Advancing Social Justice with Policy Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Policy discourse analysis (PDA) draws from critical and poststructural theories to provide researchers with an approach to identifying dominant discourses shaping policy problems and solutions. Such analyses reveal how discourse contributes to shaping subject positions, or roles, with implications for practice. This chapter defines PDA, describes the conceptual principles of the approach, and details the research methods for the implementation of a PDA study. Examples of studies employing PDA are shared to illustrate the utility of the approach.

Suggested Readings

• Allan, E. J. (2010). Feminist poststructuralism meets policy analysis: An overview. In E. J. Allan, S. Iverson, & R. Ropers-Huilman (Eds.), Reconstructing policy in higher education: Feminist poststructural perspectives (pp. 11–35). New York, NY: Routledge.

This chapter provides a more detailed introduction to the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings helpful to understanding policy as discourse.

• Dirks, D. A. (2016). Transgender people at four Big Ten campuses: A policy discourse analysis. Review of Higher Education, 39(3), 371–393. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2016.0020

This article provides a powerful illustration of a recent PDA study revealing how the policy discourses may actually undermine the outcomes of the policies intended to support trans-individuals.

• Foucault, M. (2001). From “Truth and Power”. In V. B. Leitch (Ed.), The Norton anthology of theory and criticism (pp. 1667–1670). New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Though brief, this passage may provide the most critical definition of “power” for poststructuralist thinking. Understanding how power is defined, especially in contrast to Marxian or positivist forms of power, is a conceptual key to poststructuralist work.

• Gildersleeve, R. E., & Hernandez, S. (2012). Producing (im)possible peoples: Policy discourse analysis, in-state resident tuition and undocumented students in American higher education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v14i2.517

In this study, researchers detail a PDA study of state laws to powerfully illuminate how tuition policy discourses shape understandings of identity relative to undocumented students in US higher education.

• Iverson, S. V. (2012). Constructing outsiders: The discursive framing of access in university diversity policies. Review of Higher Education, 35(2), 149–177. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2012.0013

This article provides a compelling illustration of a PDA study examining diversity action plans at US land-grant universities finding that well-intended policy efforts to enhance diversity and inclusivity may unwittingly reinforce inequitable practices.

• Mills, S. (2011). Discourse: The new critical idiom (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

This text provides a helpful introduction to the term “discourse” and how the term is used in the many varied sub-fields within scholarly work. The text introduces the history and language of debates and development of the idea of discourse for an audience not familiar or acquainted with the birth of the study of semiotics and structuralism under Saussure and Lacan. It also helps distinguish some of the fault lines between critical and poststructural thinking on discourse.

• van Dijk, T. A. (Ed.). (2011). Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

While vast in its scope, and more focused on critical discourse analysis rather than policy discourse analysis, this text is a series of collected essays that provides multiple competing and interwoven definitions of power and discourse. It also includes relevant examples of the applications of discourse theory in research.