ABSTRACT
It is difficult indeed to talk about discourse these days without bringing in a discussion of power. In large part, this is due to the influence of the ideas of the French social theorist Michel Foucault (1979; 1980). In various essays and books dating from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, Foucault transformed our theoretical understanding of power as well as putting discourse analysis on the academic agenda.Most analytic perspectives in the humanities and social sciences that employ the concept of discourse ‘have Foucauldian elements in terms of viewing discourses as something that defines what is meaningful and how it exercises power’ (Gelcich et al. 2005: 379).
