DiscourseA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWinstitution, whether marginally or centrally. A
discourse provides a set of possible statements
about a given area, and organizes and gives
structure to the manner in which a particular
topic, object, process is to be talked about. In
that it provides descriptions, rules, permissions
and prohibitions of social and individual action.’
The analysis of discourses is central to the
study of media, which is essentially about how
texts are encoded and how the meaning of
those texts, operating within and influenced
by contexts, is decoded. Discourses are, in
the words of John Fiske, ‘socially produced’
and a ‘socially located way of making sense of
an important area of experience’. Reality is a
constant part of experience – how is it recon-
structed into discourse? And how is it infl uenced
by other discourses? (See intertextuality.)
All discourses are framed within narratives of
one form or another. In news, or indeed in fi ction,
the story is what happens, the discourse how the
story is told and the connotations or mean-
ings embedded within it – the preferred read-
ings. Discourses struggle for attention; some are
dominant and thus hold the public key to the
definition of reality. They rigorously conform
to conventions that work through mechanisms
of information control (see agenda-setting;
consensus; discourse of power; gatekeep-
ing) and are ideology-driven (see conflic-
tual oppositions; demonization; news
values; photo-negativization; wedom,
theydom).
Ultimately discourse is about ruling explana-
tions and thus contributes to the nature of
myth. Christopher P. Campbell in Race, Myth
and the News (Sage, 1995) sees myth not as the
‘grand storytelling tradition associated with
ancient cultures’ but in the ‘sense of the stories
that modern societies unwittingly create to
reduce life’s contradictions and complexities’.
This is what the discourse of news does; it
‘comprises continuing stories which uphold and
consolidate myth which ultimately focuses on
order and disorder’. Campbell argues that ‘news
is a way of creating order out of disorder, off ering
cultural meanings, resolutions and reassurances’.
Discourse serves (and services) myth, and
the desired end-product is common sense;
in other words a state of aff airs in which that
which is defined by discourses is so patently
commonsensical that it cannot be seriously
contradicted. Campbell identifies the divisive
rather than cohesive potential of commonsensi-
cal discourse: ‘Th e danger of the commonsense
claim to truth is in its exclusion of those whovideos as the technology of popular choice, and
with the introduction of Blu-ray, requiring high-
resolution TV screens, the quality of picture
was vastly improved. So far, while it is easy to
lock in to specifi c scenes in a disc, DVD fails in
targeting exact moments – something video tape
can do. DVDs are now in dramatic competition
with rival ‘picture house’ services such as web-
enabled set-top boxes (see streaming), games
consoles, the BBC’s iPlayer and Apple’s iPad.
Direct cinema Term used to describe the work
of post-Second World War documentary
fi lm-makers in the US, such as Albert Maysles
(Salesman, 1969 and Gimme Shelter, 1970),
who coined the phrase, Stephen Leacock (Don’t
Look Back, 1968) and Frederick Wiseman (High
School, 1968). New, lightweight equipment
and improved synchronous sound recording
facilities made the work of these observer-
documentarists an inspiration for fi lm-makers in
many other countries. Direct cinema went out
into the world and recorded life as it happened,
in the ‘raw’.
An earlier, and British, link with this mode
of fi lm-making was Free cinema, a short-lived
‘collective’ of directors in London, organized
by Karel Reisz (Momma Don’t Allow, 1956) and
Lindsay Anderson (O Dreamland, 1953). Direct
cinema fi lm-makers had the technical edge on
Free cinema because of the availability of supe-
rior sound recording. See cinéma vérité.
Disconfi rmation See confirmation/discom-
firmation.
Discourse A form, mode or genre of language
use. Each person has in his/her repertoire
a whole range of possible discourses – the
language of love, of authority, of sport, of the
domestic scene. In a media sense, an example of
a discourse would be the news, refl ecting in its
choice of language and style of presentation the
social, economic, political and cultural context
from which the discourse emanates.
Gunther Kress in Linguistic Processes in Socio-
cultural Practice (Deakin University Press, 1985)
provides the following useful explanation of
discourse: ‘Institutions and social groupings have
specifi c meanings and values which are articu-
lated in language in systematic ways. Following
the work particularly of Michel Foucault, I refer
to these systematically-organized modes of talk-
ing as discourse. Discourses ... give expression to
the meanings and values of an institution.
‘Beyond that, they defi ne, describe and delimit
what is possible to say and not possible to say
(and by extension what is possible to do or not
to do) with respect to the area of concern of that