the politics of historical discourse analysis

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The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative research method?Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannessona

a Faculty of Education, University of Akureyri, Norðurslóð, Akureyri, Iceland

Online publication date: 26 April 2010

To cite this Article Jóhannesson, Ingólfur Ásgeir(2010) 'The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative researchmethod?', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31: 2, 251 — 264To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01596301003679768URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596301003679768

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The politics of historical discourse analysis: a qualitative researchmethod?

Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson*

Faculty of Education, University of Akureyri, Solborg, Norðursloð, IS 602 Akureyri, Iceland

This article deals with the ways in which historical discourse analysis is at oncedifferent from and similar to research described as qualitative or quantitative. Itdiscusses the consequences of applying the standards of such methods tohistorical discourse analysis. It is pointed out that although the merit of researchusing historical discourse analysis must not be judged by the standards ofqualitative methods alone, it can be easier to admit the influence of the discourseon methodology. Therefore, the article considers whether and how the ideas ofvalidity, reliability, sample, and transferability can be used to explain the merit ofstudy using historical discourse analysis. The author also discusses the basicconcepts and principles of historical discourse analysis, and he describes step-by-step a particular way of conducting historical discourse analysis.

Keywords: historical discourse analysis; discourse analysis; qualitative methods;narrative

Introduction

In current discourse about research in education and other related disciplines there is

an emphasis on methodology. This is not a new trend, as pointed out by the Swedish

education scholar Daniel Kallos about 30 years ago (Kallos, 1981), but a persistent

phenomenon. The emphasis on methodology sometimes comes close to be a fetish

on the methods rather than on what is studied. Further, there is a noteworthy trend

to create a taxonomy of research methods, classifying them into ‘quantitative’ and

‘qualitative’ categories with strict sets of standards. Most recently, the American

Educational Research Association also created standards for what is called

humanities-oriented research (AERA, 2009), which could add to the general

taxonomy of methodologies.

This article has multiple agendas. The first agenda is questioning the fruitfulness

of seeing discourse analysis as a separate column in a taxonomy of methods, or a box

in humanities-oriented research. If it was really seen that way, historical discourse

analysis would be a box among other types of discourse analysis in the respective

column. This relates to the second agenda, which is to discuss what makes historical

discourse analysis an identifiable approach in research. The focus is on its basic

concepts. Immediately, the reader must think that the author of the article is

contradicting himself. And the reader is correct: this is a contradiction, even though

I contend that historical discourse analysis is an approach to research, rather than a

method in itself. The third agenda is to describe how the author conducts his studies,

*Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0159-6306 print/ISSN 1469-3739 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01596301003679768

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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

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step-by-step. This is done to enable a reflective discussion of the politics of historical

discourse analysis in context with the actual procedural issues that arise. The fourth

agenda is to reflect upon some of the differences and similarities between historical

discourse analysis and other types of research. Separate sections, immediately

following this introduction, serve the second, third, and fourth agendas. The first

agenda is dealt with throughout the article and, in addition, in the last section.All these agendas have in common a focus on the relationship between ‘method’

and the politics of research. The politics of discourse analysis is considered by some

to be an underdeveloped issue in thinking about discourse analysis; for instance,

Australian researcher Alison Lee has asserted that ‘the field of discourse analysis has

by and large not participated reflexively in discussion about these matters in relation

to its own research and representational practices’ (2000, p. 189). As the examples

presented in this article show, historical discourse analysis is a research approach

suited to contextualize its own research stories and practices.

The article is in part a story told by a researcher who, after 20 years of research,

discovered that he had developed an approach to research �ways of working, research

procedures � that had value beyond the findings of each particular study. So,

I emphasize that although historical discourse analysis is not at all my invention,

there is a personal and political edge to what is described here.1 Most importantly, I

must acknowledge my resistance against seeing my ways of working as ‘a method’; I see

my research, most of the time, as what can be called a Foucauldian-feminist quest to

identify contradictions in the discourses surrounding us, hopefully to be able to exploit

these contradictions to interrupt current discourse. This means that I wish to focusmore on why research is conducted and under which circumstances, rather than on its

methods. Thus, what sparked the researcher’s interest becomes an important part of

the story, but what happened to the research findings is also important and will become

part of the story. Nevertheless, as this article is descriptive of the approach I have used, I

do hope that it is of some use to newcomers into research of discourse as well as being a

contribution to methodological discussion.2

Concepts of historical discourse analysis

Discussing historical discourse analysis requires a brief explanation of a set of

concepts. Discourse, discursive themes, legitimating principles, historical conjunc-

ture, and normalization are the most important of these concepts, but power, silence,

and social strategies are also concepts that matter.Discourse, discursive themes, and legitimating principles are interwoven con-

cepts. Words and ideas, behaviour and practices are observed and identified as

themes in the discourse, that is, discursive themes (Johannesson, 1991, 1998).

Discourse is a process but not a static phase (see also Tamboukou, 2001). We, the

participants in the discourse � professionals, researchers, and the public alike �produce and reproduce it with our conscious and unconscious practices and

utterances. The discursive themes create patterns in the discourse, patterns that are

shaped and reshaped in the social and political atmosphere of the past and the

present. These patterns are historical and political legitimating principles that

constitute the available means for the participants for what is appropriate or safe to

say at certain moments or in certain places � but at the same time we often try to

affect the boundaries of what can be said and what is silenced in the discourse.

252 I.A . Johannesson


How is it that some ideas and practices gain more legitimacy than others in the

discourse? What is the interplay between historical and political conditions and good

arguments for ideas and practices? The concept of historical conjuncture is meant to

capture what happens in those circumstances (Johannesson, 1991, 1998). I often use

a highway intersection near a large city in the USA to explain this concept. In such

an intersection, there are roads coming in from at least four directions. Everyone

needs to be able to travel in any direction from any of the other directions. If the

traveller does not find the desired route, s/he may need to go in a wrong direction for

miles before s/he can return and find the correct route. In addition, there are

sometimes local streets underneath. The difference between a historical conjuncture

and the highway intersection, however, is that the intersection is designed in a way so

that cars do not crash into each other if drivers follow the rules. But in a historical

conjuncture it is not easy to predict which ideas and practices will be able to coexist

because epistemological roots of ideas usually do not mean much when older and

newer ideas and practices compete for legitimacy (Johannesson, 1992, 2006b).

Let me push further the analogy of a highway intersection to see how

normalization works. For instance, if the government authorities are travelling a

main road and they do not turn off to another route, then it may be easier for other

travellers to follow that route. But the same is the case if the government wants to

turn in a different direction; some of those who were supposed to follow the course

may even miss the chance or decide that they do not care much about where the

authorities travel. They may, when they have a chance, choose to go off into a

direction different from that of the government-sponsored reform. They may, then,

also decide to select a third route in order to come closer to the government

proposals, or continue resisting the government directions. Despite these possibilities

that the analogy suggests, in modern societies we have been educated to follow rules

so that we do not need to be punished. This applies even more to professionals than

other people, as we have most of the time, through schooling, received more training

in adjusting to the demands constituted in the discourse. In that process, we accept a

variety of ideas and practices as professional truth, and we may even participate in

silencing other ideas. In brief, the participants in discourses consciously and

unconsciously employ the various ideas and practices as their social strategies

(Bourdieu, 1988; Johannesson, 1998; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) available

to them in the historical conjuncture. This is how normalization works: indirectly

through the visible and, no less effectively, the invisible relations of power.

Although the definition of discourse I use is by no means unique, it is necessary

to stress three points that differ from some other definitions of discourse. First, the

Bourdieuean notion of social strategies � where participants are active in employing

discursive themes as their social strategies rather than being simply passive recipients

� is not commonly connected to the observation of discourse (see Johannesson, 1991,

1998). Second, I emphasize that discourse is a process. This is common to

Foucauldian-feminist understandings as, for instance, is emphasized by the Greek

feminist scholar Maria Tamboukou (2001). In the third place, I emphasize that the

concept of discourse I use includes social practices and institutional structures (see

also Wodak, 1996, 1997). Some researchers, for instance Tamboukou (2001), refer to

those as non-discursive practices while nevertheless stressing their importance for the

study of discourse.

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 253


The approach to doing historical discourse analysis that I have described here is

enlightened by two French researchers, historian of systems of thought Michel

Foucault (1971, 1978a, 1978b, 1979a, 1979b, 1981, 1998/1967, 1998/1972) and

sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1988, 1991; see also Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), but

also as the work of Foucault has been taken up by many feminist researchers (see, for

example, Ellsworth, 1989; Einarsdottir, 1999; Lather, 1991, 2006, 2007; Sawicki,

1991; Søndergaard, 2002; Tamboukou, 2000, 2001; Weedon, 1987). I am alsoindebted to the work of US American education researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz

(e.g., 1991, 2008; see also Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998; Popkewitz, Franklin, &

Pereyra, 2001). In one of his most recent books (Popkewitz, 2008), he uses what is

called ‘history of the present’ to study the historical practices and social

epistemological changes that produce the governing principles of who children are

to be, tracing ideas backwards and forwards to understand the previous and current

historical conjunctures. However, I have chosen to use the term historical

conjuncture rather than the history of the present, especially because historical

conjuncture, as a term, can at once refer to contemporary or earlier conjunctures.

Step-by-step: practical issues in conducting historical discourse analysis

How do we approach doing historical discourse analysis? In this article, I consider

the use of documents and other texts. I most often use such material � especiallyofficial reports and newspaper articles � because it offers insights into the reasoning

behind social practices and institutional structures. Newspaper articles in particular

often reveal the contradictions in the social and political struggles about the

practices and policies at stake. Analyzing interview transcripts and observation

protocols as discourse is also an important avenue to study practices and the

reasoning about them.

In this section I offer the reader an opportunity to follow a detailed description

of how I have performed historical discourse analysis.3 By offering this account, I am

able to discuss issues in research politics as well as the question in the article’s title,

concerning whether historical discourse analysis is a qualitative research method. I

have selected a study of children’s special educational needs that was published in

Discourse in 2006 (Johannesson, 2006a).4 Additional examples in this section are

taken from a few other studies.

The first step is to select an issue or an event. Most likely a researcher has already

decided on the topic. In that case, it is advisable to carve out a particular aspect ofthe topic or find an event which lends itself to this kind of analysis, for instance

because it has been controversial among professionals or widely discussed in the

media. I studied the issue of special educational needs within the discourse of

education and educational reform. I was completing work in a large international

study, entitled Educational Governance and Social Integration/Exclusion (EGSIE)

(see, for example, Lindblad, Johannesson, & Simola, 2002; Johannesson, Geirsdottir,

& Finnbogason, 2002), when I discovered that special educational needs were treated

as an issue of management rather than a pedagogical concern (as I felt these matters

should be treated). I thought that this was a contradiction and decided to continue,

at first out of a mere curiosity, but then I saw that this might be an opportunity to

reveal that in this historical conjuncture practices, which no one in particular was

likely to have aimed at, were legitimated.



The second step for the researcher is to determine the material he or she considers

relevant to throw light on the issue or the event he or she has decided. There is no

right or wrong way to do so. If the researcher wants to analyze government policy

about the issue, s/he either selects important texts or asks the relevant government

agencies to tell him or her which are the key documents. If the researcher wishes to

analyze ideas in society, or among professionals, about discipline and discipline

problems, s/he could well start by finding an event that sparked such discussions andread the newspapers in the aftermath. Another suitable option would be to find a

report about discipline problems to analyze the ways in which the problems are

described and solutions legitimized. It is important at this stage to limit the amount

that needs to be read; of course, the researcher must use good arguments for

restricting the number of documents or identifying a particular time-period to be

scrutinized.

In the study about special educational needs, it was rather obvious from the

beginning to look at the educational legislation and the curriculum guidelines. I also

asked the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to identify other key

documents. The Ministry identified several documents, including The Salamanca

Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994),

as well as reports and proceedings from two conferences (see Johannesson, 2006a,

2006b). I also determined that two documents about the national curriculum for

early childhood, compulsory, and upper secondary education, sent to all homes in

1998 and 1999 � Enn betri skoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1998)and Enn betri leikskoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999) � would

cast an important light on understanding the special educational needs policy.

In this particular study I did not use newspaper materials in an organized

manner, only if relevant articles appeared when I was working on the study. In a

recent study of climate change discourse (Johannesson, 2005), I used newspaper

articles rather extensively. The study was divided into two parts: first, I analyzed

documents from the Icelandic Ministry for the Environment, The Soil Conservation

Service in Iceland, and The Iceland Forest Service; second, I analyzed newspaper

articles. I had been an observer, and indeed a participant, in debates about the use of

nature and natural resources so I knew fairly well what was to be expected. But in

order to ensure that there would not be many themes that I missed or under-

estimated, I decided to use a database of newspaper articles gathered by an

information service company named Fjolmiðlavaktin (CreditInfo Iceland). I selected

the period from late 1997, when the original version of the Kyoto Protocol was

passed, until May 2002 when Iceland ratified the Kyoto Protocol. I could also have

decided to use February 2005 when the Protocol took effect as the latter date, or Icould have performed a quick follow-up study during that month to identify if there

were different emphases in the debate at that point. It is rather easy to collect

newspaper articles for research. If the researcher, who may also be a keen observer or

a participant in debates, collects them simultaneously, he or she will have an easier

time later identifying key periods for a thorough analysis.

Journals of professional organizations can be useful materials for historical

discourse analysis. Icelandic sociologist and feminist scholar Þorgerður Einarsdottir

(1999) used the professional journal of Swedish medical doctors to analyze the status

of the different specializations within medicine in relation to gender. Einarsdottir had

also conducted a survey as well as taken interviews. The Australian education



researcher Pat Thomson (2001) used a professional journal of Australian school

principals when she studied the different discourses about what should be demanded

of principals. Thomson also used a state system document for the analysis.

Einarsdottir and Thomson selected a period of time or a certain number of issues

they were able to determine that would give a clear picture of the discourse they

wanted to study.The third step is the actual analysis of the documents. If the reasons for

conducting the study are clear, I recommend that the reader should simply start and

let the actual ways of working and thinking about the material evolve during that

process. It is probable that the researcher already has conceptualized some of the

discursive themes, and it is equally likely that s/he will find something that s/he did

not necessarily expect or that the relationship between the themes differs from what

was thought. Guiding questions are the best tool the researcher will have at this

point. The following questions guided me in my search of the special educational

needs documents: What are the policies of special educational needs? What is the

view of the subject/subjectivity of the individual? How do the views in the documents

relate to legitimating principles in the educational discourse? (Johannesson, 2006a).

The first two questions guide to step three; the third question refers to step four.

These questions evolved rather directly out of the EGSIE project, but in other

instances my questions have changed more as I collected and read the documents.

My findings � the discursive themes � at this point were, first, an emphasis onevery child being able to attend its neighbourhood school, preferably in a home

classroom without first considering whether there were any special educational

needs. Second, the means to create inclusive schools seemed to rely more on clinical

analysis of the educational needs rather than pedagogical approaches. From that

observation, I argued, Icelandic school students had become diagnosable subjects.

Third, I contended that the documents, especially those that had been sent to all

homes, i.e., Enn betri skoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1998) and

Enn betri leikskoli (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999), with their

emphasis on strong and independent individuals, had turned children and parents

into consumers who must be able to rationally determine their educational needs in a

market society.

The fourth step is to analyze the struggles and tensions in the discourse, be they

obvious or not so obvious, to analyze the patterns of arguments to see if we can

identify legitimating principles. Among the main patterns in the special educational

needs study were references to the needs of individuals, and another aspect was an

adherence to clinical methods for identifying these needs. The Salamanca Statement

and Framework for Action (UNESCO, 1994) comprises references to democracy,

humanity, and diversity. Documents other than The Salamanca Statement and

Framework for Action are silent about democracy and equality; in fact, most of the

space in The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action is devoted to a

technical discussion of how to give all children the best of education � in which

clinical analysis is mentioned as an important component. This reveals a tension

between individual needs, on one hand, and democracy and diversity, on the other;

but if we dig deeper we see that individual needs and democracy are both parts of a

Western discourse about individuals. Still this is an important tension in the

discourse where the discursive themes of accountability, standardized testing, and

management by results intensify the contradictory character of the tensions. Finally,



the cost of meeting some of the special educational needs is also a noteworthy theme

in the discourse.

At this stage, the researcher may want to read more documents, because if the

researcher knew much about the issue, s/he might realize that something is missing.

What is it that the researcher did not find of what he or she thought was important?

Is there a silence about things s/he believed to be important? What does that silencetell us about how to understand the patterns of discursive themes that constitute the

legitimating principles of the discourse?

In this example we see patterns that relate to two legitimating principles observed

in the EGSIE study, namely technological and democratic views (Johannesson et al.,

2002). That leads to the fifth step: the historical conjuncture of discourses. It is not

least this step that distinguishes historical discourse analysis from other types of

discourse or text analysis. In this case, the EGSIE study about the educational policy

(e.g., Johannesson et al., 2002; Lindblad et al., 2002) was the most important

research context for the study I describe here � but also my earlier studies of

legitimating principles in the debates about educational reform in Iceland in the

1970s and 1980s (Johannesson, 1991, 1992).

So while at step five in this study, I thought it was interesting to observe the social

strategies of spokespeople for inclusive schools who argued for inclusion because of

democratic and humanistic reasons. How do they approach their interests in the

atmosphere of clinical and technical methodologies and market-oriented views of

accountability and testing? I asked about the consequences of having to fight for theneeds of particular children � or small groups of children � in an atmosphere where

users of educational systems are seen as consumers. In his study, Icelandic education

researcher Gretar L. Marinosson (2002) observed that teachers in the school where

he did his ethnographic research thought it was necessary to put special educational

needs into a taxonomic grid. They thought it was important, not because they were

technically-minded, but because this practice was available to meet the immediate

needs of individuals they care for. In contrast, Marinosson observed that the teachers

had humanistic beliefs but normalized themselves to the available means � that is, the

clinical approach.

My reason for conducting the study was an interest in revealing contradictions in

the educational policy and practice about special educational needs of children. Three

sets of contradictions were given priority in my conclusions: first, the trend to see

children as consumers of expert clinical services; second, the trend to treat special

educational needs as issues of management and financing; third, the relative silence

about democracy and the trend to individualize all kinds of differences between

children. The consequence of the last point is that diversity among people is

increasingly discussed in light of clinical analysis of not only special educationalneeds, but maybe any human need. For instance � as I observe the discourse � talented

and gifted children have now been reduced, if I may say so, to diagnosable subjects.

The socio-economic and cultural issues that may explain the learning performance of

many children are very much in the backseat in such debates.

I was able to trace the discursive themes, found in the study, through earlier

conjunctures and observe how ideas and practices sometimes transform their

meaning in the connection with other types of discursive themes so they form new

principles of legitimacy or strengthen earlier principles. From this we see that

‘historical’, in the phrase historical discourse analysis, refers to the study of



contemporary discourses and current and earlier historical conjunctures. The earlier

work I have referred to was based on an eclectic use of Foucault’s toolbox, most

importantly a genealogical approach (Johannesson, 1991, 1998).5

The sixth and last step is to write some kind of a report. Sharp and Richardson

(2001), British researchers in environmental science and planning, call such a report

a ‘critical narrative’. It is possibly enough to publish the results in conferencelectures, journal articles, and books. A more detailed report may, however, be very

useful for further references, and it may even be made accessible on a website. I did

this, for instance, when I conducted a study of Nature as Capital (Johannesson, 2000)

where the report was the main document and other publications were derived from

it. This step would hardly be considered specific for historical discourse analysis, and

in the study discussed here I did not prepare the original report to be made available.

Reflections about historical discourse analysis: differences and similarities compared

with other types of research

Books and articles that present social science research most often include chapters or

sections to show that the researcher knows how to conduct research. These sections

describe ‘methods’ and often refer to ‘methodology’. Among constructs that socialsciences emphasize are validity, reliability, methods of sampling, and transferability.

The researcher is also required to point out that his or her personal views or

situations do not have an inappropriate impact on the results. Such methodological

sections are most of the time more minute in quantitative research articles, but there

is also a tendency to impose the same requirements upon qualitative research

(Johannesson, 2006b). This may indeed lead to such a scenario that when distinct

types of research are developed, those who conduct qualitative research neglect to

explain how they adhered to the logic of the respective type of research they are

conducting, but rather fall into the pit of explaining criteria developed for other

purposes, in that case often arbitrary. US American feminist researcher Patti Lather

(2006) labels this trend as ‘methodological reductionism that has radically flattened

the methods into a single model’. For this reason, I believe it is important that

researchers inspired by Foucault’s research participated in producing standards for

humanities-oriented research (AERA, 2009).

One of the reasons for resisting extensive discussions about method and

methodology is the fact that many social scientists do their research because they

have political goals about improving their communities and society. We wish to useour competence in doing research to create knowledge that can contribute to such

improvements. Moreover, professionals in education and health sciences are

probably especially concerned with the usefulness of their research. But is it likely

that conventional research tools alone will help if the research is aimed at

demystifying or interrupting current discourses? Feminist research is perhaps the

best example of where political interests guide the choices of issues (Ellsworth, 1989;

Johannesson, 2004; Sawicki, 1991; Søndergaard, 2002; Traustadottir, 2003). But as

pointed out by Kallos (1981), other political interests also guide the choices of what

is researched. All this contributes to my protest towards calling historical discourse

analysis a ‘method’; further, I refuse to accept that it belongs to the qualitative

column of methods. I will continue explaining why historical discourse analysis is not

a method and why it is not a qualitative ‘method’.



Remembering that this article grew out of a book chapter for disability studies

(Johannesson, 2006b), I must admit that the disability scientist may not be

particularly interested in a certificate of origin for historical discourse analysis, but

would rather focus on what insights the approach gives into the issue s/he wishes to

study. For that reason, among others, I believe historical discourse analysis should

not be exempted from considering some of the criteria applied to qualitative research

methods. But we should also be aware that these criteria now function as legitimatingprinciples operating within the discourse of social, educational, health, and disability

science methodology. This discourse emphasizes the creation and collection of

neutral, but useful, scientific knowledge; this discourse normalizes us as researchers

when we seek to be heard in many of the social sciences. Because validity, reliability,

methods of sampling, and transferability are among the major discursive themes, a

refusal to address these issues may require the researcher to do more work, or the

publication of the analysis will be delayed because the work is being doubted.

However, I believe it is of vital importance, given the character of historical discourse

analysis, that it will be accepted as a narrative composed by the researcher � that the

story s/he can tell, as a result of the analysis which was conducted, will be accepted as

a contribution to research.

What does that narrative need to include? I would like to see something about

why the research is conducted as part of the narrative. In the above story, I could use

the reason why I became interested in the topic as a way to relate my study to

previous research. So instead of being a routine literature review, often seen inarticles and often complained about by researchers, previous research is part of the

story itself. In this case, previous research both initiated the analysis as well as being

part of step five, that is, to understand the historical conjuncture.

The researcher’s identity is related to the reason why the research is conducted. If

special educational needs of children are studied, we need to know if the researcher is

a teacher or a developmental therapist or has any other professional background

relating to the topic. I am not as certain as to what to think if the researcher is (also)

a person with learning difficulties or has children or other relatives with such special

educational needs. The strongest argument for making that into an aspect of the

research story is to let the reader know that the researcher had developed his or her

interests in the topic over the years and has acquired important knowledge,

experience, and insights. By seeing it so expressed, the researcher?s position relative

to the research topic is not a methodological disclaimer, as is often maintained, but

inherent in the story. The researcher should, therefore, not be expected to be neutral

as required in quantitative research and often in qualitative research as well; it is the

aim of the study to interpret the contradictions in the discourse. On the other hand,of course, the researcher must cite documents correctly, and he or she needs to

explain how professional as well as personal insights were used to select documents

which would be called data in quantitative research.

If the results of historical discourse analysis are presented as a story, what might

then be called transferability of the results? Most important, in my opinion, is that

the story and the contradictions it may reveal can be understood for use in

contemporary debates. This does not, however, prevent the possibility of contra-

dictions found in one field of society being used in another field. The researcher may

or may not want to speculate about such possibilities, but s/he should not do that to

fulfil methodological requirements.



The selection of documents is vital to historical discourse analysis, even more so

than identifying a ‘sample’ in some other types of research. It is important to clearly

describe how they were selected. It is particularly necessary to collect more

documents if we do not find what we expected to find in the first round, especially

if we are going to, on the basis of our findings, state that government authorities are

silent about something. A good description of which documents were used and how

they were read is important so the readers of the research story could also read the

documents � but they may not accept the interpretations of the researcher.On the surface, the validity of historical discourse analysis must be high � but

what if the analysis pulls the researcher far away from the original goals of the

research? That must be a different validity or no validity at all � but still the story

can have much value as research. On the other hand, the first consideration is that

the reliability of historical discourse analysis must be very low if it is built into the

approach that the researcher interprets the documents his or her own way: But if the

researcher has thoroughly explained how s/he worked with the documents, why even

consider whether reliability is an issue to worry about?

A method or not? Notes on research politics

Having described in considerable detail an approach to research, but at the same

time I have denied that my almost recipe-like step-by-step approach is a method.Furthermore, this approach I have described indeed requires much rigour in how to

choose and use ‘data’. Then, can the argument that this is not a method be taken

seriously?

Historical discourse analysis as the approach I have described here can be located

within the so-called poststructuralist tradition. I believe what Danish feminist

researcher Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2002) describes as ‘poststructuralist-inspired

empirical analysis’ can say something about why I do not want historical discourse

analysis to be called a method; she calls for ‘analytic inspiration for a creative

development of new understandings’ (p. 202) meant to problematize the taken-for-

granted beliefs. Historical discourse analysis, as described here, has developed out of

such endeavours.

Historical discourse analysis, as well as other poststructuralist research

approaches, is well suited to questioning common assumptions. One of these is

that the beliefs and intentions of those who propose policy and practices matter. By

using historical discourse analysis, it is pointed out that it does not matter whether

policy makers wanted full inclusion of all children; what matters are the

consequences of the policy, how it connects with other policies and practices, howit plays out in practice. Of course, this immediately raises questions: Could we have

foreseen the consequences? Could we have foreseen whether the consequences would

be desirable or not? Would an understanding of the historical conjuncture have

guided the policy maker or practitioner to adopt some other strategies? This is much

less a moral question than it is a practical one of being able to understand the

legitimating principles in the historical conjuncture where reform is proposed.

When doing historical discourse analysis, the researcher does not search for the

‘authors’ of the ideas or practices. The researcher aims to identify the involvement of

the individuals and groups at stake, how they have become normalized in the

discourse, and how they take certain assumptions for granted. This does not mean



the documents were not written by people, and it does not even mean that they were

written by uncreative people. On the contrary, the discourse in question is not static;

it develops because individuals consciously and unconsciously adopt discursive

themes � some of them are creative ideas � as their social strategies. In historical

discourse analysis, we search for the principles � ‘rules’ � in the discourse, the themes

that characterize the discourse. Reading documents and newspapers is among the

means to find those principles.The metaphor of an authorless discourse in terms of the fact that no identified

author wrote it is especially interesting for Icelanders because, with regard to some

of the greatest work of literature written in Icelandic, the Old Norse sagas, we still

do not know the author(s), for instance Njals Saga (Anonymous, 1960). Knowing

who is the author is, however, by no means insignificant; at times it may be quite

relevant and important to know who wrote particular government documents,

because it may take less time to locate discursive relatives for the researcher to

understand the interplay of discursive power and other forms of power (e.g.,

Johannesson, 2010).

An important aspect of historical discourse analysis is that it allows researchers

and professionals to investigate their own involvement in the discourse, how we

normalize ourselves to take as self-evident certain beliefs and assumptions and adopt

them as our social strategies. Such professional-political study of one’s own

involvement can indeed be the chief aim of historical discourse analysis, because we

as professionals are important in how the discourse evolves. It is important, however,

that this is not handled by the researcher as merely a personal responsibility, but as acollective search for unearthing the ‘epistemological unconscious’ of his or her

discipline (Wacquant, in Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 41).

Of course, a researcher using the approach of historical discourse analysis, who

works alone or writes with a small group of other researchers, will also look at his or

her own involvement to understand how s/he is involved in the discourse or the event

s/he is describing. This is, as I demonstrated above, built into the narrative. But

I repeat: this is a practical part of the story, rather than a moral endeavour of being

right or wrong.

Having at least twice refused that morality should be considered as an aspect of

the story, I must also say that historical discourse analysis research can be highly

moral and political: What happened to the results presented in the story? What kind

of contradictions did the research identify? Were contradictions exploited, discourse

interrupted? In the same vein, Lee (2000) demands a look at the ‘material effects’ of

analysis: How is the research used? How is it taken up? Historical discourse analysis

does not end with the publication of the research narrative; the story is never a

matter of innocent results that the researcher can claim no responsibility for.The choice of research issues is also a moral and political endeavour. The

research and its environment is not a neutral act, never purely scientific. We who

conduct historical discourse analysis should do what Lather (2007) demands of

feminist work: ‘if feminist work is not to become routinized, static and predictable, it

must interrogate the enabling limits of its own practices’. In brief, the research story

becomes part of the discourse, and we need to delve into its modes of existence

(Foucault, 1979b).

Finally, I wish to remind ourselves of what Kallos said 30 years ago: ‘Problems in

studying schooling are by no means primarily methodological, i.e., that we are not



confronted with the task of a mere substitution of one package of methods for

another’ (1981, pp. 31�32). In my opinion, the focus on research methodology is one

kind of fetish. Ironically, of course, this article � by its very existence � certainly does

not work against the fetish of methodology. I also must admit that historicaldiscourse analysis is a method to the extent that we, as researchers, work within a

research community where we need to follow expectations, some of which are stated

and others are embedded in the discourse about research. But as an approach,

historical discourse analysis offers the possibility to include reflections about before

and after the research. In that sense, historical discourse analysis is hardly an

ordinary method.

Acknowledgements

The article was drafted during a research sabbatical granted by the University of Akureyri. Iwould like to thank my colleagues as well as graduate students in three overseas universities,namely Gothenburg University, John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, and theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison for their conversations and inspiration when we werediscussing this topic.

Notes

1. In an English translation of Foucault’s lecture, ‘What is an author?’, the phrase is historicalanalysis of discourse (Foucault, 1979b).

2. After the publication of an article in Discourse (Johannesson, 2006a), I was asked to write achapter in a book about ideas and concepts in disability studies in Icelandic (Johannesson,2006b). The primary focus of the chapter was to be a guide about how to conduct discourseanalysis. This article follows in part the logic and ideas presented there, but with a widerfocus on the discussion.

3. I am indebted to Sharp and Richardson (2001) for identifying many of the steps andguiding questions at each step. Their steps and questions were helpful in my task ofexplaining my ways of working.

4. An important method to learn to perform historical discourse analysis is to read such work.This journal, Discourse, publishes many articles that use historical discourse analysis (see,for instance, Johannesson, 2006a; Thomas, 2003; Thomson, 2001). Of edited volumes, Irecommend, for instance, Popkewitz, Franklin, and Pereyra (2001) and Baker and Heyning(2004).

5. Mentioning genealogy, one may ask how historical discourse analysis differs from it. Iwould begin by saying that the difference between historical discourse analysis and otherFoucauldian, Bourdieuean, or feminist research approaches is not important per se. But ifthere is a difference between my use of historical discourse analysis and genealogy, it is thefocus of historical discourse analysis on a particular historical conjuncture that makes thedifference. Moreover, genealogy as a term for a research approach is probably less likely tobe claimed by ‘qualitative’ methods than historical discourse analysis; thus it needs lessdefence.

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