Introduction
Social sciences research is an area of study that gathers, analyses, and interprets information on various social, economic, political, and educational issues. Effective social research stems from the critical analysis of modern society and issues pertaining to it based on a strong foundation that combines social theory and research methodology. Notably, social research considers not only theoretical and methodological designs but also ethical considerations associated with respect to the rights and welfare of individuals involved in research. International relations (IR) represent an area of social sciences research that encompasses research on bilateral, foreign policy, and other relationships between countries, including both current and historical occurrences. Besides, IR covers considerations on the role of sovereign states, intergovernmental organizations, national non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations, and others. Moreover, issues of gender, poverty, migration, and feminist studies are all parts of IR discourse, which is why exploring the role of discourse analysis in IR research is essential. Discourse analysis is highly relevant to the study of international relations because it allows drawing findings from official speeches, declarations, parliamentary debates, diplomatic documents, and other forms of media available for analysis.
Definition
Discourse analysis represents a qualitative analysis methodology concerned with investigating and understanding the underlying meaning of spoken or written speech. In discourse analysis, the context within which speech is taking place is highly relevant as it may include social and cultural frameworks, including speakers’ locations, the specific time, as well as any non-verbal cues (Nonhoff, 2017). As suggested by Teun A. van Dijk (2006), who developed a model for critical discourse analysis, it is the area of research that considers real language use by real speakers who are placed in real situations. Therefore, the social context of speech is highly relevant to discourse analysis because the latter aims to distinguish subtle details in text or speech to differentiate between factual reporting and fake news. According to Eisenhart and Johnstone (2008, p. 35) in Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Studies, “we’re also asking not just about the rhetoric of politics, but also about the rhetoric of history and the rhetoric of popular culture; […] not just about the rhetoricity of formal argument but also about the rhetoricity of personal identity.” The broader application of discourse analysis in IR began with constructivist scholars who had more interest in pursuing an ontological rather than the epistemological challenge; therefore, they focused on showing the socially constructed nature of international relations.
Literature Review
The application of discourse analysis in various disciplines has been a consistent area of research for the past several decades. However, more recent studies have been showing the relevance of applying discourse analysis in social sciences and international relations specifically. This literature review aims to explore the available relevant literature relevant to the topic question. Specifically, it is important to explore the application of discourse analysis in international relations as an area of social sciences.
Researchers have noted that discourse analysis is a favored method of textual analysis among researchers adhering to the constructivist approach and critically-minded IR scholars interested in the influence of identity, meaning, and discourse in international politics. In their study on the strengths and shortcomings of discourse analysis, Aydın-Düzgit and Rumelili (2019) noted that the broader adoption of discourse analysis by scholars in the IR discipline went hand-in-hand with the wide-ranging metatheoretical debates in epistemology and ontology in the late 1980s. Viewing the world through the lens of language and discourse, the post-structuralist IR theorists aimed to analyze the traditional concepts of international relations. These concepts included but were not limited to foreign policy, sovereignty, and anarchy as global politics discourses that had previously been taken for granted and not described independently.
For example, when anarchy as a part of social and political discourse was analyzed, the pertinent question in discourse analysis would be what the anarchy assumption does in terms of hiding different asymmetries in global politics and not whether a political system is anarchical (Aydın-Düzgit and Rumelili, 2019). Therefore, discourse analysis would not be even a methodological choice in this case but rather be a default within the IR discipline as a set of discourses.
In international relations, the communication between key actors presents a central instrument of the discourse. Thus, as discourse analysis has been gaining more attention in the research literature, calls were made for greater methodological clarification in academic work. In their study, Godinho (2016) explored the theoretical foundations of discourse analysis and reviewed its application in the field of international relations. The scholar notes that in the analysis of IR-related texts or speeches, international actors are no longer considered the central analysis units, with the focus shifting to their identity and the discursive processes allowing its construction (Godinho, 2016). Such a shift further allowed to facilitate the emergence of a broad range of topics and methodological approaches in IR, such as national identity.
Moreover, the researcher classified the types of discourse analysis in IR, approaches common to other social science, such as descriptive, functionalist, and other independent (autonomous) approaches. Descriptive analysis is concerned with a set of interpretation perspectives that focus on language, which is an approach the relevance of which stems from the fact that discourse is a part of the language (Godinho, 2016). This type of analysis in IR is further differentiated in such methodological approaches as grammar, stylistic, cognitive, non-verbal, and argumentation, all of which are focused on the text and almost ignore the semantic dimension beyond words.
The functionalist approach is concerned with text in context, thus offering a more complete discourse characterization (Godinho, 2016). The autonomous approaches that do not align with either functionalism or descriptivism include hermeneutics, which focuses on the subjective interpretation dimensions, ideological analysis, which views discourse as a denominator of social conflicts, as well as content and experimental analysis. Despite the diversity of approaches to discourse analysis in IR, they all share several characteristics. Specifically, they show an interest in various types of content, such as explicit, implicit, or absent. Besides, the perspectives of discourse analysis have always had instrumental nature for social sciences, “allowing access to the meaning and making of sociological inferences” (Godinho, 2016, p. 9). Thus, compared to linguistics or semantics, the primary purpose of discourse analysis in IR is to capture texts’ meaning, and in social sciences, the concern is to understand the social phenomena being studied.
Besides exploring the relevance of discourse analysis in international relations from the standpoint of theory, researchers have recently been studying the practical application of the analysis method. Wash (2020) attempted to explain the value of implementing discourse analysis in terms of interpreting the construction of resolution of policy dilemmas in international education. The researcher noted that mainstream policy analysis usually used quantitative methods for searching for a causal explanation of why specific policies fail or succeed, discourse analysis approaches analyze policies in terms of how certain beliefs come to shape them. Drawing on the interpretive turn in policy analysis, it can be suggested that discourse analysis has been particularly effective for investigating a range of policy dilemmas (Larsen, 2018). Besides, the researcher notes that the limitations and weaknesses of discourse analysis can be addressed by continuously upgrading and changing the approach to enhance the transparency of analytical processes. Through the discourse approach, it is possible to produce empirical evidence that would progress the understanding of dilemmas in public policy, including those in educational fields.
Emotional discourse analysis has also been among the subjects of research as scholars have been emphasizing the importance of language in terms of constructing reality, identity, and power relations. Using the conflict between NATO and Russia over the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, Koschut (2018) illustrated that in international relations, emotion discourse analysis could expand the scope of available meanings that emerge from the exploration of relevant speech or text. The researcher has developed a three-step framework for studying emotions in IR discourse, such as selecting relevant texts for analysis, mapping the verbal expressions and emotions of the speaker, and interpreting and contextualizing the political implications. The emotions expressed by relevant political players involved in the conflict between NATO and Russia revealed a significant difference in their perspectives on the issue, with the emotional underpinnings pointing to rising hostility and opposition between the parties (Wilhelmsen and Hjermann, 2022). In light of the Ukraine-Russia war taking place, the research bears particular relevance for illustrating the emotional context of international relations and the need for political players to align their emotions with the messages they transfer.
Analysis
The overview of the published literature on the topic of applying discourse analysis in international relations has shown that the discursive approach to studying international phenomena has been updated in recent years, leading to its significant scientific broadening. Previously, discourse analysis used to be concerned with a descriptive exploration of the role of the word in society. Since the introduction of the pragmatic approach, text and speech began to be perceived as producers of reality, allowing to facilitate significant change in the understanding of IT. The diversity of newer research on the application of discourse analysis points to the possibility of developing new discursive perspectives on international phenomena.
Notably, the definition of different discourse analysis perspectives allows to acknowledge further the importance of the text-context binomial for understanding international relations. Several steps are crucial for facilitating greater methodological clarification in discourse analysis. First, it is necessary to choose between the available analysis criteria, such as international facts objectification, the discursive power identity, and the dimension of the analysis perspective (Godinho, 2016). Second, it is crucial to identify the type of the approach chosen, whether it is descriptive, functionalist, or autonomous. Third, a position regarding context is necessary to identify, such as the economic, social, cognitive, or other. Following these steps can significantly enhance the rigor and transparency of research while also facilitating its increased replicability.
Discourse research has shown to be highly flexible in terms of being applied in social sciences and IR, specifically as researchers have used the method for analyzing the underpinnings of foreign policies and legislations and the emotional background of international relations. Researchers have explored the relations between their home countries and other international players using discourse analysis of relevant documents and materials, such as the study by Aydın-Düzgit and Rumelili (2019). Discourse analysis views language as a material component of social relation, with speech having important social meanings as they are played out in declaratory of diplomacy (Amer, 2017). For example, when attempting to analyze foreign policies of countries, there can be a wide scope for drawing on discourse analysis. The discourse-historical strand has been primarily concerned with the discursive construction of the us-them dichotomy, which is one of the main goals of the method. Identity representation in the context of international relations rarely takes explicit forms, which means that linguistic analysis tools for discerning the patterns in representation are necessary to use. When it comes to the discourse analysis disadvantages, the validity and reliability of analysis cannot be ascertained in the same way as in quantitative approaches.
Conclusion
To conclude, discourse analysis is reasonable to apply in the studies of international relations as the latter relies heavily on communication. The method will analyze the contents of declarations, official speeches, diplomatic interviews, parliamentary debates, and other forms of speech and written text. As discourse and social reality are mutually constituted, the analysis allows finding more meaning, on both material and discursive levels, of which more conclusions about reality can be made. Discourse analysis is used for serving critical purposes and denaturalizing prevalent understandings by revealing their historical and social contexts and delegitimizing claims of absolute truth.
Reference List
Amer, M. (2017) ‘Critical discourse analysis of war reporting in the international press: the case of the Gaza war of 2008–2009’, Palgrave Communications, 3(13). Web.
Aydın-Düzgit, S. and Rumelili, B. (2019) ‘Discourse Analysis: Strengths and Shortcomings’, All Azimuth, 8(2), pp. 285-305.
Eisenhart, C. and Johnstone, B. (2008) Discourse analysis and rhetorical studies. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Godinho, L. (2016) ‘Discourse and international relations: a theoretical and methodological approach’, E-journal of International Relations, 7(2), pp. 1-14.
Koschut, S. (2018) ‘Speaking from the heart: emotion discourse analysis in international relations’, in Clément, M. and Sangar, E. (eds) Researching emotions in International Relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 277-301.
Larsen, H. (2018) ‘Discourse analysis in the study of European foreign policy’, in Rethinking European Foreign Policy. Web.
Nonhoff, M. (2017) ‘Discourse analysis as critique’, Palgrave Communications, 3(17074). Web.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2006) ‘Discourse and manipulation’, Discourse & Society, 17(3), pp. 359-383.
Wash, I. (2020) ‘Interpreting public policy dilemmas: discourse analytical insights’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 7(12), pp. 1-12.
Wilhelmsen, J. and Hjermann, A. R. (2022) ‘Russian certainty of NATO hostility: repercussions in the Arctic’, Arctic Review on Law and Politics, 13, pp. 114-142.