Political rethoric
LECTURE 1: introduction
This course focuses on the interaction between language, media, and society.
We approach the world from a discursive perspective: we examine how language shapes our
understanding of reality, our social relationships, and our position within society.
Central to the course is the question of what role language use in media contexts plays in
shaping society and its structures, norms, identities, and power relations.
Media occupy a key position in this process, as they actively contribute to the construction of
meaning by disseminating particular discourses—what stories are told, by whom, where, and
in what context.
This process influences how we think about societal issues such as democracy, racism and
diversity, economic inequality, gender and sexual identities, climate change, and more.
Language shapes our society, therefore there is nothing neutral in it.
TYPES:
Social constructionism: What is meaning and where does it reside?
Poststructuralism (discourse theory): How does discourse shape the possible?
Critical discourse analysis (CDA): How is power enacted through discourse?
Cultural media studies: How do media sustain or challenge discourse?
Social constructionism: What is meaning and where does it reside?
1 The social construction of reality
Ø What does it mean for something to be “socially constructed”?
It is not constructed by nature; it doesn’t exist naturally. It exists because humans
decided to agree to make it. It is real because we act as if its real. It doesn’t mean that
it is imaginary or fake, it has consequences.
Examples: we all believe that paper with certain symbols is money. We agree that
money has value and that things are related to money; beauty: in different societies
1
, Political rethoric
and times what it beautiful has changed, it is a social construction that we agree
upon.
Ø What does this idea challenge?
Continuity: It can always be changed, it various across history and societies.
Example: Halloween didn’t exist in Europe two decades ago
2
, Political rethoric
LECTURE 2: social constructionalism
1 The social Construction of reality
1.1 From essentialism to constructionism
Essentialism: Meaning reflects reality (language represents) language just communicates
what is already there
Structuralism: Meaning comes from linguistic systems (Saussure) we use certain words for
certain phenomenoms. Words are part of a system in which some are connected from
another. Example: cats aren’t dogs but they are related
Constructionism: Meaning is produced through discourse ONLY; reality is made, not merely
reflected. Words have no intersubjective connection to what they represent, they can always
be different. Emerges in 1960s sociology, influenced by:
Phenomenology (Husserl, Schutz): experience as intersubjective
• Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer): self and society built through
interaction
• Linguistic turn in philosophy: language as constitutive of reality
What social changes have made this theory appealing;
- Social movements: Movements for racial, women equality
- Declining trust in authority: People don’t just accept authority like they used to do
- Rice of new media (television): Which made it clear that media contributed how we
see the world.
- Academia itself: move away from structuralism, …
Everyone can participate in making reality, and social constructionalism matched the
framework that was going on in this time
1.2 Core Assumptions of Social Constructionism
1. Reality is not objective but socially produced.
2. Knowledge is created through social
interaction and language.
3
, Political rethoric
3. Meanings are negotiated, not discovered (if you find enough followers you can go to
step 4)
4. Institutions and norms solidify these meanings.
What counts as “truth” is contingent on context and power.
this challenges our commonsense ideas of truth and science
- How is knowledge produced? Scientific inventions are not something that is there
and we have to discovere it. Social construction says that there is a process of
interaction and shared meaning
- Example concept of race
1.3 The Process: How Reality Becomes “Real”
STAGE 1: Externalization:
humans create cultural products (language, norms, ideas).
STAGE 2: Objectivation:
these creations take on a reality of their own (“that’s just how it is”).
STAGE 3: Internalization:
individuals learn and reproduce them as natural truths.
Can you think of an example of something “made up” that feels real in everyday life:
Money: paper or digits become “valuable” through shared belief.
Gender: norms of masculinity/femininity are learned, not biological.
Race: socially defined categories with real social effects.
Mental illness: definitions change across time and culture.-
1.5 Examples of social constructions
EXAMPLE MONEY
What is it? pieces of paper, metal coins
Why does it feel real? it has value, we buy food, we measure value
4
, Political rethoric
Why is it social constructive? the value doesn’t come from paper but from collective trust
and institutions (banks and governments)
EXAMPLE TRAFFIC LIGHTS
What is it? red means stop; green means go
Why does it feel real? because we al behave and if someone doesn’t it has consequences
Why is it social constructive? it was designed by humans for humans and it is contiguous
because we can say from tomorrow red lights will be changed into pink
EXAMPLE GENDER ROLES
What is it? expectations about how men and woman should look, act and behave
Why does it feel real? these norms are build into our language, institutions, clothes, how
we evaluate emotions
Why is it social constructive? gender roles are not following nature, there are meaning
that we attach to bodies and we ‘collectively’ (not always) are passed through
EXAMPLE SOCIAL CLASS
What is it? a (hierarchical) place you are in society based on income, job, family,
education,
Why does it feel real? behaviour; what we wear, who we see as superior or inferior
Why is it social constructive? there is no objective necessity to treat each other
differently. Only based on shared values
Are social constructions “unreal,” or do they have real consequences?
5
, Political rethoric
2 Meaning, discourse and society
2.1 Where can meaning be found?
“Meaning is not in the head. It is in the discourse.” What does it mean for meaning to
be “in the discourse”?
- We agree on the fact that we refer to a word with a thing. Meaning don’t live inside
us, they don’t come from our private ideas or intentions. They emerged from
discourses around us and then we have agreed to refer to things a certain way.
- It doesn’t mean nothing exist outside of discourse, it means that how we understand
and talk about it is always based on discourse. it never comes from the things
itselves!
- Example: a dog is a dog not because the dog wants us to call it a dog but because we
have agreed to refer to a dog as a dog
Where can meaning be found?
Traditionally, linguists and philosophers have tried to “locate” meaning in one of two places:
1. In the mind — as mental concepts or ideas that words refer to (a kind of mental
dictionary).
2. In the brain — as neural activity or patterns that correspond to meanings (a cognitive
or neuroscientific approach).
Both views assume that meaning exists inside individuals, that we are born with it —
either as inner representations or brain states.
Why not in mental concepts? = in the mind
- We can never directly access another person’s thoughts; we can only interpret what they
say or write.
- If meaning were purely mental, communication would be impossible — we’d each be
locked inside our own minds.
- The only thing we can access and share are discourses — the socially circulating uses of
language that give words their sense.
6
, Political rethoric
So, meaning must be collective, not private: we don’t share meanings by sharing “mental
representations”; we share meanings by participating in public language practices.
Example fishbowl: fish is in own blow and free from other influences but he can’t escape. It
represents language because we can’t escape language
Why not in neural activity? = in the brain
• Neural activity can explain how we process language, but not what it means we
can only learn that from social interaction
• Brains don’t “contain” meaning; but they do enable participation in discourse (= talk).
• The relation between words and concepts is cultural and historical, not biological.
In other words, neural states are necessary but not sufficient for meaning: Meaning
belongs to the social level — the level of discourse — not to the biological substrate.
Meaning = a social and discursive phenomenon
§ Emerges in discourse, understood as all the texts and talks produced by a speech
community over time we use it be giving meaning in everything that is around is
§ Is intersubjective — shared, negotiated, and contested between people
§ Is historical and contextual — it can change as discursive practices change (or
ideas/technology/…)
So the “meaning” of a word like freedom, democracy, or love is not in anyone’s head, but
in how it has been used and argued over in public language: Meaning is what a community
has made of a word — through its ongoing use in discourse.
we can interpret it in our personal ways, but its means something when we start talking
about it to other people. They can interpret that and start tzalking about that to others
By symbolic interaction in social communication
- All meaning is symbolic: “Unless I am told, a word means nothing.”
- Meaning is only in discourse.
- We have no access to the individual mind or to reality “out there”.
7
, Political rethoric
- The text alone has no meaning in itself.
- Reality is constructed in discourse.
- There can never be a finite answer to the meaning of meaning there can’t be a definte
answer to all things, things change, interpretations change, … (example what is the
meaning of love). There is no final interpretation of ideas. You can always interpret things
differently this means that you are constantly adding things to your discourse
2.2 There is no meaning without other people
How do we make sense of our experiences of life, things and people?
- We find this “sense” in collective discourse: the sum of everything that has been said
and written by members of the discourse community to which we owe our identity.
- Whatever happens to us only has meaning after interpretation: after reflection and
after sharing them with others.
- Interpretation is a collaborative act:
§ We do not interpret our experiences for ourselves; we do it for an audience,
imagined (talk to ourself) or otherwise. We learn from the interpretations of
others and we want to share ours.
§ We contribute to a limitless all-encompassing blog uniting humankind.
- It is “the discourse” that makes our lives meaningful Animals are not concerned with
the meaning of life since they lack the language to contribute to the discourse (they
cannot talk to about it)
8
, Political rethoric
2.3 Language and knowlegde
Language provides categories for experience (e.g., “illegal alien” vs. “refugee”).
Naming something brings it into social existence. by talking about it and categorizing it
Discourse sustains power relations calling someone an illegal alien represents different
relationship than refugee
Science itself is a discourse — a socially regulated form of knowledge production.
Example 1: global warming versus climate crisis
Example 2: What is the meaning of life?
we will use options from the past and a larger discourse when we try to give answers
The meaning of life is what the meaning of the word life is; or all that has been said
about it.
There is no answer that has not already been expressed before.
We are only aware of things or ideas that have already been discussed.
Something new or personal is always a recombination, variation or reformulation of
what has been said before.
So language and discourse shape everything, making things available to us in the first
place.
Example 3: What is globalization?
9
, Political rethoric
All that has ever been said about it.
Not a matter of true or false: that refers to something outside of the discourse.
Meaning is never final, but always provisional.
If we don’t agree, we open a conversation and add meaning to what is already known
about the “object of discourse”.
Example 4: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, what matters is
to change it.” – Karl Marx Marx distinguishes how you can interpret things and change
things. But by reinterpretation things
2.5 Teubert’s social constructionism
Meaning as a discourse
Why start here?
- Philosophical foundation: meaning exists only in discourse, not in individual minds or
external reality. (not everything in this class will agree with this idea)
- Confront us with fundamental epistemological questions: What is meaning? Where
does it live? Who creates it? (epistemological questions = how we can know things)
- Establishes a shared constructionist vocabulary before the more political or empirical
frameworks.
Key ideas:
- Meaning is socially negotiated within discourse communities.
- Language is not a mirror of reality but the medium through which reality is made
intelligible.
Comparison Teubert
vs Critical discourse analysis
Yes, meaning is socially and discursively constructed through discourse.
No, there is a dialectical relationship between social structures and discourse
+ research must serve a normative critical agenda, i.e. the purpose of social
emancipation.
10
LECTURE 1: introduction
This course focuses on the interaction between language, media, and society.
We approach the world from a discursive perspective: we examine how language shapes our
understanding of reality, our social relationships, and our position within society.
Central to the course is the question of what role language use in media contexts plays in
shaping society and its structures, norms, identities, and power relations.
Media occupy a key position in this process, as they actively contribute to the construction of
meaning by disseminating particular discourses—what stories are told, by whom, where, and
in what context.
This process influences how we think about societal issues such as democracy, racism and
diversity, economic inequality, gender and sexual identities, climate change, and more.
Language shapes our society, therefore there is nothing neutral in it.
TYPES:
Social constructionism: What is meaning and where does it reside?
Poststructuralism (discourse theory): How does discourse shape the possible?
Critical discourse analysis (CDA): How is power enacted through discourse?
Cultural media studies: How do media sustain or challenge discourse?
Social constructionism: What is meaning and where does it reside?
1 The social construction of reality
Ø What does it mean for something to be “socially constructed”?
It is not constructed by nature; it doesn’t exist naturally. It exists because humans
decided to agree to make it. It is real because we act as if its real. It doesn’t mean that
it is imaginary or fake, it has consequences.
Examples: we all believe that paper with certain symbols is money. We agree that
money has value and that things are related to money; beauty: in different societies
1
, Political rethoric
and times what it beautiful has changed, it is a social construction that we agree
upon.
Ø What does this idea challenge?
Continuity: It can always be changed, it various across history and societies.
Example: Halloween didn’t exist in Europe two decades ago
2
, Political rethoric
LECTURE 2: social constructionalism
1 The social Construction of reality
1.1 From essentialism to constructionism
Essentialism: Meaning reflects reality (language represents) language just communicates
what is already there
Structuralism: Meaning comes from linguistic systems (Saussure) we use certain words for
certain phenomenoms. Words are part of a system in which some are connected from
another. Example: cats aren’t dogs but they are related
Constructionism: Meaning is produced through discourse ONLY; reality is made, not merely
reflected. Words have no intersubjective connection to what they represent, they can always
be different. Emerges in 1960s sociology, influenced by:
Phenomenology (Husserl, Schutz): experience as intersubjective
• Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer): self and society built through
interaction
• Linguistic turn in philosophy: language as constitutive of reality
What social changes have made this theory appealing;
- Social movements: Movements for racial, women equality
- Declining trust in authority: People don’t just accept authority like they used to do
- Rice of new media (television): Which made it clear that media contributed how we
see the world.
- Academia itself: move away from structuralism, …
Everyone can participate in making reality, and social constructionalism matched the
framework that was going on in this time
1.2 Core Assumptions of Social Constructionism
1. Reality is not objective but socially produced.
2. Knowledge is created through social
interaction and language.
3
, Political rethoric
3. Meanings are negotiated, not discovered (if you find enough followers you can go to
step 4)
4. Institutions and norms solidify these meanings.
What counts as “truth” is contingent on context and power.
this challenges our commonsense ideas of truth and science
- How is knowledge produced? Scientific inventions are not something that is there
and we have to discovere it. Social construction says that there is a process of
interaction and shared meaning
- Example concept of race
1.3 The Process: How Reality Becomes “Real”
STAGE 1: Externalization:
humans create cultural products (language, norms, ideas).
STAGE 2: Objectivation:
these creations take on a reality of their own (“that’s just how it is”).
STAGE 3: Internalization:
individuals learn and reproduce them as natural truths.
Can you think of an example of something “made up” that feels real in everyday life:
Money: paper or digits become “valuable” through shared belief.
Gender: norms of masculinity/femininity are learned, not biological.
Race: socially defined categories with real social effects.
Mental illness: definitions change across time and culture.-
1.5 Examples of social constructions
EXAMPLE MONEY
What is it? pieces of paper, metal coins
Why does it feel real? it has value, we buy food, we measure value
4
, Political rethoric
Why is it social constructive? the value doesn’t come from paper but from collective trust
and institutions (banks and governments)
EXAMPLE TRAFFIC LIGHTS
What is it? red means stop; green means go
Why does it feel real? because we al behave and if someone doesn’t it has consequences
Why is it social constructive? it was designed by humans for humans and it is contiguous
because we can say from tomorrow red lights will be changed into pink
EXAMPLE GENDER ROLES
What is it? expectations about how men and woman should look, act and behave
Why does it feel real? these norms are build into our language, institutions, clothes, how
we evaluate emotions
Why is it social constructive? gender roles are not following nature, there are meaning
that we attach to bodies and we ‘collectively’ (not always) are passed through
EXAMPLE SOCIAL CLASS
What is it? a (hierarchical) place you are in society based on income, job, family,
education,
Why does it feel real? behaviour; what we wear, who we see as superior or inferior
Why is it social constructive? there is no objective necessity to treat each other
differently. Only based on shared values
Are social constructions “unreal,” or do they have real consequences?
5
, Political rethoric
2 Meaning, discourse and society
2.1 Where can meaning be found?
“Meaning is not in the head. It is in the discourse.” What does it mean for meaning to
be “in the discourse”?
- We agree on the fact that we refer to a word with a thing. Meaning don’t live inside
us, they don’t come from our private ideas or intentions. They emerged from
discourses around us and then we have agreed to refer to things a certain way.
- It doesn’t mean nothing exist outside of discourse, it means that how we understand
and talk about it is always based on discourse. it never comes from the things
itselves!
- Example: a dog is a dog not because the dog wants us to call it a dog but because we
have agreed to refer to a dog as a dog
Where can meaning be found?
Traditionally, linguists and philosophers have tried to “locate” meaning in one of two places:
1. In the mind — as mental concepts or ideas that words refer to (a kind of mental
dictionary).
2. In the brain — as neural activity or patterns that correspond to meanings (a cognitive
or neuroscientific approach).
Both views assume that meaning exists inside individuals, that we are born with it —
either as inner representations or brain states.
Why not in mental concepts? = in the mind
- We can never directly access another person’s thoughts; we can only interpret what they
say or write.
- If meaning were purely mental, communication would be impossible — we’d each be
locked inside our own minds.
- The only thing we can access and share are discourses — the socially circulating uses of
language that give words their sense.
6
, Political rethoric
So, meaning must be collective, not private: we don’t share meanings by sharing “mental
representations”; we share meanings by participating in public language practices.
Example fishbowl: fish is in own blow and free from other influences but he can’t escape. It
represents language because we can’t escape language
Why not in neural activity? = in the brain
• Neural activity can explain how we process language, but not what it means we
can only learn that from social interaction
• Brains don’t “contain” meaning; but they do enable participation in discourse (= talk).
• The relation between words and concepts is cultural and historical, not biological.
In other words, neural states are necessary but not sufficient for meaning: Meaning
belongs to the social level — the level of discourse — not to the biological substrate.
Meaning = a social and discursive phenomenon
§ Emerges in discourse, understood as all the texts and talks produced by a speech
community over time we use it be giving meaning in everything that is around is
§ Is intersubjective — shared, negotiated, and contested between people
§ Is historical and contextual — it can change as discursive practices change (or
ideas/technology/…)
So the “meaning” of a word like freedom, democracy, or love is not in anyone’s head, but
in how it has been used and argued over in public language: Meaning is what a community
has made of a word — through its ongoing use in discourse.
we can interpret it in our personal ways, but its means something when we start talking
about it to other people. They can interpret that and start tzalking about that to others
By symbolic interaction in social communication
- All meaning is symbolic: “Unless I am told, a word means nothing.”
- Meaning is only in discourse.
- We have no access to the individual mind or to reality “out there”.
7
, Political rethoric
- The text alone has no meaning in itself.
- Reality is constructed in discourse.
- There can never be a finite answer to the meaning of meaning there can’t be a definte
answer to all things, things change, interpretations change, … (example what is the
meaning of love). There is no final interpretation of ideas. You can always interpret things
differently this means that you are constantly adding things to your discourse
2.2 There is no meaning without other people
How do we make sense of our experiences of life, things and people?
- We find this “sense” in collective discourse: the sum of everything that has been said
and written by members of the discourse community to which we owe our identity.
- Whatever happens to us only has meaning after interpretation: after reflection and
after sharing them with others.
- Interpretation is a collaborative act:
§ We do not interpret our experiences for ourselves; we do it for an audience,
imagined (talk to ourself) or otherwise. We learn from the interpretations of
others and we want to share ours.
§ We contribute to a limitless all-encompassing blog uniting humankind.
- It is “the discourse” that makes our lives meaningful Animals are not concerned with
the meaning of life since they lack the language to contribute to the discourse (they
cannot talk to about it)
8
, Political rethoric
2.3 Language and knowlegde
Language provides categories for experience (e.g., “illegal alien” vs. “refugee”).
Naming something brings it into social existence. by talking about it and categorizing it
Discourse sustains power relations calling someone an illegal alien represents different
relationship than refugee
Science itself is a discourse — a socially regulated form of knowledge production.
Example 1: global warming versus climate crisis
Example 2: What is the meaning of life?
we will use options from the past and a larger discourse when we try to give answers
The meaning of life is what the meaning of the word life is; or all that has been said
about it.
There is no answer that has not already been expressed before.
We are only aware of things or ideas that have already been discussed.
Something new or personal is always a recombination, variation or reformulation of
what has been said before.
So language and discourse shape everything, making things available to us in the first
place.
Example 3: What is globalization?
9
, Political rethoric
All that has ever been said about it.
Not a matter of true or false: that refers to something outside of the discourse.
Meaning is never final, but always provisional.
If we don’t agree, we open a conversation and add meaning to what is already known
about the “object of discourse”.
Example 4: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, what matters is
to change it.” – Karl Marx Marx distinguishes how you can interpret things and change
things. But by reinterpretation things
2.5 Teubert’s social constructionism
Meaning as a discourse
Why start here?
- Philosophical foundation: meaning exists only in discourse, not in individual minds or
external reality. (not everything in this class will agree with this idea)
- Confront us with fundamental epistemological questions: What is meaning? Where
does it live? Who creates it? (epistemological questions = how we can know things)
- Establishes a shared constructionist vocabulary before the more political or empirical
frameworks.
Key ideas:
- Meaning is socially negotiated within discourse communities.
- Language is not a mirror of reality but the medium through which reality is made
intelligible.
Comparison Teubert
vs Critical discourse analysis
Yes, meaning is socially and discursively constructed through discourse.
No, there is a dialectical relationship between social structures and discourse
+ research must serve a normative critical agenda, i.e. the purpose of social
emancipation.
10
