Dominant Discourse Analysis

Although an individual’s identity is their own, their thinking and actions are influenced by external forces. This means that a person’s action can be defined by the dominant discourses in society, such as gender and sexuality. Michael Foucault’s definition of discourse is more than just the ways of thinking and producing meaning through communication. The notion of discourse defined by Foucault have become closely associated with power and knowledge (Miller, 1990). Dominant discourse demonstrates how reality has been socially constructed. They can be found in many forms of media and communication. Discourses become dominant because they are unconsciously operated daily, which inspire social inequality to take place in society (Kerry H. Robinson
Burr (2015) comments that it is very unlikely for another regime of truth to occur outside of our current social reality, as “nothing exists except as it exists in discourse” (p.94). This means that the effect of the existing dominant discourse being so powerful that it is psychologically ingrained within our being. This is exemplified with images that represent discourse of masculinity and femininity. The image above is one of things that appear in the google images section when typing ‘femininity in the media’. The findings on the search engine demonstrates femininity being associated with women being slender, beautiful and dressed nicely across media. This evidently displays the heavy influence of discourse in the world. Pritchard & Cramblitt’s research (2014) has indicated that the media has an apparent mental and physical influence on individuals, especially on their own body appearance and what they consider are the norms. In essence, such discourse are not just plain thoughts and ideals brought up by certain individuals, but they constitute to a system of society that functions based on what people think is the
Discourses that are continuously practiced socially throughout history become more dominant. It produces invisible rules that people blindly follow and abide by. There is a noticeable relationship between discourse, power and knowledge. People who possess strong knowledge and power over others have more chances of making certain discourses stronger. This is because individuals are more influenced and motivated to do things that are based off people with greater power. Social media is a form of interaction across the globe, which individuals use to their advantage and convince others to operate a certain way due to discourse. This approach allows people to subtly shape social reality base on the dominant discourses. The social reality that creates cultural binaries and unfairness. However, there are organisations that attempt to use social media to persuade the to the public by conforming to an alternate discourse that brings equality among everyone. There are also professionals who utilise deconstruction techniques in education, which educates to children to question and tackle the negative discourses in