I
specialize in Discourse Analysis, Rhetoric & Composition Studies,
and the Discourses of Recovery, Self-Improvement, & Wellness.
More specifically...
I am interested in
the ways in which power is negotiated through the spoken and written
word. I am curious about how power and identity are negotiated through
language, especially in regard to the ways in which language is used
to produce and reproduce ways of knowing, both individually and institutionally.
Basically...
How do people influence
others and control events through language?
How does language
affect the ways that people understand their sense of self-identity
and represent that self to others?
How does language
act to construct identity for people as they participate in various
discourse communities?
How does narrative
play a role in identity (re)construction & sense-making?
Critical
Discourse Analysis is my primary research methodology, as it
allows me to consider how language serves as an instrument of power.
“My
approach to discourse analysis (a version of ‘critical discourse
analysis’) is based upon the assumption that language is an
irreducible part of social life, dialectically interconnected with
other elements of social life, so that social analysis and research
always has to take account of language. This means that one productive
way of doing social research is through a focus on language, using
some form of discourse analysis.” (Norman Fairclough, 2003,
2)
Narrative
Analysis also allows me to investigate identity construction
and coherence systems within discourse communities.
Narrative
is among the most important social resources for creating and maintaining
personal identity. Narrative is a significant resource for creating
our internal, private sense of self and is all the more a major resource
for conveying that self to and negotiating that self with others.
(Charlotte Linde, 1993, 98)
Rhetoric
& Composition allows me to investigate the ways in which
people use writing, especially real-life writing, to come to ways of
knowing. I am interested in composition and literacy as ideology in
action.
Education
may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual,
in a society like our own can gain access to any kind of discourse.
But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and
in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social
conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintating
or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge
and the powers it carries with it. (Foucault, 1980)
Discoursea
of Recovery, Self-Improvement and Wellness drive much of my
current research. In order to understand governementality and mental
health in the United States, I look to everyday texts that participate
in the circulation of ideologies that encourage self-improvement activiites
as part of the project of the self--a never ending quest towards a sense
of wellness.
The questions I am
pondering...
What types of
identities are individuals constructing for themselves through narrating
their stories of recovery?
How is the language
of recovery circulating in American society and what are the implications
of such circulation?
How are such discourses
(re)producing ideologies about mental health and recovery?
How has the Internet
had an impact on the discourses of wellness and recovery?
What conclusions
can be drawn about wellness and recovery based on discourse analyses
of websites circulating in various self-help communities?
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