Researchers in the Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies (InterDisc) network hub at Aalborg University are interested in studying discourses in contemporary societies in the broadest sense from disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The concept discourse includes the many ways in which language is used, such as writing, speech, bodily gestures, music or silence. It also entails a socially constructed perspective, where social actors and actions negotiate and constitute meaning, relations and identities.
Approaches to discourse studies are increasingly interdisciplinary and include dialogic, discourse analytic and material approaches to mediation and meaning-making in social practices with the aim of understanding, analyzing, critiquing and impacting these practices. Of particular interest are, for instance, studies on how to apply discursive approaches to managing transitions democratically, with an emphasis on social justice in the global north and south, as well as studies on how and why discourses themselves are being transformed for a variety of reasons and purposes. This entails exploring relations between language, social actions, embodiments, materialities, governmentalities and multicultural practices.
Our research may focus on a wide variety of changes – including changing organizations, institutions, identities, markets, economies and climates – and how such changes are construed in discourses and discursive practices, through different modes, materialities and media. Examples of topics that interest us include, but are not restricted to, sustainability discourse, environmental discourse, mobility discourse, political discourse, discourses on language policy, marketization discourse, stakeholder discourse, health care discourse, multimodal discourse, discourses about gender and career, discourses about racism and sexism, discourses about social inequality, etc.
Approaches may vary and could include critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, ethnomethodological conversation analysis, text linguistics, genre analysis, mediated discourse analysis, positive discourse analysis, nexus analysis, rhetorical analysis, social semiotics, etc.
If discoursing on a difficult problem were like carrying weights, when many horses can carry more sacks of grain than a single horse, I would agree that many discourses would do more than a single one; but discoursing is like coursing, not like carrying, and one Barbary Courser can go faster than a hundred Frieslands
Galileo Galilei - Il Saggiatore (1623)