158 Douglas J. Glick
society is talked about in another discursive construction. By framing the talk about the social
problem of school violence explicitly on the propositional elements of, and thus implicitly on
the model for, how the individual and society are interrelated, one can see how they both
mutually constrain and support each other. Violating the conventional terms of talk in either
of these two practices would shake, however mildly, the foundations of both. Both then gain
strength as conventionally legitimate modes of representation embedded within verbal
practices through this mutually supporting relationship.
The relevant conclusion for now is that in documenting the social life of one discursive
construction, evidence for the life of another has been found. At times, as here, that
relationship is a reflexively supporting one. As noted above, however, they are not the only
kind that one should expect to find. Examples of contrasting and even opposing cases of
contact within and between different discursive constructions will be discussed further below.
ORGANIZING THEMES IN CONSTRUCTING THE „PROBLEM OF
SCHOOL VIOLENCE‟
Recalling the propositions presented in Table 1 above, consider their reorganization as
displayed in Table 2. In Table 2 the propositions that constitute the focal discursive
construction have been reorganized based on three causal themes that are both implicitly and
explicitly present in the data itself.
More specifically this time, consider first how this reorganization of the data reflects on
the first 28 propositions in Table 1 above. Note how all of them can be reorganized in Table 2
above by the three interrelated themes of violence, alienation and cross-institutional
dysfunction. In fact, the interrelated nature of these themes makes it possible for some of the
propositions to appear under more than one theme. So, for example, the mass media robbing
control from parents (n. 17) can be implicitly framed or explicitly extended to be either a
cause of alienation between parents and their children and/or an instance of institutional
dysfunction between the mass media and the family (cf. similarly, n. 15 and n. 25). This
further demonstrates the power of these three themes to constrain and thus partially account
for the propositions within the focal discursive construction.
Similarly, though regularities in how different causal propositions co-occurred together in
particular written texts was not the focus of this study, it is worth noting how these three
themes were clearly interrelated in various culturally coherent ways in the kinds of
̳explanatory arguments‘ that were formed by combining the different propositions. So, for
example, with (some kind of) alienation itself a typical effect of (some kind of) institutional
dysfunction, one or both of these could then be proposed as the cause(s) that explained
specific instances of violence, the general problem of violence and/or a general cultural value
on violence. While the focus here is not on these kinds of ̳arguments‘, their recursive power
as thematically repeating models of explanation is relevant to the larger point here.