Abstract
Identifying meaningful absences in discourse presents numerous theoretical and methodological challenges, some of which are addressed in this chapter. Section 8.1 focuses on how different types of discourse studies, namely Critical Discourse Analysis and French Discourse Analysis, approach absence. Among the numerous types of absence that researchers from these fields distinguish, this study concentrates on what does not need to be said because it is shared knowledge, on the one hand, and on what cannot be said because it would be socially unacceptable or make a text incoherent, on the other. In this perspective, the challenge for the analyst is not to find out what the speaker’s intentions nor the recipient’s expectations are, but to create the conditions in which he or she will be able to identify discursively relevant silences. Section 8.2 concentrates on analytical procedures for the detection of absences. Methodological tools developed by French Discourse Analysis are reviewed and completed by procedures capable of detecting absences that are not ‘signalled’ in discourse by any kind of specific ‘absence markers’. In a mapping, different analytical procedures are linked to various levels of ‘presences’ and ‘absences’ in discourse, which are in turn linked to different levels of consensus or disagreement on representations. This section also shows how analysing what is said and not said by means of the mapping helps to understand on-going social change. Finally, the methodology is illustrated by excerpts from studies on data sets in French, German and English from parenting guidebooks, intercultural parenting books and history textbooks.
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Notes
- 1.
Schröter also refers to Herdina (1996, p. 30) on the subje ct of silencing.
- 2.
- 3.
All translations in the chapter are mine.
- 4.
‘Discursive formation’ is used here in the sense given to it by Haroche, Henry, and Pêcheux (1971, p. 102), that is what determines ‘what can and must be said […] from a given position in a given set of circumstances’.
- 5.
The next two paragraphs draw on a more extensive development on this subject in von Münchow (2016).
- 6.
Maldidier refers to a 1982 handwritten note from Pêcheux here.
- 7.
See Pordeus Ribeiro (2015, pp. 163–164) for a recent summary of these studies.
- 8.
- 9.
My definition of ‘social representations’ differs from the ones that social psychologists like Guimelli (1999, p. 63) put forth in that I see them as covering the beliefs, the knowledge and the opinions that members of a group know about and are able to use (in whatever way) rather than produce and/or share.
- 10.
- 11.
Der Spiegel 1/2011, p. 138.
- 12.
Unless otherwise specified, the italics in all excerpts are mine and point out elements that are particularly important for the analysis.
- 13.
For van Leeuwen, ‘backgrounding’ entails that ‘the excluded social actors may not be mentioned in relation to a given action, but they are mentioned elsewhere in the text, and we can infer with reasonable (though never total) certainty who they are’ (2008, p. 29). ‘Suppression’ is a more radical exclusion from the text.
- 14.
The excerpt marks the beginning of a new section. The reader thus cannot rely on previous information for the construal of reference.
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von Münchow, P. (2018). Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Identifying Meaningful Absences in Discourse. In: Schröter, M., Taylor, C. (eds) Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64580-3_8
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