1 Analysing Knowledge-Based Post-industrial Societies: Challenges and Chances
During the last 50 years, Western societies have experienced substantial changes. The phenomena of Europeanisation and globalisation as well as technical innovations such as the Internet and social media have revolutionised the way we use language when interacting, socialising with each other, or storing and recalling knowledge. In fact, the Internet has fostered access to globally produced information. In the abundance of sometimes contradicting information, the formation of knowledge in discourses with a particular inherent logic becomes evident. Moreover, recent debates in the public sphere about gender identities, national and cultural identities, and post-truth evidence an increased self-reflexivity in Western societies, emphasising the construction of knowledge as pivotal for the way we make sense of ourselves and our surrounding world. Drawing from Foucault, Althusser, PĂȘcheux, Laclau, and others, discourse studies has developed as a transdisciplinary research field that responds to a need for a better understanding of how contexts influence the making of meaning and knowledge on various levels of social interaction.
This volume is a compilation of papers that present sophisticated quantifying methods used to analyse textual and social contexts of language use. The volume covers a large range of quantifying methods that could be used by social scientists who investigate the construction of knowledge in society. Before presenting the texts that have been compiled for this volume at the end of this introduction, the first part of the introduction will outline how trends in society have contributed to discourse becoming an object worthy of social sciences research. The second part will explain the importance of context for analysing the construction of meaning in different discourses. The third part of the introduction discusses the benefits of using quantifying methods to analyse meaning-making process in the digital age, and the last part presents the purpose of this volume.
2 Societal Trends Influencing Knowledge Production and Knowledge Exchange
This book showcases methods developed in natural language processing, quantitative linguistics, corpus linguistics and statistics for the analysis of discourses across the social sciences. Discourses have become a preeminent object of investigation across the social sciences and humanities because they have become palpable phenomena in everyday life. This is mainly due to an increased amount of coherent information contradicting previously established knowledge formations or narratives. The discursivity of knowledge is evidenced in a number of societal developments: (1) an increase in expert-based legitimation of decisions and competing, sometimes contradictory, expertise; (2) an increasingly rapid exchange of information on a global scale, sometimes contradicting mainstream media narratives; and (3) a democratisation of information production through social media in which communities are formed beyond national borders, and in which historical events can be recontextualised by contradicting a narrative circulated, for instance, in the mass media.
First, in post-industrial societies, work, as a primary object for sociological research, is often knowledge-based. Hence, the construction of knowledge and the conditions of its emergence become crucial for better understanding societies, and their dynamics and structuration. Moreover, its continuous production leads to a constant renewal of knowledge and thus, to a higher dynamic and fluidity of established bodies of knowledge. For example, knowledge about societal structures, including national, cultural, social and political boundaries seems to be constantly challenged by cross-boundary influences and experiences. One way of dealing with the emerging complexity of societies, is the instalment of knowledge authorities referred to as experts. They help to interpret, order, evaluate and interlink the abundance of produced information that becomes knowledge. Expertise, however, is the result of a knowledge industry that extends from classical universities to think tanks, which compete in the public space for recognition. Nowadays, political decisions are often legitimised by an army of experts and interpreted by political agents in line with their political argument (Maesse 2015). Some scholars have argued that the demonstration of scientific information has become part of a range of governance techniques contributing to the construction of Europe as a political and scientific community (Rosental 2015).
Second, faster routes of communication have helped to raise awareness of political problems in the most remote areas on the planet. Nevertheless, the ever-larger news corporations and the deregulation of the media landscape have led to increasing competition in news production, favouring the coverage of dramatic events and information, which guarantee a high news value (Luhmann 2000), attracting high numbers of audience. Failing to provide balanced background information about a political issue enabling the citizens to engage fully with a political debate, these infrastructural changes have led to a new media style, a superficial âinfotainmentâ, which can easily be argued against with similar superficial but contradicting information.
Third, important technological changes have taken place that impact on the way we socialise. Some scholars have stressed the importance of new media for economic development and political innovation (Barry 2001). Indeed, new communication devices have enhanced communication on a global scale leading, among others, to similar cultural trends triggered by a globalised cultural industry. Moreover, social media have opened up a new social arena enhancing socialisation beyond geographical and social boundaries. Nowadays, personal and collective identities are often influenced to a substantial extent by experiences in the virtual space of social media. At the same time, knowledge emerges and is reproduced much more dynamically than it used to be. Large sets of information are available through the Internet and can be accessed and reproduced individually at any time and as often as desired. Smartphones and tablets have led to a popularisation of information production. Thereby the Internet functions as a new social location, in which socialisation can take place often without control or influence of mainstream political stakeholders. This new social location has not only fostered democratic debates, it has also enhanced a particularisation of discourse communities, in which the flourishing of counter-discourses and identity-building that oppose official political positions is facilitated. This has given rise to populist and extremist discourses all over the world evidenced by the political success of movements like PEGIDA, SYRIZA, and PODEMOS or politicians like Trump, Orban, Duterte, or Le Pen. Social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, especially gives individuals easy access to communicating with the relatively anonymous masses. The twofold constellation of mainstream and social media has provided the grounds for a broader reproduction of knowledge, in which current and historical events can be recontextualised. As a result of the manifold recontextualisations available in the public space, various interpretations, narratives, and representations of historic and contemporary events seem to circulate in society that not only researchers but also the wider public refers to as âdiscoursesâ. In sum, we can identify a number of aspects that render discourse a relevant research object for social scientists.
3 Discourse, Context, and Meaning
The overall objective of discourse studies is to analyse language use in context in order to better understand the social construction of meaning and its influence on the knowledge circulating in any given society or part of it. Thus, social scientists doing discourse analysis will, for instance, gain insights into: how knowledge about groups, communities, and social identities is constructed in discourses (inclusion and exclusion; gender, religion, race, class, nation); how this structuration is justified; how social spaces and positions are constructed, negotiated, and orchestrated; which narratives and ideologies drive different actors, groups, and communities in society; and how decisions in a given society or a part of it are being legitimised. Moreover, with its capacity to map prevailing argumentations and narratives, discourse studies can reveal how values are articulated in a particular way in order to justify the stance of a specific group, social strata, or class. In this sense, discourse analysts can show how society is governed and hence can feed into the formulation of a social critique that contributes to social progress (Herzog 2016).
Foucaultâs philosophy has helped to understand the formation of knowledge in terms of discourses that organise knowledge. Most importantly he has insisted on the fact that discourses are driven by power relations that are rooted in institutional, social, societal, and historical contexts in which language users have to operate (Foucault 1970, 1972, 1979). Foucaultâs theoretical categories have informed discourse analytical approaches no...