Submitted to : Sir Amir Zahoor

Submitted by:Aqsa Ahmad

Roll nmbr # 13

What is the focus of FDA?

How language shapes experience

FDA is concerned with language and its role in the constitution of social and psychological life. It
argues that language constructs social reality which consequently constructs Subjective.

What are discourses?

Ways of constructing objects

Discourses are "sets of statements that construct objects and an array of subject ' positions"
(Parker, 1994)

Discourses are "relatively coherent ways of talking about objects and events in the world" (Edley,
2001)

What are the assumptions of FDA?

Discourses give people ways of ''seeing and ''being in the world

Discourses make available to people certain ways of seeing the world and certain ways of being in
the world. Discourses offer subject positions, which when taken up by people, have implications on
subjectivity and experience.Discourses shape subjectivity and experience From a Foucauldian point
of view, discourse: facilitate and limit, enable and constrain what can be said, by whom, where and
when(Parker, 1992). FDA focuses on the availability ofdiscourses and their

implications to how people live.Discourses are linked to institutions

and social practices FDA asks questions about the relationship

between discourse and how people think or feel (subjectivity), what they may do (social practices)
and the material conditions within which such experiences may take place (institutional practices).

What are the assumptions of FDA?

Discourses are linked to power

FDA is concerned with the role of discouliu in wider social processes of legitimation and

power. Dominant discourses privilege those versions of social reality which legitimate existing power
relations and social structures. Some are so entrenched that they have become "common
sense".FDA can lead to social change through creating a/fermat/ve or counter-discourses It is in the
nature of language that alternative constructions are always possible and that counter-discourses
can, and do, emerge.

What is the research question in

FDA?

How discourses construct subject

"What characterizes the discursive worlds participants live in and what are their implications for
possible ways of being?" FDA focuses on the power of discourses to construct objects, position
subjects, and shape what people can say, think, feel, and do.

Selecting Texts for Analysis

Text that focus on the object of the

research

FDA can be carried out "wherever there is meaning" (Parker, 1999)

The selection of suitable texts for analysis is informed by the research question. Selecting Texts for
Analysis

Find the relevant text Which social object or phenomenon are loB

interested in?

Whose constructions of the social object are

you interested in? Where can you find these constructions?

Doing FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

1. Discursive Constructions

2. Discourses

3. Action Orientation

4. Positionings

5. Practice

6. Subjectivity

Doing FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

Stage 1: discursive constructions

How is the discursive object constructed in

the text?

Identify the different ways by which the

discursive object is constructed in the text.

That is, highlight all instances of reference to

the discursive object.

Doing FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

Stage 2: discourses

Focus on the differences between

constructions. What appears to be one aHT '

the same discursive object can be

constructed in very different ways. Locate the

various discursive constructions within wider

discourses or "ways of seeing the world".

Doing FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

Stage 3: action orientation

What is the function of constructing the objd)t

in a particular way within the text?

When is a particular discourse used and what

can be its purpose when it is used in the text?

(What is the person "doing" in the talk?)

Doin Stage g FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

4: positionings

What subject positions are made availablef!-a

the discourses for persons to take up? How are different persons positioned in the text? What are
the rights and duties ascribed to them?

Doing FDA: A Step-By-Step Guide

Stage 5: practice

What can people say and do given posturing made available in discourses?

What social practices can people do (and do) when they are positioned in a particular way by the
discourse?

Stage 6: subjectivity

What can people think, feel, and experienced given positions made available in discourses?

do you know if you are doing it

right? How

Follow your intuition

"Analysis is not a matter of following rules or recipesl it often involves following hunches and the
development of tentative interpretative schemes which may be abandoned or revised."

How do you know if you are doing it

right?

Follow your data

"The trick is. . . familiarity with one's data. . . repeated reading.... Gradually, one comes to recognize
patterns...a sure sign that one is getting a feel for the 'discursive terrain.