Cultural Discourse Studies as culturalist approach to communication: object, objectives and tasks

Abstract

Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS), to which this journal is devoted, concerns itself with human communication, like Communication Studies (CS) in general. That is, it takes as its object of study the social interaction in which people use language and other mediums in context, purposefully and consequentially. In this view, communication is a social process which encompasses multiple elements and dimensions (e.g. language, gesture, technology, channels, time and place). As such, communication functionally constructs reality, exercises power and changes the world. And yet, different from many common forms in CS, CDS considers communication not as universal or culturally neutral, but as a global system composed of culturally diversified and competing discourses. Here discourse refers to the cultural form of communication, real or potential, of an ethnically and geopolitically characterized community (say the Chinese/ Asian/Developing/Third World, the/Western/Developed World). Culture in this context refers to the particular ways of thinking, speaking and acting, often involving concepts, norms, values, rules, language, ethnicity, religion, traditions, as well as material artefacts, that are embodied in the discursive practice of a community. Thus, culture is the defining feature of a discourse – hence cultural discourse – and of communication more generally; to study discourse and communication, then, is also to study culture. Any cultural discourse as such has its own system – discourse system. By this is meant the underlying, constitutive configuration of (a) communicative institutions (community, organization, platforms, media technology, etc. – ‘the motor system’) and (b) communicative knowhow (concepts, values, theory, information, principles, tactics, etc. – ‘the nervous system’) which combine to enable, organize and sustain a community’s discursive practice at different levels of abstraction and fields of action. It is the discursive competence of a given community and can have a profound impact on the outcome of its communicative practice. However, it should be stressed that cultural discourses are not to be taken essentialistically, as if they were homogeneous, reified or fixed. Rather, they should be understood in differential, dialectic and dynamic terms: they have dissimilarities both within and without, they are interdependent, and they are subject to change. More importantly perhaps, they are not equal to one another but must be seen in power terms: they interact with one another and consequently relations of domination, exclusion, resistance, cooperation, etc. saturate the process. For practical research purposes, CDS categorizes cultural discourse into six interlocking components, they are: Communicators, Act, Medium, Purpose, History and Culture (CAMPHAC). Specifically, Communicators imply: discursive actors as cultural organizations and members, for investigating who is (not) speaking and acting, in what position and capacity and with what characteristics (e.g. world views, ways of thinking, character, past experiences); Act: relevant verbal and non-verbal (inter)actions, for studying what is (not) said and (not) done and how, how it is responded to, and what social representation and relation result; Medium: the use of symbols, channels and other tools (e.g. specific languages, conventional and new