Quantitative text analysis tools have become increasingly popular methods for the operationalization of various types of discourse analysis. However, their application usually remains fairly simple and superficial, and fails to exploit the resources which the digital era holds for discourse analysis to their full extent. This paper discusses the discourse-analytic potential of a more complex and advanced text analysis tool, which is already frequently employed in other approaches to textual analysis, notably topic modelling. We argue that topic modelling promises advances in areas where discourse analysis has traditionally struggled, such as scaling, repetition, and systematization, which go beyond the contributions of simpler frequency and collocation counts. At the same time, it does not violate the epistemological premises and methodological ethos of even the more radical theories of discourse, we will demonstrate. Finally, we present two small case studies to show how topic modellingwhen used with appropriate parameterscan straightforwardly enhance our ability to systematically investigate and interpret discourses in large collections of text.
Post-structuralist Discourse Theory is an approach to political analysis that reformulates Marxist theory so as to emphasize structural contingency and openness. Whereas classic Marxian sociology is rooted in economic processes that "structure" society and ideas, post-structuralist Discourse Theory emphasizes the absence of any determinative principle. Thus, it radicalizes an ongoing shift in Marxism away from economic essentialism towards indeterminacy. The ideological superstructure becomes ever more important at the expense of the economic base; class struggle and production relations lose analytical and strategic purchase in favor of a complex and integral form of politics; there are no deeper, natural foundations determining how society is organized and structured. Post-structuralist discourse-theorists argue that this orientation leads to a more satisfactory analysis and critique of political practice than is possible through positivist behaviorism or orthodox Marxism. Assessing that claim requires a survey of the hermetic terminology in which poststructuralist discourse-theorists often express their ideas-the discourse, as it were, of discourse-theorists-exploring their use of Marxist sociology, structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis, populism research, and various currents of political theory.
Cite as Jacobs, T. (2018) Poststructuralist discourse theory as an independent paradigm for studying institutions: Towards a new definition of 'discursive construction' in institutional analysis.
The outbreak of COVID‐19 in March 2020 led to substantial upheaval in the EU's trade policy. Over the course of a year, EU Trade Policy as a field witnessed the launch of hitherto unthinkable ideas; the proliferation of a range of new buzzwords such as resilience, autonomy, and reshoring; and ultimately the arrival of a new consensus in the Trade Policy Review of February 2021. This article uses a discourse‐theoretical approach (PDT) to retrace the political process that unfolded throughout this year, from the start of the COVID‐19 crisis, to a fundamental dislocation of EU trade politics, and ultimately to the consolidation of a partial, temporary, and frail new hegemony within the policy field. Our goal is to explain the trajectory and the dynamics of this process by studying the discourses, the framings, and the political strategies that comprised the hegemonic struggle underlying it.
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