102357 A3 Discourse Analysis

Advice – please refer to the Learning Guide (LG) for details of this assessment and take careful note of the
focus questions listed (see also end of this document). Refer also to the marking rubric on vUWS.

The Discourse Analysis provides an opportunity to think about ethics and diversity in therapy and/or
research through dominant discourses and what they do in these contexts in terms of producing social
realities, including ‘truths’ about people/perspectives/practices and how that process creates binaries that
can marginalise/disempower some while privileging others.

When choosing a ‘text’ (document/artefact) for A3:

Please ensure you choose a ‘text’ of the counselling, psychotherapy or art therapy professions that is
relevant to clinical and/or research practice. ‘Text’ is used generically here to refer to anything that ‘carries’
or embodies discourse/s; can be the printed or spoken word, but can also be, for e.g., objects or spaces. You
might choose a document (or part thereof) such as a journal article, archival document, policy document,
practice manual, clinical assessment or in-take document, brochure etc; OR other artefact such as a website,
artwork/exhibition, object, space etc (see also WK 4 slides & Sheridan slides).

Rather than something that you find convincing in its own terms, choose something to analyse where the
dominant discourses/narratives and assumptions jump out at you and are readily available to discuss and
critique. Most importantly, do keep in mind the set of questions posed for A3 (see below & in LG) and
whether your ‘text’ (document/website etc) gives you sufficient/relevant material.

If you prefer to work with a journal article or similar, we suggest you find one that you ‘don’t like’, as it is
much easier to look critically at the 'language' of such documents (eg, something jarring in terms of its
'whiteness' or 'maleness' etc). It's easier to conduct a discourse analysis on something you can see problems
with, rather than a document/website you particularly like or agree with, as ‘partiality’ makes it difficult to
see where ‘power’ might be at work.

When conducting your Discourse analysis for A3:

Consider the overall themes of this unit – ethics & diversity and look back at the workshop readings and
power point slides, especially for WKs 4 & 5. Please note that you are analysing the discourse embodied in
the ‘text’ (document/artefact), not the argument being made in the document (if a journal article) or the
service provided (if a therapy website, for example). When constructing your analysis, use the guiding
questions from the LG to organise and focus your analysis of just one or two major discourses/narratives
evident in your ‘text’ (be that a document or artefact).

You are looking for the dominant discourse/s used in the ‘text’ and who/what such discourse/s might
empower on the one hand and marginalise/make invisible on the other - you might think about this from the
diversity perspective taken in this unit. For example, looking to see if a document/website focuses on a
particular type of person/group while neglecting others (keep in mind considerations of
gender/race/disability/class etc that were raised by the ADDRESSING model & discussed in Workshops 1 & 5.
If you put on a certain ‘hat’ (your culture of origin or gender etc) and 'read' the document from that
perspective, would it 'speak' to you? Or are you 'invisible' to it? What does this ‘do’ to you?

Using the postmodern ideas in workshop 5, for example, you might view your ‘text’ through a postcolonial
lens and notice that it would not be very helpful for a client from a non-western culture; or even worse, that
it promotes racial stereotypes. You might ‘see’ that it reproduces ‘white normality’; marginalises
culture/makes diversity invisible; thereby puts relevant cultural issues/stories in the background; serves to
disempower racially diverse clients; puts clients in a position of dependence on a therapist who is positioned
as an ‘expert’; and so on. You could use any of the postmodern lenses to do this - gender, or class, or
(dis)ability, etc; or a combination thereof.

Conducting a Discourse Analysis does not necessarily mean ‘finding fault’ with the content of a ‘text’ (eg.,
article or website). Some discourses are ‘positive’; or considered to have merit and we therefore subscribe
to them (eg., think about how pervasive the discourse of ‘mindfulness’ has become). But this does not mean
that such discourses cannot (or should not) be subjected to a Discourse Analysis.

Such an analysis means identifying the dominant discourse/s in a ‘text’, leading to a consideration of what
such discourse/s do in terms of marginalising other discourses/stories; producing people or practices in
certain ways that become taken for granted as ‘normal’ (empowered); and/or conferring privilege on some
people/perspectives/practices while making other people/perspectives/practices invisible or abnormal
(disempowered). This does not mean that one discourse should then necessarily ‘replace’ the other, but that
awareness of the marginalised discourse might help us be ‘ethical’ practitioners and/or researchers.

When writing up your Discourse Analysis for A3:

Please don't assume that the reader/marker is familiar with your ‘text’. You need to write so that the
reader/marker will understand your assignment without having to read all of the ‘text’ that
you are analysing. Include enough relevant and specific direct quotations, paraphrased material and, if
relevant, visual images/photographs from the ‘text’ to provide context for and illustrate your analysis.

You might find it helpful to write briefly about the ‘text’ as a whole and then focus in closely on a particular
section, especially if the document is long. For instance, you might look at a whole website then focus in on a
particular webpage; or at a whole journal article then focus on a particular section such as the introduction
or methodology or discussion; or look at a video of a therapy session but focus in on just a brief period
of transcript. As with A2, you can write either as an integrated narrative or adapt the guiding questions to be
headings (but take care to integrate your work and to avoid overlap if using the latter kind of structure).

If you are analysing something other than a written document e.g., a website, a video, the setup of a therapy
room, an excerpt from a published transcript of a therapy or research interview, etc, please provide
adequate relevant description and documentation in an appendix, e.g. hyperlink; photographic stills,
transcription of selected dialogue. Include citations and a reference list - these can be from relevant
essential or additional readings that you have been given for the Unit as well as those you have sourced
yourself for A1, or beyond. The reference list should also include the ‘text’ you are analysing if this is a
document or webpage (include web address).

Questions from the LG for A3:

What are the implicit assumptions and/or theories about counselling, psychotherapy and/or art therapy in
this document?
Some examples of theories…Person centred therapy; Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic therapy;
Psychodynamic arts psychotherapy; Interpersonal counselling etc

Assumptions…really depends on the ‘text’ - eg assumptions about whether the client is an individual or a
family; assumptions about ‘normality’/pathology; assumptions about gender; about ethnicity; about age;
about mobility; technological proficiency/access; etc

What dominant discourses/narratives can you identify? What do these discourses/narratives do?

Narratives are the 'stories' that accompany discourses. For example, in a gender discourse there
are narratives (stories) about the 'appropriate' behaviour for men or women and as a result of these 'truths',
women and men are produced/described in certain ways – for example, women as 'homemakers' and men
as 'breadwinners'; women being held responsible for things going wrong in relationships; anger more
acceptable from men than women; men being expected or expecting themselves to be ‘strong’; people
being categorised as being men or women in the first place. These discourses and narratives define who
people are.

How is the therapist and/or researcher positioned in this ‘text’? How are the clients and or research
participants positioned and described/'produced' in this ‘text’?

c.f. WK 4 Sheridan’s guest lecture + Davies, B & Harre`, R. (2001) on LG reading list. Positioning can be partly
understood (crudely) as 'power position'... thinking again about the gender example above, women have
historically been ‘produced’ in certain ways to be dependent/ feminine/nurturing; they are disempowered
because ‘positioned’ as dependent relative to male counterpart. So, in terms of your ‘text’, how
are clients positioned and described/produced? (helpless? ill? dependent? etc); or the therapist (are they
personalised? seen as a friend? seen as an expert? etc).

Whose language is used for this description? Who speaks and who is spoken for?

Is the language medical, for example? Or self-help genre? or is the language used assumed to be that of the
client? Power can be relevant here - eg, is the language used to describe/produce the client that of the
therapist? or some other expert? is the language 'scientific'? or showing 'technical expertise' that locates the
client as needing expert help? or, is the 'everyday' language of potential clients used? Etc…

What is left out of the picture or relegated to context or background knowledge? What might be made
visible if this/these were foregrounded? (i.e. is there a submerged/different story that might usefully be
told?)

If discourse analysis is about identifying the 'dominant' discourse/s evident in a ‘text’ and what such
discourses do (in terms of positioning and producing people in certain ways); then the counterpart to this is
the non-dominant/invisible/marginalised discourses/stories/narratives that might be 'brought to light'. What
is ‘left out of the picture’ or 'ignored/made invisible' in the ‘text’ because the voices/perspectives of, for
example, women or non-western people or those with lived experience of mental illness are absent? What
difference might it make if these voices/perspectives were foregrounded/included?

Returning to the gender example above, a submerged/different story might be the survival of the many
women subjected to DV; or single mothers that had to support their kids; or chose not to have children
without experiencing that as a lack of femininity. Men who have willingly embraced the primary care of
children. People who have refused to be ascribed to a gender category based on biology and who live as
transgender or intersex people.

So, in terms of your ‘text’, is there a different 'story' that could be told about/from clients, a different way of
positioning/describing them? Are there 'potential clients' left out of the story/made invisible, that might be
brought into the picture?

Such analysis is about building an alternative narrative that might gain enough strength or detail that could
take its place alongside the dominant story (or even replace it).

What if clients were able to give an account in their own words? But they have also been subjected to
dominant discourses…so the work of therapy might be about undoing things…clients being assisted to see
alternatives to being pathologized, for example.