TEXTS AND DISCOURSES
A framework for the production of meaning
Roy Williams
roy.w.w@ntlworld.com
roy.willliams@port.ac.uk
In: Mass Media for the 90’s. (1993) A.S. de Beer (ed), van Schaik Books, Pretoria, S.A. pp343-363
In the previous chapter the more traditional quantitative methods of mass
communication research that form the bulk of research in this field, were
discussed. However, qualitative research methods offer very stimulating ideas and
innovative ways of looking at mass media. One such method is discourse analysis,
which is discussed here by way of an introduction, and from a specific
perspective, namely by deliberately challenging the acceptability of White
discourse in South Africa. Four newspapers are analysed in this fashion (see later
in this chapter).
INTRODUCTION
Discourse analysis builds on other approaches to the media. It deals with texts and with
language in minute detail, but within a framework which is a larger unit of analysis than
signs or texts, namely discourse, on which this discussion will focus. My ideas on
discourse analysis owe most to Foucault, critical theory, and various semioticians
including Barthes; to Hallidayian grammar and the forms of discourse analysis which
have emerged from it, broadly called 'critical linguistics', including the work of Hodge,
Kress, Fowler and Fairclough; the writings of the Glasgow Media Group; and Bruno
Latour on the sociology of knowledge. For a more detailed introduction to linguistic
aspects of discourse analysis, consult Fowler (1991).
MEDIA ANALYSIS
Signs, messages, texts, films, television programmes - all of these have been analysed,
evaluated and criticized in media studies. The institutions in which these media products
have been produced, circulated and received have also been examined. Various kinds of
textual analysis have been developed, namely literary criticism (in various forms), content
analysis, and linguistic discourse analysis. In addition, various schools of thought, from
the functionalists through the critical theorists, to structuralists and post-structuralists,
have been applied to the interpretation of media and media institutions.
Discourse analysis has emerged from an appreciation and a critique of these schools of
thought. What does discourse analysis therefore seek to achieve? To begin with we can
say that it attempts to unify textual analysis and sociological analysis.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
It is possible to analyse texts on their own. But within discourse analysis, this is
problematic. Discourse analysis makes several basic assumptions, which are numbered
and referred to throughout this chapter.
1. Texts are always produced, circulated and received within discourses.
The meaning of texts is obviously dependent on the ways in which signs are arranged
within these texts. But meaning is always assigned within a larger framework or
discourse.
Examples of discourses include: legal, medical, democratic, populist, military, workerist,
and academic discourses. You will notice that many of these overlap.
2. Meaning is normally assigned simultaneously, by the people who produce the
text as well as those who receive it, within more than one discourse.
The next assumption follows from the above two:
3. Meaning is produced within a group of some kind - a discursive community.
Individual variation and creativity obviously also occur, but usually within the
limits of an existing discourse or discourses, and of discursive communities.
BASIC ELEMENTS OF DISCOURSES
Let us look at a few examples of the manner in which texts are produced within
discourses. One might say that most of the basic ways in which we use signs and create
texts are perfectly straightforward: time and space are self-evident, and they are surely not
the products of some discourse?
Space
Space is defined on maps which have a straightforward reference system, based on a clear
indication of where north is. But why is north at the top? There is no physical reason
why north should not be at the bottom. If we were to turn the globe of the earth the
other way around (upside down), we would not be violating any natural laws. In terms of
the earth's position in space, there is no up or down - we make the choice. It may not
seem obvious that this is part of socialization, in other words, that it is a social construct
rather than a natural fact.
But it does matter. Not in terms of space - because the earth could just as happily be the
other way up. It matters in terms of language and the values that we build into language.
If someone is at the top or ‘on top of’ it is positive. The bottom is always at least second
best. Similarly, going up and going down are loaded with positive and
negative values. One should critically examine the values placed on words and terms
which are used to refer to those in the North and those in the South, and the ways in
which these terms are used to add value to what appear to be objective statements.
This leads to the next assumption regarding discourse analysis:
4. The meaning of words is related to, and even dependent on, the meaning of
other words, and the ways in which they are used.
But to get back to which way up the world should be. Who is the ‘we’ who made the
choice as to which is north and which is south? Certainly not those of us at the bottom.
The answer is straightforward - the people who made the choice were the people who
explored, discovered and defined the world, the people of the North, the people on top
of the world. They decided that they would be at the top and the rest of us down at the
bottom.
The idea of a flat earth, however mistaken it may be, was, in many senses, more
democratic. At the time the ‘top’ of the world was defined, this accurately reflected the
state of world power. The international naval and trading powers of Europe were on top.
Their naval power enabled them to completely dominate world trade, and therefore the
world economy. They had the power to decide which way would be up and which way
would be down.
The world was not defined (only) as a physical object, but also as a text. Not just any text
- a text within a particular discourse of power, which in many senses wrote or inscribed
its discourse all over the world. Even the world - under our feet, was previously largely
undefined, or defined in contradictory ways by different cultures. There was no single
concept of what the world was, that was agreed upon by most, let alone all people. In
that sense therefore, the European colonialists did define the world, and to a large extent
we still live within their definition of it, within their text. For all practical purposes the
world as we now know it did not exist before then.
So when we say that we live in the Southern hemisphere, we are talking within someone
else's text and discourse - the discourse of European conquest. And al- though,
theoretically, we could turn the globe the other way round, this will never happen. We
have produced so many texts within this discourse that to change them all would be so
expensive as to be impossible. We are trapped forever within what we might have
thought were our own texts and our own space.
Time
Time is similarly used as text. It is defined by the position of the earth relative to the sun.
But from which point? Again, the European powers (the British at the time), had the
unchallenged power to make the choice - and they decided that Greenwich, just
outside London, would be the point from which all time would be defined. Greenwich
Mean Time is the primary point of reference. It also defines 0 degrees longitude, so
England is not only at the top of the world, and the point of reference for time, it is also
at the centre of it!
The very idea of time depends, of course, on when it all started. Until barely two hundred
years ago, many people in the West were convinced that the world had begun about 4
000 BC. We now know that modern man has been around for at least one, if not two
million years; that our ancestors came onto the scene about 10 million years ago; and that
the earth is about four billion years old.
But less than two hundred years ago the first evidence for all this, in the form of
fossilized bones, was not even recognized. There was, as yet, no framework
within which these bones... could be understood. Almost everyone accepted that
the earth had been created as recorded in the Book of Genesis, ... which ... had
even been specified with reassuring exactness by an Irish Archbishop, James
Ussher, who, in the seventeenth century, announced that the earth had been
created on Saturday 3 October 4004 BC at 20:00. Only in the late eighteenth
century-about forty years before the first dinosaurian discoveries - did scientists
begin to work out a more realistic chronology (Man, 1982: 14).
The redefinition of time and space, within the discourse of European conquest, and later
the discourse of natural science, radically changed the way in which people assigned
meaning. Until then, time and space had been defined very differently within various
cultures and religions. Western conquest of the world and of nature radically changed,
codified, and standardized every aspect of time, space, and history - the most
fundamental elements of discourses within which meaning can be produced. The history
of Western conquest has its own ironies. It displaced the fundamental notions of
traditional cultures with its own, in the name of civilization. But this civilization had its
own contradictions, namely those of science and religion. On examining the discourses
of colonialism, one finds many references to the value of truth. But those truths
sometimes contradicted each other.
Even today, some Christians operate within a discourse which contradicts basic notions
of science – evolution and biblical notions of earth history. That should not be
surprising, if one considers assumption #2, namely that meaning is simultaneously
assigned within many discourses. The fact that some of them are quite plainly
contradictory is not necessarily a problem. Thus there is no reason why European
conquest should have found it in any way problematic to civilize people in the name of
truth, which included contradictory truths!
DISCIPLINES OF TEXTS AND BODIES
Discourses, if we want them to include textual and sociological analysis, have to be
defined quite broadly:
5. Discourses are disciplines that order the way in which bodies of texts are
produced, circulated and received; but also within which human and inanimate
bodies are ordered.
This definition is based on Foucault's work (Foucault, 1979). Foucault talks about a
discourse as a discipline - discipline in the sense of a body of knowledge - the discipline
of psychiatry or law for instance. Also, discipline as a practice which orders bodies - the
discourse of psychiatry removes certain people from society, and incarcerates them in
mental institutions. In England, for example, two women were incarcerated in a hospital
in the 1920s because they had illegitimate babies. They were certified morally insane, and
were still there in the 1950s, when two journalists discovered them. They were possibly
‘mad’ by then. But the discourse of psychiatry has changed - unmarried mothers are no
longer locked up, and husbands can no longer declare their wives insane.
In 1991 there was a woman in Bophelong Hospital in Mafikeng. She became trapped
within the wrong discourse, with tragic consequences. She had had a baby in the early
1960s, and while in a state of severe depression, she had killed it. She was subjected to
the discourse of psychiatry, within which she was declared insane, and was committed as
a State President's patient. Thirty years later she was still there. According to the
Superintendent of the hospital, a psychiatrist, she appeared to have recovered from her
depression within a few years of the birth (and death) of her baby. Despite this, she has
thus far been incarcerated for thirty years, and the Ministry of Health in so-called
‘Bophuthatswana’ has no plans to release her.
If she had been dealt with primarily under the discourse of criminal law, she would
probably have been declared temporarily insane, and at most been sentenced to a few
years in prison for manslaughter with extenuating circumstances. She would have been
freed at least twenty-five years earlier. But she was declared insane within the psychiatric
discourse, and she has been incarcerated indefinitely ever since. She is stuck in the wrong
discourse and there is little prospect of her ever getting out of it - either as a way of
classifying her, or as a way of ordering the confinement of her body - and discourses
always do both, although to varying degrees. The way in which one talks about people the manner in which one refers to someone - has serious consequences.
Inscription
Discourses are also about inscribing, or writing, in a wider sense of the word. Discourses
produce texts, such as advertisements, newspapers, and television programmes. They also
inscribe on bodies: the discourse of law inscribes itself on the necks of people that are
hanged. Hanging has recently been abolished in various countries. This does not mean
that the law no longer inscribes itself on the murderers, it just does so in a different way.
In general, what happens in various fields is that the discourse no longer inscribes itself
on the body of the deviant person, it inscribes itself on the mind of the person instead in the case of a murderer, through twenty long years in prison. The result is that instead
of forcibly and often violently excluding deviant people from society, deviant people are
slowly and systematically incorporated into society, but strictly on society's own terms.
You don't fight the enemy, you try to incorporate him or her into your own discourse.
State President F. W. de Klerk' s reform initiative, which started in 1990, is a fascinating
and largely successful example of this approach.
This process of incorporation via the mind is called civilization. It tends to replace the
‘offer you can't refuse’ with something more invidious. South African history is a case in
point. The colonists came with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. They first
eliminated some of the indigenous people (the Khoi and the San), and then incorporated
the rest into Christian civilization. For hundreds of years, whole continents were
incorporated into the (economic) discourses of colonial empires. Now the discourse has
shifted. But the same urge to control and incorporate continues in the battle for
domination, through the trans-national discourses of economics and marketing. Many of
the countries of Africa have discovered that there are no final victories. The battle simply
shifts from the colonial/military discourse to the economic discourse.
6. Discourses are created and maintained to control the production of texts and
the ordering of bodies. The way in which control is exercised is usually
transformed over time from exclusion and coercion to incorporation and
persuasion - the civilization of power or, the power of civilization.
Apartheid discourse
If the notion of discourse is applied to the South African situation, this might give us a
better understanding of both the notion of discourse and of the historical tasks that face
South Africans in the 1990s, namely to forge for everyone an inclusive civil discourse for
the first time in the country's history.
There is a limit to what can be achieved by means of coercive discourses based on
physical force. South Africa has changed for all sorts of reasons. One of them is that, in
the late 1980s, Afrikaner and English capital realized things had to change if the economy
was to be maintained. Military discourse was not only unsuccessful in absolute terms
(specifically the costly and drawn-out war in the former South-West Africa (now
Namibia) and Southern Angola, and the withdrawal of foreign investment capital from
South Africa, but it was no longer the best option.
The discourse of economic imperialism could possibly be even more powerful and
profitable than military discourse, if only a deal could be struck with the ANC to
‘normalise’ capitalism, preferably in a neo-liberal form. Besides, the discourse of
apartheid was increasingly at odds with the discourse of capitalism, from the time that
demographic factors turned against apartheid in the mid 1980s. The white population
began levelling off, while more skilled Black people, and therefore improved education
for Blacks, became essential for the continued growth of the economy.
Civil and military discourse
In 1990 a period of remarkable transition was initiated in South Africa. South Africa had
always marketed itself as civilized: as a Western Christian Civilization - a society of civil
discourse - but in truth, it has always been a schizoid discourse. Civil discourse for the
whites, and military discourse for the Blacks. The crucial element in defining civil society,
and civil discourse, is the role of the police. In South Africa this has always been
subservient to, and absorbed into, military discourse. Long before the troops went into
the townships, the police were doing active duty in the many guerrilla wars in Southern
Africa, as part of South African destabilization of independent African states.
The police have always been at the forefront in challenging all Black rights to be in socalled white South Africa. The dompas, the continual demand: “Waar is jou pas?”
(Where is your ID document?) placed the police solidly within military discourse. It is
only within military discourse, where the boundaries of countries are unstable, and are
continually at stake, that one's presence is constantly challenged. The body has no
established right to be in any particular place. There is nowhere where one can be at
home. This is precisely what Blacks were subjected to in South Africa.
Totalitarian discourse
During the 1970s and 1980s South Africa moved even further away from civil society
and discourse, to what can be called totalitarian discourse - the discourse of the police
state. At least in military discourse your official papers can confirm that you are
legitimately present. As a Black person, the dompas merely confirmed that your presence
was an absence. You were not really here, but really there - there in the 13% of space
that, however much it did (or did not) represent home/land, could never accommodate
you. It was bureaucratic space, not real space. Your space was constructed in a way that
was doubly unreal. You could never be present there, (there was no work there), but on
the other hand, the dompas that always had to accompany your body ensured that you
could never be present here either. You were stateless, you were put in your place which
was actually no place at all.
Military discourse redefines space, and manipulates the boundaries of space. It also
continually challenges your presence. Totalitarian discourse takes it one step further, and
denies any stable presence or state - it administers statelessness. The space that
your body occupies is presumed to be guilty space - culpable until proved otherwise.
Even more destabilizing is the negation not only of bodily presence (although that is
more invidious - you can never get out of it), but of housing. The forced removals.
(and in some cases repeated forced removals) of three million people denied one of the
most fundamental rights - home and land. This became increasingly problematic because
of the media coverage it attracted. So the discourse shifted in the most significant way the agency of the discourse changed. For instance, in the case of terror, one could argue
that the Witdoeke at Crossroads in the Cape, (and later the Rooidoeke of Inkatha),
carried out forced removals for the State at a fraction of the cost, and without anyone
being able to pinpoint who was behind it. The State, operating by proxy and in media
darkness, hid its fist - bulldozers are more expensive and more difficult to hide.
7. Who does and says things within a discourse - the question of agency - is
crucial.
The person identified as the agent can be held responsible. But if there is no agent, no
one can be held responsible, and everyone has to accept that that's just the way ‘it’ is.
The most often quoted example of deleting the agency is the difference between the
newspaper headlines Police shoot strikers and Strikers die in riot. In the first case, police are
clearly the agents, and they may or may not be responsible for the deaths. In the second
case, the strikers are the agents of the action, and they are far more likely to be blamed.
The police, as agents, have been removed, and may even be entirely omitted in the
newspaper report.
Undermining the body and the home as signs of presence is an integral part of
totalitarian discourse. It does not respect the integrity of people. The police in South
Africa enforced totalitarian discourse on Blacks, while simultaneously masquerading as
the bastion of civil discourse in white society.
Military discourse is a zero-sum game. It requires no identification beyond itself, it has no
obligations to public accountability; it acts entirely on its own behalf, and is answerable
only to obedience. It has a licence to kill, and enjoys immunity from prosecution.
There were many attempts to create the trappings of civil discourse - fairly successfully
until the 1950s in the form of the proceedings of the white Parliament; much less
successfully after that, with efforts which included the charades of ‘homeland
independence’, and the tri-cameral parliaments and multiple ministries, calculated to have
cost an additional R6 billion per annum in the early 1990s.
However since 1976, and later in reaction to the tri-cameral farce, Black people took up
the challenge, and responded in kind to the military discourse of the State. If, since State
President F. W. de Klerk's policy statement on 2 February 1990, Black communities were
still operating within military or even totalitarian discourse, whites had only themselves to
blame.
Although the transition from military discourse to civil discourse could be achieved after
1990 because civil discourse is both more rational and necessary (for resumed
investment, for instance), this will only be assured when it starts to produce the goods at
a very ordinary level - power and effective control by people over their own lives, and a
viable chance of getting on in life within civil discourse.
The minimal condition for civil discourse is unqualified respect for life - and one
wonders if it will ever be attained. We have a long way to go before we can establish (for
the first time ever) a civil discourse which will include all South Africans - in which all of
us will, equally, be citizens.
MARKETING
Much of the bottom line in media is marketing - selling not only commodities, but also
ideas and policies. In the New South Africa, substantial resources are being redirected
into marketing new policies. And this will continue until the political environment settles
down, if it ever does. The discourse of marketing seeks to incorporate people's behaviour
into the corporate strategy of the company, organization or, for that matter, the State, or
whoever else is held responsible for actions.
People are involved in a variety of discourses, including those of their peer groups.
Successful marketing in discourse terms has to relate to, as well as establish and maintain,
various social discourses, within which its products contribute to and facilitate desirable
discourses other than merely purchasing goods. These can be called host discourses,
within which the market for the product can grow.
Purchasing behaviour can be understood in terms of the various discourses in which
people operate. Some years ago the rising Black market was analysed in terms of
subcultures such as the ‘Mapantsulas’. In the UK a recent marketing analysis on youth
defined not only discourses and subcultures, but also narratives (Euromonitor report
Young Britain 1990). Discourses inevitably include narratives - from the metaphysical
ones about what happens when one dies, to the more mundane ones about what is likely
to happen when children grow up.
The UK study defined groups such as Life's a Party, who want to work for themselves
one day, don't worry about a pension, are not environmentalists, and are generally antiBlack and anti-gay. Then there are Young Moderates, who will put a lot of effort into
family life and pensions; the Chauvinists who are bigoted and aggressive, who will work
hard and get married, and believe in ID cards for young pub-goers; and the Safety
Seekers, who are nearly 100% middle of the road - they are not convinced that hard work
leads to success, and will not work in a lower paid job now to secure success later on.
The New Moralists are cautious and clean-living, and see hard work and conformism as
the answer to their many insecurities. The Freedom Fighters are independent idealists,
and the Greying Youths are very middle-aged in their attitudes, believe in hard work, and
are already worried. about their pensions (Euromonitor report Young Britain, 1990).
Many of the categories in the UK study were essentially narrative: pensions, marriage,
working hard now for benefits later, smoking, environmental concern, as well as antiBlack and anti-gay bigotry.
A discourse analysis approach does not, however, maintain that our understanding of new information is determined by pre-existing cultural and political
assumptions, but rather that the cultures of any given moment are part of a social
process in which beliefs are produced and contested in the conflict between
groups and classes (Philo, 1990:6-7).
In other words, however much people may have ready-made discourses at hand to use in
the production of meaning, the production of meaning is still something to be negotiated
with the people you are addressing - in discourse - whether personally or in the mass
media. A discourse analysis approach along the Euromonitor lines would argue that these
subcultures are not fixed recipes for interpretation, but rather discourses within which
meaning can be produced, within an interpretative community or communities.
Shifts in marketing discourse
Marketing discourse, like all other discourses, shifts from time to time. One of the
interesting shifts in marketing discourse, as well as in discourses within the broader
society, is the increasing use of counselling discourse.
The most crucial aspect of discourse is agency. Who acts, who is allowed to act and who
is held responsible for actions, are relevant factors. In psychological counselling people
who are deviant are no longer diagnosed and cured, they are given the opportunity to
share their ideas in a controlled setting, in which they are encouraged to make up their
own minds about how they can function within society - this is the civilization of mental
health care.
The person is allowed to make up her or his mind, but the bottom line is that this
decision invariably has to conform with existing discourses in society, and the person
must end up incorporated within them. On the other hand, a crucial aspect of many
counselling discourses is that they operate in groups and not individually. This is essential
if counselling is not going to be restricted to mere incorporation. In other words, if it is
going to allow for the possibility of change in discourses.
This is because the task of shifting discourses, or even shifting your own position within
a discourse, is difficult if not impossible to undertake on your own. It is essentially
something that involves shifts in a discursive community, not in individual ideas (if there
are such things). (See assumption 3.)
The use of counselling discourse within marketing discourse has, of course, no such
aims. Marketing is plainly in the business of incorporating people's behaviour into
company discourse - and the ultimate example of incorporation is the well-known claim,
‘What's good for General Motors is good for America’.
Counselling therapy generally assumes that “the effects of social ills can be remedied on
the basis of the hidden potential of the individual" (Fairclough, 1989:225). The shift to
counselling discourse within marketing likewise assumes that the individual inserts
himself or herself into the marketing discourse, using his or her (latent) ability to make
the right choices in a consumer world. The old-fashioned hard-sell which tries to force
people to buy is no longer productive. There has been a subtle but powerful shift from a
discourse in which the company tries to incorporate the consumer into its discourse, to
one in which the company offers the consumer a spread of opportunities to insert
himself or herself into the company's discourse. (A similar shift occurs in the move from
Catholic to Protestant discourse, as well as in many processes of ‘democratisation’ and
‘secularisation’.)
MARKETING POLITICAL DISCOURSES
To demonstrate the application of discourse analysis to media texts, I will analyse some
aspects of the marketing of political discourses, using examples of front page coverage of
the 1989 general election from The Star, The Citizen, The Weekly Mail, and New Nation
(see appendices 1-4).
The newspapers I have analysed invite the reader to join the struggle (New Nation); to
enter an inclusive South African discourse (The Weekly Mail); to support racist reform
(The Citizen); or to support a slightly less racist discourse of reformist liberal capitalism
(The Star).
Counting
Elections are largely about counting - counting the number of votes. One might expect
counting to be reasonably consistent across the newspapers.
Far from it. Apart from the votes counted for the election, a number of people were
killed and counted as dead on the night of the election. According to the newspapers
under discussion, the number of people killed were: New Nation (25), The Weekly Mail
(23), The Star (more than 4), and The Citizen (none). Three papers agree on the number
injured (about 100), but The Citizen mentions none. Three (different) papers (The
Weekly Mail, The Star, The Citizen) agree on the number of seats won in the white
election, but the New Nation doesn't mention any numbers for any of the tri-cameral
Houses.
The Star (and no other paper) calculates that 75% of the people support reform
candidates, but The Weekly Mail (and no other paper) calculates that a mere 6% of South
Africans supported the Nats - the New Nation does something similar by dismissing the
elections as racist. The Star makes an effort to count the votes and the swing in key
constituencies; and The Citizen lists a few detailed results of specific seats alphabetically.
The other papers do not give figures for any constituencies on the front pages.
The Star (alone) mentions 130 arrests. Only The Weekly Mail and New Nation mention a
three million stay-away, and The Star is the only paper that mentions (in small print) any
of the results for the “non-white” Houses.
Discourse frames
Discourses have different frames in which meaning is assigned. These frames are offered
to you as a reader, as frames within which you are invited to assign your meaning. The
counting itself - even before we get to the headlines which are more obvious frames constructs frames for the various discourses.
The Star's counting frame is narrowly focused on shifts within reform. In fact, it is the
only paper to specifically count the reform vote (75%), so that in case you are
unconvinced that the frame of reform is relevant, the figure of 75% should prove to you
that this is how the vast majority of South Africans (who happen to be white) are
thinking. Within their liberal discourse they do feel obliged to mention the 100 injured,
and even the 130 arrests, but they grossly under-report those killed.
The Star and The Citizen reported 24 hours before the New Nation and The Weekly
Mail, which could, perhaps, explain some of these discrepancies. But The Weekly Mail
writes that they received the information early on Thursday from Bishop Tutu, who
released a figure of 23 dead. It is possible, even though it might be debatable, that the
daily press could have waited for Tutu's statement; but they might even have received
and ignored it.
More to the point is the comparison between the resources allocated to counting the
dead in the townships, and the resources allocated to counting the votes in the white
constituencies. Thousands of votes in hundreds of constituencies were counted, checked
and released to the world before Thursday morning. But there was obviously no
consolidated police report on deaths, even though they all occurred within the
comparatively small area of Cape Town, and police always maintain radio contact with
their command posts.
A discourse is not a series of texts and separate contexts. The difference is not in the
texts - one set of figures about voting which is reported, and another set about deaths
which is not. The different discourses are primarily organizational. For the counting of
votes, thousands of people and thousands of Rands were specifically allocated and
managed to ensure that the voting figures were efficiently delivered to the media. In the
State of Emergency, on the other hand, thousands of people and thousands of Rands
(including a whole new State department) were allocated and managed to ensure that
figures on township violence were not available to anyone, least of all the media (and
television coverage was totally banned), which is why Bishop Tutu's office had to
function as a news agency. An examination of the differences in the texts creates the
danger of looking for an explanation in the texts or even in the newsrooms, whereas the
differences are articulated, primarily, at sites far removed from the media themselves.
The Citizen counts anything it can get quickly and easily from SAPA (the telex news
agency service). It makes no calculations of its own, and is based in a discourse of
'undigested' and 'raw' journalism, in which telex reports are often cut and pasted almost
unchanged onto the newspaper page. The Weekly Mail puts various figures up-front; in
a very conscious working of the figures to create a frame and a headline. This will be
clarified below.
Headlines
The Citizen reports: Small overall majority for NP. This positions the NP (Nationalist
Party) as the party in the centre, threatened on all sides, and it is an implicit appeal for
help. This is thoroughly racist (see below), in that any positioning of the NP (especially in
1989) in the centre of South African politics is a cynical manipulation of the facts.
The Star is equally racist, as their headline: Nats mauled on left and right wings could be
substituted for the headline in The Citizen, (and vice versa) without being noticed.
An interesting point here is whether the discourse of The Star and The Citizen should be
called racist or just White. Technically the two are similar: White discourse is racist by
definition. The point is that as a producer of this text I have a choice. I can choose to call
it a White discourse, in which case I am mentioning the facts without explicitly taking
sides - or so it seems. But I would be taking sides. By omitting terms such as racist, I
would be saying that White discourse in the circumstances (taking into account the White
advertising market of these papers, and the White electorate) was perfectly
understandable - and therefore acceptable. By not doing so, and by choosing to use the
term racist, the discourse of this chapter deliberately challenges the acceptability of White
discourse, then and now.
8. Discourse analysis itself is always produced within a discourse; there is no
neutral position from which to analyse discourse.
The New Nation's headline, Election Carnage, is written within the framework of the
Black struggle, but in discourse terms it says a lot more. One of the central mechanisms
of discourse is the placing of agency (assumption 7). The New Nation implies not only
that the election was violent, but also that all the people who participated in the election
were, in an indirect but culpable sense, agents of the killings, along with the police who
are directly culpable. This opens up space for the discourse not only of the Black
struggle, but also that of the armed struggle, waged in response to the violent discourse
of repression.
The Mail's headline does a number of things with very few words and figures, but many
layers of juxtapositioning. It ends up distancing itself from the racist liberalism of The
Star and The Citizen, but it starts by counting tri-cameral votes - it puts them at the top
of the page, in big figures. In this way it enters into the discourse of its more racist
readers, to assure them of the comfort of recognition for their discourse. But it does so
only to lure them on to a different discourse. It is a trap. It invites (marginally racist)
readers to enter a racist discourse, only to lead them on to a fully South African
discourse.
In 1989, South African discourse was necessarily a discourse of conflict, and by inviting
the reader into this South African (as opposed to racist) discourse, The Mail was trying to
create a new discourse of negotiation and, eventually, reconciliation.
Rise of negotiation and in-the-end reconciliation
The Mail's discourse invites the reader to confront and work through the conflict. This is
not the overt (it may, in fact, be a covert) discourse of the liberation struggle. A stronger
probability is that it is a radical reform discourse (liberal reform, if one is less charitable).
It is a pedagogical or educative discourse too - it starts with what you know, and leads
you on to new insights.
The subtlety lies in the 100 Hurt. Without these 100, it would be too confrontational to
be pedagogical, and would fall into the (one-sided) discourse of the struggle. It uses these
hundred to gently introduce the (partly racist) readers to the ‘but’ parts of the election. If
you count the bodies of the voters, the Nats did win. But there are other bodies to be
counted - not only the live White ones, but (first) the Blacks who were injured, and then,
the Black bodies of those who had died. This ironic discourse which uses the familiar
signs of racist discourse to lead the reader into a non-racial discourse, is also present in
the sub-heading. The sub-heading (above the headline) reads: “Election day: the final
results”. It is a parallel invitation through racist discourse to non-racial discourse. The
final results are, simply, the figures at the end of the counting. But the Mail does not end
the counting where you might expect it to be ended. They count the Nats, then the
Conservatives, then the Democrats (in a fair, liberal discourse of descending order).
Then, in a manner similar to the racist liberal discourse of The Star, they also count the
injured, the ‘soft’ casualties of the reform process. Then they go on counting, and count
the dead. In the final analysis, the election was violent, and the election was also more
final for some Black people (who were killed) than for Whites.
In terms of news values and news discourse this discourse is highly ironic, and
undermines the neat liberal descending order of NP-CP-DP, on two counts: first, the
number of 100 hurt exceeds any of the others, so it should be placed ahead of them.
Secondly, within news discourse bad news always has a higher value than good news, so
the deaths should come first.
The overall result is non-racial discourse, which neatly incorporates and transforms racist
liberal discourse, and which should be a sufficiently subtle bait to entice Star readers and
perhaps even some Citizen readers into its net, and maybe even one or two New Nation
readers, who may feel some rapport with the conflict within the headline. To be
generous, one could call it a discourse of radical pedagogy - alternatively, reformist nonracialism. The way in which you apply different discourses to these texts is always as
much a statement about yourself as about the newspapers - describing and ascribing
discourses always takes place within your own discourse - there is no neutral position
outside discourses from which you can discuss other people's discourses. In addition,
your own discourse always adds to, and develops and supports some discourses and
displaces others.
Photographs
The photographs reveal another whole layer of discursive strategies and moves. Because
these photographs were taken at the same time, and relate to the same event, it must
have been possible, in principle, for the papers to use any of the photographs. They
could either have bought them from agencies, or they could have sent out photographers
with instructions to get a particular kind of photograph. None of the photographs are
particularly unique. Each photograph that was used can be analysed in terms of why it
was used, and in terms of why other photographs were not used.
9. The absences tell us as much about the discourses as the presences.
THE CITIZEN
The photograph of the (White) De Klerks voting is formally posed. He votes first, and
she dutifully waits to vote afterwards. There are a number of discourses overlapping each
other here, which offer multiple combinations of discursive positions and which the
reader may take up. These include the discourse of male chauvinism, in which he should
vote first. This is overridden by the discourse of political power and authority, in which
his vote counts for more. This is, however, inverted by placing him, the news value, at
the back instead of at the front, possibly because of the intervention of other discourses,
such as fashion (see below).
The discourse of democracy, which makes all citizens equal, is also present: they are
(also) merely a couple - a man and wife casting their (equal) votes - even though in many
ways the votes are also unequal - his vote is a vote that many people will follow, hers is
not necessarily so, and they are also White votes. In addition, the couple is a symbol of
the value of the family, which implicitly calls on a moral discourse for support.
A sub-element of the discourse of democracy is the discourse of peaceful, legitimate
democracy. The two people in the picture are calm, thoughtful, and rational. The
inscription of the electoral process as peaceful and calm - civilized - legitimises the
democratic discourse. The central value of democracy is that it allows for peaceful
transition from one political dispensation to another. This implicitly contrasts with the
absences on the page - the absence of any mention of the excluded other people - Blacks.
Also, the fact that it is De Klerk himself, who as the White President in 1989, symbolized
the 350 year-old refusal to allow any peaceful transition of power to the majority. By
implication, Blacks are excluded from the election because they are (supposedly) not
committed to peaceful development - probably communists, with no interest in
democracy. This division between peaceful democratic Whites and violent intimidating
Blacks is not questioned in this set of inscriptions. Particularly absent is the way in which
exactly this kind of discourse is an integral part of the structural and historical violence of
apartheid which violated the lives of the Black majority.
The discourse of gendered news values and fashion, in which the clothes that (only) the
woman wears are potentially of interest to the reader, is another possible reason for
putting the man in the background. The discourse of design and layout: if this was the
only photograph available for the front page, it would have to be cropped to include
both De Klerks. There is no other way to show his head and his (voting) hand, because if
she is excluded from the picture it becomes very narrow, and unbalanced.
The overall thrust of the photograph is a discourse of peaceful, home-loving democrats,
acting in a rational thoughtful way as equal and responsible citizens. The systematic
absences on this page, emphasized not as lies but as absences, powerfully naturalize what
is going on here. An election in which a small minority of privileged people vote within a
systematically racist and structurally violent system, and vote overwhelmingly for its
continuation, is presented within layers of highly positive discourses as totally
unproblematic.
Within the transition to a New South Africa in the 1990s, many Whites feel
overwhelmed. This should not be surprising, as the presence of Blacks is new - their
absence has been forcibly maintained and systematically naturalized in everyday life and
in the media for so long. One of the simple yet revealing techniques of discourse analysis
is to ask, what would the opposite be? In this case, it would be a report of what the
whole country thought of its leaders - because that is, after all, what an election should
be. It should be a feedback mechanism to tell the people who govern the country what
the people as a whole think about the way they are governed. In late 1989 South Africa
was so divided that it might be difficult to imagine how all that could fit onto one page.
THE STAR
The picture of Wynand Malan presents him as victor, and perhaps even a potential
saviour - which is the role in which the bourgeois press were systematically casting Malan
at the time - a potential leader to form a new centrist alliance of the right wing of the
Democratic Party and the left wing of the Nationalists.
This is part of the messianic discourse which the bourgeois press tried to establish from
time to time: bringing to the fore figures whom they hoped would break the political ice
(and economic sanctions) with personal charisma. They tried Van Zyl Slabbert, Malan,
Dennis Worrall, and Zach de Beer. Nobody thought of the party bureaucrat F. W. de
Klerk.
The media cannot transform a cardboard figure into a charismatic leader. But they can,
and repeatedly try to, create outstanding figures (literally, within media discourse) to see
whether the human being concerned can successfully step into her or his media
personality. Malan's wife is necessary for the composition of the photograph, but she
plays a marginal role in the picture. It is a clever picture in that it shows the defeated and
dejected Glenn Babb literally being pushed aside. The dominant discourse in The Star is
similar to that of The Citizen; Blacks are conspicuous by their absence. But this racism is
tempered by liberalism - especially in the subheading at the bottom of the page
mentioning four killed and 100 hurt. In terms of pictures, the appeal of The Star is
painfully clear. The large, prominent, very expensive colour display advert, placed bottom
right, a key position in layout terms, is very revealing.
It is an advertisement to promote tobacco, a damaging and potentially lethal product, but
one which is backed by powerful commercial interests, some of whom have overlapping
interests in media. It is an English brand of cigarettes - that is not only White, but
specifically colonial too, in the case of Mills. Mills is also a brand which was re-launched
after many years, so it appeals to nostalgia. And the advertisement draws explicitly on
elitist English manners and values. The advertisement presumably works - it must appeal
to the readers of The Star, or no-one would pay all that money to put it there. In terms
of layout, the advertisement runs a close second to the photograph. This is a hybrid
discourse - in which reformist and commercial interests are merged.
The Citizen, in contrast, has removed all display adverts, and shifted the presidential
couple down to the most prominent position in the layout. (Newspapers are read, or
scanned, in a spiral, starting top left, then going down and to the right, across the
bottom, and up to centre left.) There is little else in The Citizen layout that looks
deliberate, but at least the positioning of the photograph fulfils a specific function.
In The Star, the double-line frame of the Mills advertisement is far clearer than that of
the photograph of the Malans, which has no frame at all. And the advertisement is also
more prominent, due to the White space which separates it from the rest of the text.
When the layouts of the two papers are compared, and if the simple technique of
imagining the opposite is used (imagine no display advert in The Star), it becomes
obvious that both the framing of the photograph in The Star and the headline itself are
crowded out by the Mills advertisement. The headline is, in any event, marginalized by
the messianic photograph, indicating that the dominant discourse of the Star is in fact
(racist) reformist liberalism - a messiah to lead us out of sanctions, and back to a more
profitable relationship with England and the rest of the G7 nations (the West plus
Japan).
Combined with these layers of discourse is the modem discourse of graphics - the results
at a glance, or histograms. Unfortunately, they add no more than a flavour of modernism.
The crucial question, whether the combined opposition could outvote the Government,
is not answered. It is impossible to see clearly (at a glance) whether or not the Nats could
be outvoted. What is worse is that from the histogram it appears that they may indeed be,
whereas this is actually far from true - the opposition total of 72 seats comes nowhere
near the Nats' 93 seats. The Star's discourse incorporates people into unhealthy
behaviour in the name of corporate profits, and it naturalizes racist practices, tempered
slightly by some secondary attention to the excluded others, flavoured with a pretty
useless touch of modernism, and optimistic messianism.
NEW NATION
The New Nation photograph shows a potentially menacing armed vehicle, and a burning
barricade. However, the person in the centre seems to be unperturbed by it all. The
discourse of the media Black-out of the Emergency at the time is the reason for this
photograph not being more dramatic. The caption talks of townships erupting, although
this is far from true in the picture. What is explicit, is the extent to which the SADF/SAP
dominates the scene, and inscribes its presence on the public space of the township. At a
more subtle level (probably lost on the readers) the armoured vehicle has clearly
displaced the civil discourse of traffic lights, and has taken over control of the
intersection. The discourse is clearly that of the struggle between unarmed people and
the intruding forces of the SADF/SAP. Everyday life has been suspended. The New
Nation uses green, yellow and Black for its layout, putting in a splash of colour for the
ANC-aligned struggle.
THE WEEKLY MAIL
The Weekly Mail deals with the conflict between the divided parts of South African
society in its photographs, just as it did in the headline. But it has to use two separate
photographs - there is no photograph which, like the headlines, could create a single text
for a South African discourse. The Weekly Mail mixes the genres of photographs and
captions with that of editorial copy. Instead of a caption for the Cape Flats photograph,
they write:
The real mandate for F.W. de Klerk can be found in these figures: On the day in
which six percent of adult South Africans voted for the ruling party, three million
others stayed away from work; over 100 people were injured and 23 killed on
election night.
The Cape Flats photograph shows a police officer standing next to a police car, firing a
shot off the frame. The remarkable thing about the picture is that the street scene
continues as normal and the police van does not dominate the scene at all. In contrast to
the New Nation photograph, which seems to be an attempt to show the abnormlity of
township violence, the Weekly Mail makes a very different point - police shootings are
part of everyday life in the townships.
The De Klerk photograph differs significantly from the one used by The Citizen. It is a
picture of De Klerk trying hard, and perhaps too hard (especially as his hand is
positioned on the page to reach out to the words Dead: 23). To add to this, his wife (also
smiling broadly) seems to be pulling his arm back, or at least holding on to it. The wideangled lens used in the photograph distorts it, which displaces De Klerk from the normal
- his gesture is artificial, his outstretched hand is artificially enlarged.
The overall perception created is that the townships are normally violated by the SAP,
and De Klerk is artificially trying to convince the (White) electorate of his integrity. By
juxtaposing the two photographs, the Mail questions the validity of De Klerk's response
to the crisis in the townships - where the majority of South Africans live.
CONCLUSION
Discourse analysis assumes a wide framework for the production of texts and meaning,
as well as multiple discourses operating simultaneously. It forces us to see the text as
moves, tactics, strategies, within discourses. This does not imply a conspiracy theory of
media production, it simply means that all texts, from the simplest conversations to huge
media productions, are always produced within discourses.
Neither the producer nor the receiver of the text (who also produces the text and its
meaning) operates within a single discourse, and neither of them is necessarily aware of
the discourses in which they operate. And they do not necessarily agree with each other.
All the (media) text can do is to offer certain discursive frames in which the reader is
invited to interpret certain readings of the text. The power and sophistication of
discursive frames must not be underestimated. Both the determined media professional
and the determined reader can mobilize powerful discourses in the struggle for meaning.
REFERENCES
Fairclough,N. 1989. Language and power. London: Longman. Fowler, R. 1991. Language
in the news. London: Routledge. Man, J. 1982. The day of the dinosaur. London: Bison.
Philo, G. 1991. Seeing and believing. London: Routledge.
FURTHER READING
Anon. 1990+. Discourse and society. (Quarterly). London: Sage.
Cock, J. & Nathan, L. (ed.). 1989. War and society: the militarization of South Africa.
Cape Town: David Philip.
Dreyfus, H. & Rabinow, P. 1982. Michel Foucault. New York: Harvester. Foucault, M.
1979. Discipline and punish. New York: Vintage.
Hodge, R. & Kress, G. 1988. Social semiotics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kress, G. & Hodge, R. 1979. Language and control. London: Routledge.
Threadgold, T. 1986. The semiotics of Volosinov, Halliday & Eco. American Journal of
Semiotics. 4:3-4.
Todorov, T. 1985. The conquest of America. New York: Harper.
Van Dijk, T.A. 1985. Structures of news in the press. In: Discourse and communication.
Edited by Van Dijk. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Volosinov, V.N. 1973. Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press. '.
Williams, R. T. 1983. The impact of informatics on social sign systems. In: Sociogenesis
of Language and Human Conduct. Edited by B. Bain. New York: Plenum, 353-376.
Williams, R.T. 1989. Discourse & narrative. Context. 2: 5-27.