1st homework-Various definitions of 'discourse'

Discourse (from Latin discursus, meaning "running to and fro") generally refers to "written or▪In semantics andof conversation to all modalities and contexts.▪"The totality of codified linguistic usages attached to a given type of social practice.▪In the work of Michel Foucault, and social theorists inspired by him: "an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements(enoncés)."[3] An enouncement (l'énoncé - often translated as "statement") is not a unity of signs, but an abstract matter that enables signs to assign specific repeatable relationsThus, a discourse constitutes sequences of such relations to objects, subjects and other enouncements. A discursive formation is defined as the regularities that produces such discourses. Foucault used the concept of discursive formation in relation to his analysis of large bodies of knowledge, such asDiscourse in the first sense is studied inand third senses is carried out within a variety of traditions that investigate the relationsdebated on the basis of specialized knowledge. Discourse can be observed inincluding the use of spoken, written and signed language in contexts spanning from oral history to instant message conversations to textbooks.Discourses being corpuses of texts or communication have internal relations to themselves as well as external to other discourses. Thus, a discourse is not locally isolated,takes part in the constitution of a discourse.In the humanitiesthinking that can be manifested through language, a social boundary defining what can be saidDiscourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to avoid discourse. Forcommunicate.Discourses are embedded in different rhetorical genres and metagenres that constrain andthereby mediating meanings and dictating practices of the professionals of psychology anddiscourses is seen to mean defining reality itself. This conception of discourse is largely derived from the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (see below).Modern theorists were focused on achieving progress and believed in the existence of natural and social laws which could be used universally to develop knowledge and thus a bettertheorists therefore viewed discourse as being relative to talking or way of talking andto progress or the need to develop new or more “accurate” words to describe new discoveries,dissociated from power and ideology and instead conceptualized as “natural” products ofrights, equality, freedom, and justice; however, this rhetoric masked substantive inequality andhave significance when considered in relation to the structure as a whole, and that structuresother words, it is the structure itself that determines the significance, meaning and function of the individual elements of a system. Structuralism has made an important contribution to ourFollowing the perceived limitations of the modern era,theorists were interested in examining the variety of experience of individuals and groups andIn contrast to modern theory, postmodern theory is more fluid and allows for individual differences as it rejected the notion of social laws. Postmodern theorists shifted away from truth seeking and instead sought answers for how truths are produced and sustained. Postmodernists contended that truth and knowledge is plural, contextual, and historically produced through discourses. Postmodern researchers therefore embarked on analyzing“systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitude s, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak." Foucault traces the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating and power, emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry with them.” Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium through which power relationsinter-related and therefore every human relationship is a struggle and negotiation of power. Foucault further stated that power is always present and can both produce and cons train theby rules of exclusion. Discourse therefore is controlled by objects, what can be spoken of;and creation of power. An object becomes a "node within a network." In his work,The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault uses the example of a book to illustrate a node within a network. A book is not made up of individual words on a page, each of which has meaning, but rather "is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences." The meaning of that book is connected to a larger, over-arching web of knowledge and ideas to which it relates.Feminists have explored the complex relationships that exist among power, ideology,behaviours to which members of a society ascribe a gendering meaning. “Being a man/woman involves appropriating gendered behaviours and making them part of the self that an individual presents to others. Repeated over time, these behaviours may be internalized as "me"—that is, gender does not feel like a performance or an accomplishment to the actor, it just feels like herand "subjectivity." Chris Weedon, one of the best known scholars working in the feminist poststructuralist tradition, has sought to integrate individual experience and social power in athoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself, and her ways of understandingscholar, explains that the performativity of gender offers an important contribution to the conceptual understanding of processes of subversion. She argues that subversion occurs through the enactment of an identity that is repeated in directions that go back and forth which。