Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis The subject will focus on a variety of approaches to discourse analysis from the perspective of recent critical, literary and feminist theory. The term `discourse analysis' is used by the disciplines of sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy, and is current within a wide range of theoretical frameworks - positivism, phenomenology, structuralism, Marxism, and feminism - and their neo- and post-varieties. This subject will be structured around four major areas. The first includes formal approaches which construe discourse as text. The second covers modes of analysis which have taken discourse to mean conversation. The third will deal with the critical approach to discourse that is typical of the work of continental discourse theorists like Foucault, Lyotard, Pecheux, Bourdieu and de Certeau. The fourth will explore approaches to language, semiotics and discourse by women which work within or against empirical/positivist, sociolinguistic, and poststructuralist modes of discourse analysis (Deborah Cameron, Julia Kristeva, Teresa de Lauretis, and a number of Australian feminists). The subject will ask questions about the possible relations between these approaches and try to develop the resources for critical and politically informed kinds of discourse analysis in a variety of contexts and fields.
Assessment Assignment (2000 words): 30% + Assignment (4000 words): 40% + Seminar paper (3000 words): 30%