OBSERVARE

Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 7, Nº. 2 (November 2016-April 2017), pp. 1-13

DISCOURSE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A THEORETICAL AND

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

Luísa Godinho
[email protected]

Assistant Professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Portugal) and researcher in the field of
Political Communication. Her academic interests include discourse, digital communication and
computational approach to Social Sciences. She has a PhD in Economic and Social Sciences from
the University of Geneva, Switzerland

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International

Relations
E-ISSN: 1647-7251
[email protected] Abstract
Observatório de Relações Exteriores In this article, the relationship among international actors is understood as a communicative
Portugal process in which discourse is a central instrument, a perspective that in recent decades has
expanded remarkably in International Relations. This plethora has, however, been
accompanied by frequent calls for greater methodological clarification in academic work. This
Godinho, Luísa article aims to contribute to this purpose, offering an integrated view of discursive approaches
DISCOURSE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A THEORETICAL AND in International Relations and presenting an updated picture of context theory.
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations, vol. 7, núm. 2, noviembre, 2016, pp. 1-
Keywords
13
Observatório de Relações Exteriores Language; Discourse; Constructivism; Context; Methodology
Lisboa, Portugal

How to cite this article

Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=413548516001 Godinho, Luisa (2016). "Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and
methodological approach". JANUS.NET e-journal of International Relations, Vol. 7, Nº. 2,
November 2016-April 2017. Consulted [online] on the date of last consultation,
observare.autonoma.pt/janus.net/en_vol7_n2_art1 (http://hdl.handle.net/11144/2780)

Article received on July 5, 2016 and accepted for publication on September, 25 2016

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 JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
e-ISSN: 1647-7251 e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 7, Nº. 2 (November 2016-April 2017), pp. 1-13 Vol. 7, Nº. 2 (November 2016-April 2017), pp. 1-13
Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach
Luísa Godinho Luísa Godinho

Despite this growing interest in the discursive approach to international phenomena, calls
for the need to use more systematic methodologies in the studies abound and include
DISCOURSE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A THEORETICAL AND
discourse analysis works produced in all fields of the social sciences.
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH1
As Müller noted, the methodological warning accompanied the emergence of the main
publications in the area of discourse, and Van Dijk, one of the most prominent authors,
in the first editorial he wrote for the Discourse and Society journal underlined the need
for "explicit and systematic analysis based on serious methods and theories" (Van Dijk,
Luísa Godinho
1990: 14). Over a decade after Van Dijk wrote these words, Antaki and Checkel identified,
among the works written about discourse in International Relations, a descriptive and
justifying gap in the “sources and techniques used to reconstruct discourses" (Checkel
2004: 7).
Since the first half of the twentieth century, particularly from the 1940s onwards, the The need for methodological accuracy is imperative in an area that, like discourse
social sciences’ interest in the meaning of language focused on the so-called content analysis, can offer an invaluable contribution to International Relations. A discourse
analysis, reproducing the dominant positivist paradigm and, in a way, demonstrating a analysis of international practice combining textual analysis and contextual analysis
significant aloofness regarding the intellectual legacy of Wilhelm Dilthey (Dilthey, 1883; allows making political and sociological inferences that can be of great use for the topic
1900). addressed here. According to Van Dijk "It is precisely this integrated analysis" that allows
Dilthey had claimed, back in the nineteenth century, a scientificity specific to social a better understanding of the complexity of the practices, institutions and political
sciences (Dilthey, 1883, 1900), based on the explanatory method, which opposed the processes, precisely the kind of objects of analysis that interest political scientists" (Van
traditional thinking of the natural sciences, grounded on the central paradigm of Dijk, 1997: 41).
quantitative demonstration. Still, content analysis, which preceded the study of Van Dijk exemplifies the utility of the discursive approach in Political Science and
discourse, emerged precisely in Dilthey’s opposite camp from techniques such as
International Relations with the study of topics such as the relationship between
lexicography, believing in the possibility of the empirical study of the word. immigration and xenophobia, immigration policies and social integration, partisan
Since the 1960s, due to the analytical deepening that the study of discourse has positioning and propaganda, or how the mass media deals with ethnic affairs. According
undergone (Van Dijk, 1972, 1977, 1988; Ducrot, 1972, 1980, 1984; Grimes, 1975; Hall to the author,
et al, 1978), this positivist paradigm has been challenged by the need to explain the
meaning of what was said, thus paving the way for qualitative analysis and the necessary
interdisciplinarity between the two approaches. Accordingly, the text ceased to be “What is at stake here (in the study of the discourse on immigration)
considered a closed construction that statistical analysis allowed access to, and started is not only the socio-economic 'facts' of the immigration of others.
to be understood as a structure of meanings, open and dependent on their context, which In a symbolic perspective, what is at stake here is how politicians,
many disciplines such as sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, law, and journalists and the public think, speak and write about the topic and
international relations could aspire to unravel. The scientific potential of this new how this discourse and cognition influence political action and,
discursive approach would soon be demonstrated by a galloping number of studies in all consequently, the political structure. This is where the discourse
areas of the humanities. analysis may allow explanations that otherwise would be absent”.
(Van Dijk, 1997: 42)
Also in the field of international relations, there was a growing interest in the study of
world politics as a social construction and in the increasing use of discourse analysis as
an analytical tool. According to Müller, this interest covered a wide range of topics, from The theoretical foundations of discourse analysis
"the rhetoric production of marginality, resistance and otherness” in International
Relations to the “constitutive and disciplining power of geopolitical discourses as truth Discourse analysis has very deep intellectual roots in philosophy, linguistics and
regimes. Similarly, discourse and discourse analysis have been among the most popular pragmatics.
concepts to study the formation of geopolitical identities" (Müller, 2010: 1). In philosophy, the study of discourse arose from the intellectual movement that embodied
the so-called interpretative shift in the social sciences. At the root of this shift lies, in
turn, hermeneutics, which shares with analytic philosophy the emphasis on the linguistic
nature of subjectivity. Authors like Heidegger, Ricoeur and Wittgenstein stressed the
impossibility of studying reality without understanding the meaning (s) of the actions of
1
social agents, which, in turn, can only be learned through the study of language. It is
The translation of this article was funded by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e
a Tecnologia - as part of OBSERVARE project with the reference UID/CPO/04155/2013, with the aim of language that allows sharing concepts and the construction of social life, from which
publishing Janus.net. Text translated by Carolina Peralta.
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Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach
Luísa Godinho Luísa Godinho

important theories derive, such as Wittgenstein’s, focused on language game, as well as

the revolutionary schools of Heidegger and Gadamer, which underline the social and
1. Discourse analysis in International Relations
historical nature of subjectivity itself.
It is in the light of the previous theoretical framework that the study of discourse in
From a linguistic perspective, the origins of the study of discourse go back to classical
International Relations must be understood. This discipline received from pragmatics the
rhetoric, which recognized, over 2000 years ago, that the quality of a text does not lie
concept of language as social action (Austin, 1962) and therefore the performative
only in its formal correctness, but also in its "persuasive effectiveness” (Van Dijk, 1985:
dimension of the word has become a key element to understand the relationship between
1). According to Van Dijk, the success of the discipline continued even during the Middle
international actors.
Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the preponderance of rhetoric in the humanities was eventually The so-called International Relations are, in essence, discursive interactions between
supplanted by areas such as historical and compared linguistics as well as by the peoples, i.e. texts that simultaneously reflect and produce a given context. The critical
structural analysis of language. The Russian formalism of the 1920s and 1930s fostered theory school pioneered this approach, based mainly on the study of actors and the
the study of narrative, hitherto confined to linguistics, in other disciplines such as effects that their discourse cause in international contexts (see image 1).
psychology and anthropology, and the fruits of this interdisciplinarity would still be picked
The critical discourse analysis is based on two fundamental assumptions: first, it indicates
forty years later in the French structuralism, in works by authors like Levi-Strauss and
a particular positioning of the researcher, who leaves the distancing of conventional
Barthes, to name a few. Linguistics thus became a vehicle for the study of culture, myths
approaches and has a set of ideological assumptions in the way he studies reality. Second,
and now discourse, a topic first published in 1964.
it identifies a close relationship between social structure and language, tending to analyse
This was the collective work Communications 4, dedicated exclusively to discourse political systems as linguistic systems and ideologies as texts aimed at creating a
structure analysis, which included a revolutionary set of topics, including film analysis by collective political will.
Metz and Barthes’ rhetorical analysis of advertising, who also signed the first introduction
to the newly formed Semiology discipline. According to Van Dijk, "Despite the framework,
guidelines, the research subjects and methods of all these authors being far from Image 1 – Transformation of the discursive approach in International Relations
homogeneous, the common interest in discourse analysis within the broader framework
of semiotics inspired by linguistics influenced and gave coherence to these first attempts"
(Van Dijk, 1985: 3).

The French structuralism set the tone for the new area of discourse that would grow over
the next decade in dozens of published works and applications to various disciplines. The
next increase came in the 1970s, with linguistics’ discovery of the philosophical work by
Austin, Grice and Searle on speech acts. The book How to do things with words (Austin,
1962), demonstrated, for the first time, how and in what circumstances to talk is to do,
opening the field of linguistics to pragmatics. With Austin, the speaker becomes a social
actor and the understanding of life in society can no longer do without the study of
language and its use.

In psychology, the study of discourse allowed developing cognitivism against the

prevalence of the behavioural trend of previous decades; sociology, by the hand of
authors like Goffman, focused on the analysis of social structure, studying the daily
conversations of ordinary speakers; anthropology, for its part, took the first steps in the Source: Müller, 2010.
so-called ethnography of communication, taking an interest in language and its symbols;
law also yielded to the study of discourse, after realizing that its object - laws, legal
action, legal documents - had an eminently discursive nature; history, whose sources In recent years, however, the traditional approach has been accompanied by situational
and work are mostly textual, saw a fundamental methodology in discourse analysis; in and proximity analyses, interested in understanding "the micro contexts and daily
the same sense, the study of mass media found in discourse analysis a powerful tool for practices as the focus of the discursive construction of identities" (Müller, 2010: 8). In
understanding phenomena, such as the conditions of message production and reception parallel with this expansion of the object, there has also been an international
and the meaning of the actual published message. "reconceptualization of discourse and identities" (Müller, 2010: 8) following a post-
Although deriving from linguistics, this expansion of the discursive approach was so structuralist perspective, the latter being understood as the result of a discursive
significant that, today, a growing number of linguists even question the qualifications of construction complex process and not as a natural attribute, which was the prevailing
discourse analysis as an area belonging to the language science. view in the interpretive and explanatory approaches. Therefore, it was a profound shift

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Luísa Godinho Luísa Godinho

in the object of analysis in International Relations. The international actors cease to be

the central unit of analysis, with interest now shifting to the identity of these actors and Image 2 – The discursive-constructivist approach in International Relations
the discursive processes that allowed its construction.
Possibility of objectification of Thin constructivism
The discursive shift allowed the emergence of a wide range of topics and methodological
international facts Thick constructivism
approaches in International Relations (Müller, 2010). Wodak (Wodak, 1999) has focused
on the construction of national identity, in particular studying the case of the European Dimension of the analysis Macro-structural
Approach criteria
perspective Micro-interactional
Union; Nonhoff (Nonhoff, 2006) investigated how the project of a social market economy
in post-war Germany won such broad social support, and demonstrated the existence of Intersubjective power
Identity of the power of discourse
a hegemonic strategy focused on the text and on the particular conditions under which Deliberative power
it was produced. Glasze (Glasze, 2007), in turn, studied the construction process of the Grammar
so-called Francophonie as a geo-cultural space, based on methods borrowed from Stylistic
linguistics, such as lexicometrics and narrative analysis. A group of authors, including Descriptive Cognitive
Shapiro (Shapiro, 1992) also analysed the joint processes of articulating and contesting
Non-verbal
meaning in the formation of identities, concluding that these processes closely depend
Type of methodological Argumentation
on the contexts in which they occur. In this sense, national identities consist of discourses
approach Functionalist Text in context
in constant formation and reformulation, in permanent dialogue with the conditions of
each historical moment. Hermeneutics
Ideological analysis
Despite the primacy of the critical school in recognizing the contribution of discourse Autonomous approaches
analysis to the field of International Relations, it was followed by constructivism and, Content analysis

more than claiming the importance of the meaning of international acts to understand Experimental analysis
the relationship between people, it was interested in demonstrating that international Source: author’s own.
acts are in themselves socially constructed discursive practices, i.e., that "the objects of
knowledge are not independent from interpretation or language" (Adler, 2002: 95). Thus,
we can see how the constructivists incorporated areas like language, communication and The third typology, identified by the same author, examines the relationship between
discourse in the theoretical debate in International Relations, demonstrating, as Anna power and discourse, a binomial whose modern parenthood belongs to Michel Foucault
Holzscheiter notes, that international facts "are not natural, but rather the result" of a and Jurgen Habermas and which is still a reference among social scientists interested in
social building process (Holzscheiter, 2013: 4). understanding the role of language in the process of social construction. Each of these
authors, however, is at the base of the two main lines of approach that can be identified
The volume and diversity of studies espousing the discursive constructivist approach in
in constructivist studies in International Relations: a first approach which, following the
International Relations allow identifying different research strands, according to different
legacy of Foucault, perceives international events as discursive actions built inter-
criteria: the belief in the possibility of objectification of international facts, following the
subjectively and impossible to be objectified, the actors becoming hostages of their own
proposal advanced by Wendt and Kratochwil; the dimension of the analysis perspective
subjectivity; and a second approach, based on Habermas, that believes in the possibility
and the identity of the power of discourse, according to the proposals of Anna
of a deliberative emancipation of the actors, guaranteed by the rational public debate.
Holzscheiter.
Studies inspired on Foucault’s work are pessimistic, focusing on discourse as a form of
The proposal advanced by Wendt and Kratochwil divides discursive constructivist type of structural and totalitarian power; those inspired by Habermas are idealistic and approach
studies into two categories: thin constructivism and thick constructivism. The former discourse as the international actors’ power of liberation.
believes in the possibility of the objective existence of international facts regardless of
the existence of a subject that conceptualizes them. The latter is based on the discursive
and linguistic concept of the actual international facts, whose existence results 2. Types of discourse analysis in International Relations
exclusively from their own inter-subjectivity.
From a methodological point of view, discourse analysis in International Relations has a
The second typology, proposed by Anna Holzscheiter, organizes discursive constructivist set of approaches common to other social sciences and language at its disposal. Strictly
studies according to the dimension of the adopted analysis perspective: macro-structural speaking, due to the fact it is a recent analysis field, discourse does not yet have a specific
studies that view speech as a linguistic structure that determines the relationship and solid theoretical body, relying on techniques and concepts borrowed from linguistics,
between international actors, and micro-interactional studies, which are pragmatic semantics, psychology, sociology, and any other discipline deemed useful to understand
approaches centred on real-time communication processes, in which the agents actively language in society. It is precisely in this interdisciplinary that its analytical richness lies.
and inter-subjectively build, renegotiate, and transform shared interpretations of reality"
The discursive approaches available today in the study of International Relations are
(Holzscheiter, 2013: 6).
considerable in number and variety, and are divided into three groups: descriptive
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Luísa Godinho Luísa Godinho

approaches, functionalist approaches and a number of other autonomous approaches

that have no direct relationship with each other but offer important contributions to the
The traditional concept of context in discourse analysis was to see this concept as an
study of discourse. The descriptive analyses are a set of interpretation perspectives
objective social variable, such as gender, ethnicity or social class. According to this
grounded on language, an approach whose relevance stems from the fact that discourse
concept, all discourse is determined by the set of social, economic and biological
is, first of all, a form of language. This group includes the grammar approach, concerned
conditions of the interlocutors and it was in this light that disciplines such as
with understanding the formation of words and sentences, and subdivided into
anthropology, sociology and psychology were worked upon, the first in the context of
“structural, generative and functional” grammar and into sub-disciplines such as
ethnography of communication, the second focusing mainly on conversation analysis and
“phonology, morphology and syntax" (Van Dijk, 1985, 2); the stylistic approach,
the third through discursive psychology, an area of social psychology (Van Dijk, 2008: 6-
traditionally used in poetry, sociolinguistics, and ethnography, assists discourse analysis
7) (see image 3).
by indicating the “appropriateness of a particular discourse to a certain social situation"
(Van Dijk, 1985: 2); the cognitive approach perceives discourse as a result of social Recently, however, a new perspective emerged from the work of Teun Van Dijk (Van Dijk,
interaction and, accordingly, the researcher should take into account the conditions under 2008) (see image 3). Rooted in what the author calls cognitive theory of context, this
which this interaction occurs, including the psychological dimension of both parties; the approach was the first multidisciplinary attempt to address a topic as central as this one.
study of nonverbal activity that accompanies the production of discourse, such as For the author, it is not the historical or social situation of the subject that per se
“intonation, gestures, facial expressions or body position” (Van Dijk, 1985: 3) and determines the discourse, but rather how it perceives the communicative situation in
determines much of its interpretation; analysis of the existing narrative structure; the question, the understanding it has of dimensions such as the relative position of the
analysis of the arguments between both parties, in particular the strategic argumentative parties, the motives and purposes of the communication, the language negotiation
movements (Van Eemeren, 1999) they make. involved.

While the descriptive approaches focus on the text, almost ignoring the semantic In this cognitive process, the subjective mental constructs that make up true contextual
dimension that is beyond the word, the functionalist approach emphasises the models intervene decisively. They are responsible for how each participant understands
relationship between text and its context, proposing, in Van Dijk’s opinion, a "fuller the communicative situation and adapts his production of language to the situational
characterization of discourse "(Van Dijk, 1985: 5). environment that is presented to him. This adaptation process, in turn, involves selecting
and using the language resources that each person has at his disposal during the dialogue
The relationship between text and context is the central pillar of discourse analysis, which
and using them at the time each considers to be more appropriate. In this sense,
encouraged, moreover, abundant academic production in recent years. The study of
contextual models are the key link that unites discourse, communicative situation and
context, in particular, attracted the attention of a large number of researchers interested
society.
in further defining the concept and in developing theories able to relate it to the linguistic
dimension of discourse. Parallel to the descriptive and functionalist approaches, there are also various other
autonomous approaches of great value to the study of discourse (image 2), such as
hermeneutics, concerned with the subjective dimension of interpretation; ideological
Image 3 – Transformation of the contextual approach to discourse study in analysis, with Marxist roots, which sees discourse as an indicator of social conflicts;
International Relations content analysis, focused on a highly quantitative approach to the text and used mainly
in the study of very large works; and the so-called experimental analysis, widely used in
psychology, focused on the procedural dimension of discourse, and interested in aspects
such as discourse activation processes, the measurement of reaction and interpretation
times or transition networks.

Despite the diversity of analytical perspectives examined in the preceding paragraphs,

there are some common points in them, which Van Dijk summarized well: "First, they
demonstrate an interest in the explicit content (and sometimes implicit or absent) of
discourse" (Van Dijk, 1985: 12-13). Second, these analysis perspectives have always
had an instrumental nature for the social sciences, allowing access to the meaning and
the making of sociological inferences. Contrary to semantics and linguistics, whose
ultimate goal is to capture the meaning of the text, for the social sciences the meaning
interests in that it allows understanding the social phenomena under study.

In the same fashion, the interest of International Relations in discourse lies in the
reflective nature it has, perceived as a sample of the social fabric that allows us to
understand the international reality. In recent years, however, this instrumental
Source: author’s own. perspective of discourse has been abandoned in favour of an autonomous understanding,
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Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach
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an understanding that rejects the study of the word as an expression of something else,
preferring to see it as an autonomous form of action and interaction between people.

3. Conclusion
In recent years, the discursive approach to international phenomena has experienced a
remarkable transformation that resulted in significant scientific broadening and
deepening.

Traditionally, discourse analysis was based on a descriptive concept of the role of the
word in life in society but since Austin’s pragmatic approach, the text came to be
perceived as a producer of reality, allowing a substantial change in the understanding of
International Relations. This profound epistemological transformation enabled the
development of a new discursive perspective of international phenomena, although
recurrent appeals in the scientific literature denounce the need for greater methodological
clarification in the studies carried out.

This article intends to contribute to filling this gap. Here we reconstituted the intellectual
heritage of the study of discourse, examined the three research strands that can be
identified in discourse-constructivist studies in International Relations and presented the
main methodological approaches followed.

From different perspectives, all of these approaches acknowledge the importance of the
text-context binomial to understand international phenomena. As we have seen, the
latter can be understood distinctly according to the research interests and has recently
seen its field extended.

In this article, three steps are fundamental in the search for greater methodological
clarification in discourse-constructivist studies in International Relations. First, the
explanation of the chosen analysis criteria – regarding the objectification of international
facts, the dimension of the analysis perspective and the identity of the discursive power;
second, the identification of the type of the chosen approach - descriptive, functionalist
or autonomous; third, the position regarding what is meant by context, clearly identifying
the chosen concept - economic, biological, social and/or cognitive. Adopting this
methodological triad in discourse research in International Relations is a very important
clarification factor that not only will give greater rigor and transparency to studies but
also facilitate the replication exercise, which is a determining condition of what is called
scientificity.

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