The encounter between society and discourse in the qualitative approach in sociology
Luis Enrique Alonso | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The qualitative approach in sociology is based on a sociological interpretation of discourse. It is a contextual analysis where arguments acquire meaning in relation to the actors who state them, framed within a set of conflicting social forces that give rise to them. The interpretative action of social research is a desire to gain knowledge about discursive action, in other words, it is an attribution-of-meaning practice focused on what discourses do in society. This represents exactly the opposite of an analytical reading of texts –which attempts to find a structural profile dividing the text in parts and subparts-; it is an active reading where the questions made to the text are posed from a polyphony of different social positions that enter in the social field of reference. All interpretation is made from a conflict of interpretations because all interpretation is made at the crossroads of the plurality of meanings of the social context (using Paul Ricoeur’s terminology). Qualitative sociology operates on this plane, inasmuch as the work of language is not studied as an end product, but as a vehicle for acquisition and communication of the meanings regarding the social framework of the messages. Interpretation is, therefore, the discovery of meaning in the intersubjective encounter between the subject as a generator of meaning and the social framework limiting the meanings. Interpretation acquires meaning when it rebuilds, relevantly, the field of social forces that have led to the research, and when its interpretative key is coherent with the specific research goals; a double pragmatic approach –pragmatic in terms of the social discourses and pragmatic in terms of the research strategy- which differs from linguistic or mathematical formalism, although may find basic tools in these, as with any desire to overinterpret based on a theoretical a priori assumption. Sociological discourse analysis taken as socio-hermeneutic work is not thus interested in seeking universal codes or underlying structures in statements, but rather in finding the meaning of the actions of the social subjects, going from text to action, from the statement to the meaning of the practices of actors.

Studies on discourse and society. A critical approach
Luisa Martín Rojo | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The starting point of studies on discourse and society is the premise that social practices are, at least in part, discursive. In general terms, they even go further, considering that social processes such as the construction of inequality or exclusion take place in their everyday performance. Thus, for instance, if we think of an institution such as schools, it is through discourse that educational practice is carried out in the classroom, but also that symbolic resources are distributed, norms are established, access to other educational stages is allowed or blocked, symmetrical or asymmetrical social relations are negotiated, etc. For some of the researchers attending EDiSO, the critical appraisal lies precisely in outlining these social processes in local/interactional practices. However, in order to capture the relationship between discourse and society we still need to explore a second way in which discourses shape and are shaped by social practices (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 37). Of course, any practice has a reflexive aspect to it, given that its development generates discursive representations of those same practices, which are also an essential part of them. For instance, when a class is being taught, representations are generated regarding what contents and languages it is legitimate to teach and learn, who is a good student, what is the aim of education, etc. In this way, in classrooms and in other contexts, knowledge is generated that is often regarded as the truth and is, therefore, never neutral, constituting a key element in the justification or legitimation of those social processes to which we have referred. Approaching this issue does not only involve studying how legitimation is produced ex post facto, or even how certain practices are naturalized. It involves asking questions regarding how power is exerted in innumerable everyday encounters, within and outside institutions, in which numerous social actors take part and act. As to the example of schools, we see how educational policies multiply rather than limit their effects in each of the everyday exchanges between teachers and students. It is precisely in that daily experience of innumerable encounters that teachers and students will all have to face what disciplines, government documents and those that surround them say is a (good) teacher or a (good) student; they must face norms that disqualify or favor their way of talking and acting. In this scenario, teachers and students, as every social actor, could internalize whether or not they are considered legitimate or not valued participants in that context, and whether they are rejected based on gender, class, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Thus, in studies on discourse and society, we also deal with changes in the forms of governmentality, normalization, contestation, resistance, subjectivation, as it can be seen in the programme for this symposium.

Discursos e silêncios. O trabalho da tradução
António Sousa Ribeiro | Universidade de Coimbra

In a text that has become a classic, Gayatry Spivak asks the question `Can the subaltern speak?`. There are different ways of translating this question into Portuguese, but the one probably most faithful to the spirit of Spivak's argument would be to ask about the subaltern's conditions of enunciation. Indeed, that argument is evidently not about denying the subaltern's voice, but about drawing attention to the simple fact that within the colonial relation, which, in the cases analysed by Spivak doubles as patriarchal domination, the conditions of enunciation condemn that voice to silence. My own reflection will be grounded in the question of silence as a limit to discourse, under the assumption that discourse defines itself against auto- and heteroimposed borders. The question of the violence inherent to the drawing of those borders will be questioned in the framework of an inquiry on the possibilities of a work of translation capable of situating itself productively within the various forms of conflict which permeate discursive relations as an "arena of the class struggle" (Voloshinov), with particular emphasis on the possibilities of articulation of experiences of trauma and suffering.