You may be asking yourself: “So what is different about this blog? How is it any different than every other person spewing their opinions on the internet?”
And that’s a legit question! You can go to any number of blogs or culture websites and find people’s opinions, theories, expressed beliefs, or anything else all over the place. None of those people are necessarily wrong in what they have to say. That’s what I find really beautiful about pop culture fandom: it engages our minds and souls. It can impact our worldviews and beliefs, help to shape who we may become. It can also just be a fun escape for a short while. A “what if” experiment that breaks us away from the doldrums of our normal day to day lives.
But that still begs the question: How is my blog different?
The answer is that my content is written using discursive analysis.
That’s a fancy phrase, but what does it mean?
Discourse (as a noun) of course is:
1: verbal interchange of ideas especially : CONVERSATION
2 a: formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject
b: connected speech or writing
c: a linguistic unit (such as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence
3: a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (such as history or institutions) critical discourse
So, discursive (or discourse) analysis is a systematic way of looking at those interchanges of ideas.
My style of analysis comes out of the field of critical social psychology. I could go in a lot of potentially boring detail about this (feel free to leave a comment if you would like me to in the future!) but core idea of the field is that the hallmarks of the scientific method used in other scientific fields (biology, chemistry, etc.) just doesn’t work for researching how people interact.
Context is vitally important to understanding social interactions. Sterile environments (which the scientific method calls for) cause unrealistic interactions.
For example: If you see a close friend of yours that you have not seen in a long time, the way you react to them may be different depending where you are. If you are in a familiar location, you may be loud and boisterous about greeting them. If you are in a public location like a subway you may not be so boisterous. If you are in a laboratory, you may be self conscious about the fact that someone is watching you and you may not act as you normally would.
I write my content with context in mind. I look for patterns in written text or spoken dialogue that might indicate something specific. I look at the language used to determine its function. Words are chosen for specific reasons, to accomplish specific tasks, to convey certain ideas. I ask “what is this language trying to accomplish here?”.
Books, movies, TV shows, and video games are all written with very specific goals in mind. Even if it it just to provide entertainment without deeper meaning, all of the words in those mediums are specially curated. There is a lot we can learn from that.
The thing I love about entertainment is how it is a part of our culture. It both reflects our current culture as well as impacts our culture. Look at Harry Potter for example. We can now self-define by which house we think we would be sorted into.
One of my passions in research is looking at our pop culture icons and asking what are they reflecting as well as how are they impacting our day to day lives. I will dig into that topic in my next post, so be sure to stick around.
