ABSTRACT
At the heart of foreign policy research should be an engagement with politically pertinent issues, but ‘reality’ is always larger than the number of questions one can ask of it; to formulate a research project is therefore inevitably to make a series of choices. For poststructuralist discourse analysis, the central choices concern whether one should study official foreign policy discourse or expand the scope to include the political opposition, the media, and marginal discourses; whether one should examine the foreign policy discourse of one Self or of multiple Selves; whether one should select one particular moment or a longer historical development; whether one should study one event or issue or a multiplicity; and, finally, which material should be selected as the foundation for and object of analysis. Making these choices might sometimes appear as if produced by the case itself. If there is heated debate it would be reasonable to analyze competing discourses; if the media has propelled governmental discursive changes, it appears commonsensical to include both discourses; and if a country or an institution has undergone radical change, it would seem logical to trace this transformation through an analysis of the discourses before and after the historical turning point. But rarely, if ever, does a case present itself ‘beyond any reasonable choice’; there will always be a process of selecting agents of discourse as well as the material to be drawn upon. Even official foreign policy discourse is articulated through a multitude of sources, ranging from official speeches, press statements, parliamentary debates, and interviews, and going beyond official discourse to the intertextual references made within it; the choices expand exponentially.
