauel Levinas
http://theology.co.kr/article/levinas.html
http://web.skku.edu/~philos//webzine/2/levinas.htm