Discourse analysis
granted resources and news space to present in
their own ways, and in their own words, their
own frameworks of understanding’. See disem-
powerment; framing: media.
Discursive gap Term used by Roger Fowler in
Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology
in the Press (Routledge, 1991). Th e ‘gap’ is that
which exists between the mode of address of
the newspaper – formal, bureaucratic – and that
of the perceived reception mode of the reader,
informal and personal, especially readers of the
popular press. Fowler argues that ‘the funda-
mental device in narrowing the discursive gap is
the promotion of oral models within the printed
newspaper text, giving an illusion of conversa-
tion in which common sense is spoken about
matters on which there is consensus’.
He believes ‘the basic task for the writer is
to word institutional statements (those of the
newspaper, and those of its sources) in a style
appropriate to interpersonal communication,
because the reader is an individual and must be
addressed as such. Th e task is not only stylistic,
but also ideological: institutional concepts have
to be translated into personal thought’. In brief,
the press employs a range of devices to simulate a
sense of ‘orality’ which has the writer sitting next
to the reader around the kitchen table or in the
pub and joining in a process of ‘co-production’;
the product being consensus, an apparently
shared vision of the world.
Disempowerment The taking away from
individuals, groups, communities or nations
of the power to have control over their lives.
In World Communication: Disempowerment
& Self-Empowerment (Zed Books, 1995), Cees
Hamelink describes disempowerment as ‘the
reduction of people’s ability to defi ne themselves
and construct their own identities’. It can be the
result of a deliberate strategy or the unintended
outcome of developments locally, nationally or
internationally. As a strategy, says Hamelink,
disempowerment ‘often employs the deceit of
making people believe that existing conditions
are desirable and preferred out of free will. Th e
most perverse form of disempowerment makes
people accept their own dependency and second
rate position’.
The privatization of communications
is seen as an agent of disempowerment: ‘As
knowledge is created and controlled as private
property, knowledge as common good is
destroyed.’ For Hamelink, the inherent meaning
of privatization is private = to deprive. Strategies
of empowerment include regulation, the provi-
sion of power to people through human rightslive outside the familiar world it represents.’ See
dominant discourse. See also topic guide
under language/discourse/narrative.
Discourse analysis Form of mass communica-
tion analysis that concentrates upon the ways in
which the media convey information, focusing
on the language of presentation – linguistic
patterns, word and phrase selection (lexical
choices), grammatical constructions and story
coherence. In particular, discourse analysis sets
out to account for the textual form in which the
mass media present ideology to readership or
audience. See content analysis; modes of
media analysis.
Discourse of power The French philosopher
Michel Foucault (1926–84), wrote that all argu-
ments as to the truth are driven by the will to
power, that is to exert control. Clearly, in terms
of the media, discourses are perceived as means
of exerting infl uence and control over audiences.
Foucault saw the fi eld of a discourse in the same
way that a physicist sees the electromagnetic
fi eld: it is defi ned not by its will to truth, but by
its will to power. A discourse seeks power, and
that is what marks out its range. See hegemony;
ideology.
Discursive communication Susanne Langer
in Philosophy in a New Key (Harvard University
Press, 1942) differentiated between what she
named discursive communication – prose and
logic – and non-discursive communication, such
as poetry, music and ritual.
Discursive contestation Situation, usually
occurring in the transmission of news, where
the audience is permitted room to challenge
or disagree; where news texts passing through
frames of production are more open (to inter-
pretation) than closed. News formats either
facilitate discursive contestation or close down
its potential.
Simon Cottle in ‘Television news and citizen-
ship: Packaging the public sphere’, published
in No News is Bad News: Radio, Television and
the Public (Longman, 2001), edited by Michael
Bromley, talks of how ‘incredibly “restricted”
some news formats are when reporting news
stories’. Conventionalized TV news formats
frame and discursively ‘seal’ the text from alter-
native interpretations. On the other hand, where
‘words are spoken by accessed voices’, that is by
members of the public rather than media profes-
sionals, news texts are more open to discursive
contestation.
Cottle argues that formats should work
towards what he terms ‘participatory control’
or alternative frames where ‘social actors are