Discourse and Power: An Introduction to Critical Narratology: Who Narrates Whom?

By: Peter V. Zima

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Synopsis: Discourse and Power: An Introduction to Critical Narratology: Who Narrates Whom? is both an introduction to discourse research and an application of the concept of discourse to the problem of power. Divided into two sections, Part One is a presentation of the most important theories of discourse in which the link between discourse and power or language and power is central. It provides a critical overview of the most important discourse theories: Foucault, Bourdieu, Fairclough and Greimas’s structural semiotics. In Part Two, the section on practice, the insights gained in the first part of the book are applied to analyses of particular discourses and their involvement in power relations. Ranging from psychiatric, legal, political, literary and scientific discourses, examples include the presidential speeches of Obama, Trump and Biden and the novels of Camus and Pirandello. The book demonstrates that it is possible in theoretical discourse to reduce the power factor to a minimum, improve theoretical innovation, and thus pave the way for new insights in social sciences. This is an important and timely text from a leading scholar, suitable for use in discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and rhetoric courses.