Week 7 - Representation: Ideology, Discourse and Power
This week’s lecture was about ideology, discourse and power. The main objective was comprehension of the two terms ideology and discourse and being able to differentiate the two. Discourse and Ideology are very similar concepts however, the difference is simply discourse there is a direct link between one’s knowledge and power, Foucault’s post-structural sociologist ideas was the main case study of the lecture.
Foucault’s discourse theory (1980) is at the heart of each reading, the idea that the more discourse gives more knowledge which in turns provides more power. In the first key reading discourse is presented as the connection of knowledge and power. (Long, 2012: 363)
Michael Foucault work within fluctuated from medicine and science to sexology which in all helped him define discourse as an ideas embedded in what we say and do and over time these create terms or commons which we all abide to. (Long and Wall, 2012: 364)
The reading “How to do a Critical Discourse Analysis” looks both Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse analysis. The focus of Machin and Mayr was on the ways Critical Discourse Analysis critique media texts. (Machin, 2012:1) The CDA focuses on capturing “interrelationship and draw out and describe the practices and conventions” (Machin, 2012: 4) in and behind texts whilst the MDA focused on authors in the 80s and 90s deciphering that ‘meaning’ could be communicated “through other semiotic modes.” (Machin, 2012: 6)
For my own research I decided I would look into discourse examples within world renowned
programme “How I Met Your Mother”. The programme features around a father telling his
children a long story of how he met their mother. The episode I decided to focus on was in
Season 9 (2013) where character Barney said “If women are stupid enough to fall for this lie,
they basically deserve to be used” Within this episode we saw multiple examples of
discourse, the stereotypes and discrimination for the female characters. However, HIMYM
makes light hearted fun jokes to these serious comments which through the language
certain ideas, values and practices can become naturalised. (Machin, 2012: 1-29)
References:
Long, P and Wall, T (2012) 'Discourse, power and media’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp 363-369
Long, P and Wall, T (2012) 'Media Representations’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp 100-129
Machin, D and Mayr, A (2012) How to do a Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Sage. pp 1-29
