Study guide: Discourse Analysis and Social Power

📋 Course Outline

1. Multidisciplinary discourse analysis
2. Language, context, and social power
3. Civilizational approaches to discourse
4. Grammatical analysis of discourse
5. MAGA slogan history and meanings

📖 1. Multidisciplinary discourse analysis

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Multidisciplinary approach: Multidisciplinary approach : studying the same expression or corpus using multiple complementary research perspectives.
• Language in use: Language in use : focusing on how speech, sentences, or texts function in real communication rather than only on abstract rules.

📝 Essential Points

• A multidisciplinary approach can apply different methods to the same expression, sentence, speech, or corpus.
• Discourse analysis starts from actual language use to explain how meanings are produced in practice.

💡 Memory Hook

Think MULTI = multiple lenses on the same message.

📖 2. Language, context, and social power

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Importance of context: Importance of context : treating discourse meaning as inseparable from its social, political, and economic setting(s).
• Social power: Social power : how identities, power relations, ideologies, and cultural norms are shaped by discourse and also shape discourse.

📝 Essential Points

• Meaning of discourse is tied to specific social and political contexts rather than being fixed in the words alone.
• Discourse both shapes and is shaped by social identities and power relations.
• Ideologies and cultural norms can be expressed through language choices and patterns.

💡 Memory Hook

Context sets the frame; power sets the impact.

📖 3. Civilizational approaches to discourse

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Legitimation strategies: Legitimation strategies : ways discourse works to persuade an audience and make claims seem acceptable.
• Theme-based approach: Theme-based approach : tracking recurring themes across individuals and how those themes evolve over periods of time.
• Ideological adaptations: Ideological adaptations : adjustments of ideas to fit changing circumstances.
• Representations: Representations : discursive links that define how groups are described through labels like I, we, or them.

📝 Essential Points

• Civilizational analysis asks how ideas are structured, including why they are chosen and what results they aim to produce.
• It examines representations by checking how discourse links I, we, and them to describe social groups.

💡 Memory Hook

L e g i t = Legitimation, Evolutions, structuring, adaptations, representations.

📖 4. Grammatical analysis of discourse

📖 5. MAGA slogan history and meanings

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Golden Age idealization: Golden Age idealization : presenting an earlier time as a preferable benchmark that justifies returning to it.
• Unifying value: Unifying value : a discourse function that creates shared identity or purpose among supporters.
• Critical value: Critical value : a discourse function that frames the present as degraded and signals something has gone wrong.
• Enemies from within: Enemies from within : an in-group/out-group framing that portrays internal opponents as threats.

📝 Essential Points

• The slogan Make America Great Again first appeared in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign after perceived U.S. loss of prestige.
• It was used again in 2016 during Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign and re-used in the 2024 presidential campaign.
• The four-word structure unites and divides by implying a former greatness plus responsibility for current decline.
• Vagueness can be an advantage because multiple time periods can be mapped to what “great” means without settling one definition.
• The course associates “America” with groups such as White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), mostly men, and possibly rich Americans and some of the middle class.
• The slogan is said not to address certain discriminations and inequalities faced by minorities, so “great” and “again” can exclude them indirectly from the project.

💡 Memory Hook

Use 5 Ws: Who/What/When/Where/Why, then ask what unifies and what divides.

📅 Key Dates

1. 1980First use of the slogan during Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.
2. 2016Re-use of the slogan during Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign.
3. 2024Re-use of the slogan during the 2024 presidential campaign.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. Confusing language in use with purely grammatical correctness, since the course links meaning to real communication.
2. Treating context as only background information, even though it is said to deeply tie to discourse meaning.
3. Assuming representations only come from explicit words, when the course stresses what the slogan implies can matter.
4. Thinking “great” has one fixed historical period, even though the course lists many possible candidate eras and highlights vagueness.
5. Mixing unifying value and critical value, since the slogan is described as both positive about a past and negative about the present.
6. Believing the slogan directly answers social inequalities, even though the course claims it does not address discriminations faced by minorities.

✅ Exam Checklist

1. Identify what a multidisciplinary approach does when analyzing a discourse object such as a sentence, speech, or corpus.
2. Explain what “language in use” means for discourse analysis.
3. State why context is essential and name examples of relevant context types (social, political, economic).
4. Describe how language can shape and be shaped by social identities, power relations, ideologies, or cultural norms.
5. List the civilizational notions used to study discourse, including legitimation strategies and theme-based approaches.
6. Explain what “structuring ideas” examines in a discourse analysis and what it seeks to justify.
7. Define how representations work using I, we, and them labels for social groups.
8. In the MAGA case study, recall the three campaign moments when the slogan was used (1980, 2016, 2024).
9. Explain how the phrase’s four words are analyzed through unifying and critical values.
10. Connect the slogan’s vagueness to the idea that multiple historical periods can be mapped to “great.”
11. State who “America” is portrayed as being for and who is portrayed as not being America in the course description.
12. Recall what the course says the slogan does not address and how that can function as indirect exclusion.