METHODOLOGY

A potential pitfall of a discursive approach to the study of national identities is that it can be easy to get carried away with a narrow focus on selected discourses. For example, there might be a temptation to study media discourses in isolation from any consideration of how these discourses are actually integrated into the identities of those people who read (or even those who do not read) the discourses in question. In many respects this again invokes the question of media effects– that is, how much impact do media discourses actually have on people's attitudes and behaviour? Most commonly a discursive approach is based on the ontological assumption that discursive actors create meaning. This, in turn, would indicate that it is important to study the discursive content of specific discursive agents, be they journalists, politicians, academics or any other socially important actors. While this research adheres to a constructivist position, it is also acknowledged that the sheer number of potentially creative agents means that it is impossible to conduct a comprehensive study of discourse for any given topic. It is precisely for this reason that CDA has traditionally focused on the areas deemed to be most discursively significant: the fields of politics and the media. This makes logical sense when consideration is given to the outreach and exposure politicians and journalists can potentially enjoy. Nevertheless, this traditional focus is not without its problems.

The most obvious potential problem is that, by focusing solely on the moment of production, we can miss the importance of the moment of consumption– for Stuart Hall (1980) encoding and decoding respectively. That is to say that it is possible to examine why and how discursive agents create specific discourses without considering how these discourses are interpreted by their audiences. Moreover, by privileging the moment of production when trying to map out the contours of group identities, there is the possibility of effectively trying to speak on behalf of large groups of individuals without letting them have any input into the conclusions that are drawn.