DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

IGroup 5 :
Kurnia Sri Putri Panjaitan (1801030202)
ResiNainggolan 1801030215
SabarniSipayung 1801030213
Andrian Sirait 1801030229
 
 
FIGURED WORLDS 
The term “figured world” is a name for something that people have called
by many different names. Cultural model, discourse model, Discourse
model, folk theory, as well as certain uses of schema, frame, and script,
are a few of the names that have been used, each with somewhat different
meanings. Figured worlds are simplified, often unconscious, and taken-
for-granted theories or stories about how the world works that we use to
get on efficiently with our daily lives. We learn them from experiences we
have had, but, crucially, as these experiences are guided, shaped, and
normed by the social and cultural groups to which we belong. From such
experiences we infer what is “normal” or “typical” (e.g., what a “normal”
man or child or policeman looks and acts like; what a “normal” marriage
is like; what a “normal” classroom looks and acts like) and tend to act on
these assumptions unless something clearly tells us that we are facing an
exception.The term “figured world” has the advantage of stressing that
what we are talking about here is ways in which people picture or
construe aspects of the world in their heads, the ways they have of
looking at aspects of the world.
STIMULATIONS IN MIND
 There are lots of different sorts of figured worlds and lots of different ways
to think and talk about them. Figured worlds are rooted in our actual
experiences in the world, but, rather
 like movies, those experiences have been edited to capture what is taken to
be essential or typical.
 In fact, figured worlds are linked to simulations we run in our minds,
simulations that help us to think about things and to prepare ourselves for
action in the world. Figured worlds are linked to simulations in our minds.
Simulations are the way the mind handles figured worlds. We build worlds
in our minds (much as video-game designers build worlds into their
games). But these figured worlds are not just mental. They exist in books
and other media, in knowledge we can gain from what other people say and
do, and in what we can infer from various social practices around us. They
exist, as well, in the metaphors we use. In many cases, individuals do not
know all the elements of a figured world, but get parts of it from books,
media, or other people as they need to know more. This is so because we
humans are capable of gaining experiences vicariously from texts, media,
and other people’s stories.
 ALL MEANING IS LOCAL
 When we watch language-in-action in a culture quite different from our own,
even simple interactions can be inexplicable, the fact that we do not know
many of the figured worlds at play. This means that even if we can figure out
the situated meanings of some words, we cannot see any sense to why these
situated meanings have arisen.
 For example,In a small town in Yucatan, a Mayan Shaman named “Don Chabo”
is sharing a meal with his daughter-in-law, Margot, and a visiting
anthropologist. They are all in Margot’s house. A young man, named “Yuum,”
approaches from the outside, and, standing at the window, asks: “Is Don Chabo
seated?” Margot replies: “Go over there. He’s drinking. Go over there inside.”
These are about as simple as sentences get.
 And yet the meaning of these sentences is not so straightforward after all. For
example, the people seated around the table are having a meal, so why does
Margot say that Don Chabo is “drinking”? Furthermore, Margot’s response
implies that Don Chabo is “drinking,” despite the fact that he was, at the
moment, gazing off into space with a roll in his hand. Indeed, in Mayan, it
would have been equally true here to say Don Chabo was “drinking” had he
been altogether done with (eating) his meal.
 DIFFERENT SORTS AND USES OF FIGURED WORLDS
 What Strauss’s study leads us to see is that we need to distinguish between
figured worlds based on how they are put to use and on the effects they have on
us. We can distinguish between, at least, the following sorts of figured worlds
in regard to these issues:
 A. Espoused worlds, that is, theories, stories, ways of looking at the world
which we consciously espouse (say and often think we believe);
 B. Evaluative worlds, that is, theories, stories, ways of looking at the world
which we use, consciously or unconsciously, to judge ourselves or others;
 C. Worlds-in-(inter)action, that is, theories, stories, or ways of looking at the
world that consciously or unconsciously guide our actual actions and
interactions in the world (regardless of what we say or think we believe).
 Furthermore, figured worlds can be about “appropriate” attitudes, viewpoints,
beliefs, and values; “appropriate” ways of acting, interacting, participating, and
participant structures; “appropriate” social and institutional organizational
structures; “appropriate” ways of talking, listening, writing, reading, and
communicating; “appropriate” ways to feel or display emotion; “appropriate”
ways in which real and fictional events, stories, and histories are organized and
end, and so on and so forth.
FIGURED WORLDS IN ACTION : MIDDLE-CLASS PARENTING
 
Annette Lareau, in her book Unequal Childhoods (2003) has identified two different models of
what it means to raise children.
These models are what we would call figured worlds. Her work is a close ethnographic study of
child rearing in different homes. One model she calls the “cultivation model.” This model is
applied mostly, though not exclusively, by middle- and upper-middle-class parents. The other
model she calls the “natural growth model.” This model is applied mostly, though not exclusively,
by non-middle-class parents, parents in the working class or poor parents.
When parents hold the cultivation model they treat their child like a plant that must be
constantly monitored and tended. They talk a good deal to their children, especially about topics
that do not just involve the here and now.
They use a good deal of “book language” and more adult vocabulary around their children,
especially in the areas where their children have become “little experts” (e.g., on dinosaurs or
trains), something these parents encourage.
Even though they are the ultimate authority in their homes, these parents negotiate with their
children so that their children get lots of practice in developing arguments and explanations.
They set up, monitor, and facilitate a great number of activities for their children, such as
museum trips, travel, camps, special lessons (e.g., music), and special out-of-school activities
(e.g., ballet).
In the act, they heavily structure their children’s free time (and, yes, sometimes over-stress the
children). They encourage their children to look adults in the eye and to present themselves to
others as a confident and knowledgeable person or at least one with a right to an opinion. They
encourage their children to develop mastery with digital tools—using things like games as a
gateway—and help their child to relate this mastery to literacy and knowledge development
 FIGURED WORLDS IN CONFLICT
 Figured worlds in conflict demonstrate that each of us can have allegiance to
competing and conflicting figured worlds. It also shows one way in which more
powerful groups in society can influence less powerful groups. The example
comes from Claudia Strauss”s (1992) studies of working-class men in Rhode
Island (Strauss also uses the term “cultural model” instead of “figured world”).
In contrast to these working-class men, many white-collar professionals work
in environments where the daily behaviors of those around them conform to
the success figured world more than daily behaviors on the factory floor
conform to this way of construing the world. For these professionals, then, their
daily observations and social practices reinforce explicit ideological learning in
regard to the figured world for success. For them, in contrast to the working-
class men Strauss studied, the success figured world, not the breadwinner one,
is seen as “an inescapable fact of life,” and, thus, for them, this way of
construing the world determines not just their self-esteem, but many of their
actual behaviors. The working-class men Strauss studied are, in a sense,
“colonized” by the success figured world (we are all, in fact, “colonized” by a
good many figured).
 FIGURED WORLDS CAN BE PARTIAL AND INCONSISTANT
 Figured worlds, though they are theories (explanations), need
not be completed, fully formed, or consistent. Their partiality
and inconsistency are sometimes the result of the fact that one
figured world can incorporate different and conflicting values, or
values connected to groups to which some people who use the
figured world don’t actually belong, or, at least, values that serve
other people’s interests better than their own . the partiality and
inconsistency of figured worlds reflects the fact that we have all
had a great many diverse and conflicting experiences; we all
belong to different, sometimes conflicting groups; and we are all
influenced by a wide array of groups, texts, institutions, and
media that may, in reality, reflect our “best interests” more or less
poorly.
 
FIGURED WORLDS AS TOOLS OF INQUIRY
Figured worlds offer us another “tool of inquiry.” They lead us to
ask, when
confronted with a piece of talk, writing, action, or interaction,
questions .good reasons” and makes “deep sense” in terms of their
own socioculturally specific ways of talking, listening (writing,
reading), acting, interacting, valuing, believing, and feeling. Of
course, we are all members of multiple
Discourses and so the analytic task is often finding which of these,
and with what blends, are operative in the communication. The
assumption of “good reasons” and “deep sense” is foundational to
discourse analysis. It is not only a moral principle. It is based, as
well, on the viewpoint, amply demonstrated in work in cognitive
science, applied linguistics, and in a variety of different approaches
to discourse analysis, that humans are, as creatures, par excellence
sense makers. Within their Discourses, they move to sense, the way
certain plants move to light.
CONCLUSION

From the explanation above , we can conclude and

understand what is the figured worlds. Namly a figured
world is a picture of a simplified world that captures what
is taken to be typical or normal. The term “figured world”
is a name for something that people have called by many
different names. Cultural model, discourse model,
Discourse model, folk theory, as well as certain uses of
schema, frame, and script, are a few of the names that
have been used, each with somewhat different meanings.
Figured worlds are simplified, often unconscious, and
taken-for-granted theories or stories about how the
world works that we use to get on efficiently with our
daily lives.