Discourse studies and the material turn: From representation (facts) to participation (concerns)

Abstract

Discourse studies has shown how language use matters in various political and societal settings. With the »material turn«, the focus on language has meant that discourse studies have been deemed as a symbolic and representationalist approach. In contrast, this paper shows how discourse studies have been concerned about material issues, language included, in local achievements of sense. »Nexus analysis« is introduced as an ethnographic framework to study »assemblages« and affects as entangled material-discursive practices, where close analysis of embodied practices is crucial. Nexus analysis encourages participatory research, providing a framework for agential research on matters of concern.

Ethnomethodological conversation analysis and the study of assemblages

“…Next, I go through Karen Barad’s (they, them, their) approach to materiality in more detail, as they have shown how the very basic ideas we have about materiality, gained through scientific evidence, depend on material arrangements. This is why I referred to them as a central theorist in my assemblic analysis ( Raudaskoski, 2021b ) of an experimental interdisciplinary workshop about the concept of abduction arranged in a Viking museum. Their agential realism treats matter as one of the aspects of the world that is in continuous becoming through various “practices of knowing”: “knowing is a matter of part of the world making itself intelligible to another part” ( Barad, 2007 , p. 185).…”