a critique of critical discourse analysis: deconstructing and reconstructing the role of intention

. Sara Cobb

Communication Theory

Four: Two

Pages: 132-152

A Critique of Critical Discourse Analysis: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Role of Intent ion

Current approaches to critical discourse analysis either presume that persons are active agents, intentionally and strategically resisting oppression and domination or that persons are objects, inscribed in the reproduction and reconstitution of speech conventions. These dichotomies (intention/convention and resistance/ reproduction) inhibit the description of the discursive processes through which persons participate actively in the transformation of dominant ideologies. This article attempts to dissolve these dichotomies by deconstructing the role of intentionality in critical discourse analysis and redefining intentions as social constructions in discourse, rather than deep structures manifest in speech action. Using Anscombe ( 1 960), I define intention as a language game central to the political management of positions in discourse; from this perspective, intentions, as discursive artifacts, are empirically available and methodologically pertinent to the analysis of power in communicative practices.

Rodney King should be grateful- according to the defense, the policeman who stepped on his neck during his arrest was restraining him from getting up and thereby protecting him from the blows of fellow officers who would have continued to hit King with their batons had King man- aged to struggle to his feet (New York Times, April 30, 1992). The acquittal of the policeman in the criminal trial for the beating of Rodney King was shocking because it demonstrated that what was at issue, at least for the jurors, was not that King was brutally beaten, but w h y he was beaten: as it was presented, he was beaten because he “resisted arrest” (Time, May 11, 1992).’ The white policemen were acquitted because they were understood as responding to the actions of King, who was repeatedly described by the defense as “being in control” of the episode (New York Times, May 1,1992).

Critics of the trial, decrying racism, have focused on the intentions of the judge when he approved a change of venue or the intentions of the all-white jury as they reviewed facts about King’s beating (WuU Street ]ournal, May 1 , 1992), on the assumption that proof of racism is a function of the intention to discriminate.’ What is at issue in this genre of critical analysis is the accurate depicting of inner reasons for people’s actions: the “discovery” of their true intentions.

Effective critical analysis of this trial must instead ask the question

Critique of Critical Discourse Analysis

“how”- how did the defense manage to locate agency in the prone body of a man being beaten? How were his “actions” imbued with bad intent? How were the officers’ baton blows (to body parts that included the face and head) imbued with good intent? How were responsibility and blame constructed? How did these constructions in discourse deny King’s claim to victim status?

It is my thesis in this article that existing approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA) are unable to address these “how” questions due to the relationship between intentions and action posited by two dominant strains of CDA-what I refer to as the “intentionalists” and the “conventionalists”: the former leads critical analysts to imbue actions with intentions and the latter, to ignoreldeny agency altogether. My task in this article is to deconstruct the role of intentions in critical discourse analysis in an effort to recast intentions as discursive artifacts, socially constituted, and empirically available as structures relevant, and indeed central, to the construction/location of blame and responsibility. I argue that intentions “appear” in social contexts where the meaning of conduct is indeterminate; in these contexts, persons (collectively) construct connections between actions, outcomes of those actions, and intentions. In turn, these connections establish the “meaning” of the action-persons are either socially condemned or socially accepted as a function of what intentions are attributed. From this perspective, intentions attributed construct social liability /culpability via the demarcation of legitimate/delegitimate positions in social space. Because intentions contribute to the regulation of social/ discursive space, they function as disciplinary discursive structures, controlling and regimenting how persons are situated in moral orders (Foucault, 1979). In this way, intentions are central to our understanding of the relation between power and discourse, not because intentions reveal (or mask) persons’ moves to dominate, but because intentions construct legitimacy or delegitimacy and all their corollary consequence^.^

Statement of the Problem Much of discourse analysis that addresses power locates ideology either inside persons or inside institutions-in either case, as a function of the needs and interests of individuals or group^.^ Talk (or conversation) is often treated as a tool that actors use to dominate, coerce, manipulate, save face, or further their own plans or goals;’ in other words, talk is understood and described as the manifestation of the intention to dominate and an expression of power.

This formulation of the relationship between power, language, and intentions is based on a Weberian concept of power as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his (or her) own will despite resistances” (Weber, 1947, p. 152). To use this definition of power is to locate ideology in the heads of individu-

als, driven by their intention to dominate or subvert; the task of CDA is then to surface the linkages between individuals’ intentions and outcomes in interaction (Thompson, 1983). This approach to the intention-language relationship is based on the assumption that intentions operate as deep structure to action/talk (surface structure).

In communication research, speech act theory has provided the basis for an extension of Weberian concepts of power; both Searle (1 969) and Austin (1 962) define speech activity as the manifestation of intentions in action. Searle (1 983) has differentiated between “prior intentions” and “intentions-in-action”; the former precedes action and the latter, coupled with bodily movements, is action. In this way Searle is able to maintain a structuralist approach to intention without needing to claim that all actions manifest prior intention; prior intention causes intentions-in- action, but this causal connection may not be obvious or apparent in the intentions-in-action. Thus we can have what appear to be unintended actions that are simply actions in which the causal connection to prior intentions is unclear or unavailable.

The use of speech act theory (and its Weberian correlate) is problematic for critical discourse analysis with respect to (1) the level of analysis at which critique takes place; (2) the nature of the critical description that is fostered; and (3) the epistemology of the critique itself. In terms of the level of analysis, this approach fosters a focus on isolated individuals and reenacts the quest for the “origin” of action toward the construction of a causal explanation of talk, that is, the “intention” underlying the talk. However, neither intentions nor actions originate in individuals in the sense that any act is a symbolic accomplishment, the meaning of which forever exceeds the limits of the act itself (Ricoeur, 1984).6

In terms of the nature of the critical description, the intentionalist perspective leads to the construction of two kinds of critical descriptions, neither of which are adequate: descriptions of “false consciousness” and descriptions of “resistance.” Either persons are duped by the powerful or they are resisting oppression. Yet both explanations are tautological - neither can be proved or disproved as long as analysts assume that persons may not know or may falsify their intentions. In tautological critical accounts, like psychoanalysis, analysts are empirically unable to differentiate “real” resistance from acquiescence’ or, for that matter, identify whose interests are served, denied, or coopted in discourse. Cut off from any empirical base for assessing intent, the validity of the critique remains caught in the centrifugal force of the critic’s perspective.

This brings me to the third problem: epistemology. Underlying intentions (intentionality) cannot provide a valid empirical base for critical analysis- intentions are not “available” except by inference. Both prior intention and intention-in-action must be “read” off of action, an act that itself constitutes the authority of the critic and effaces the subjectivity of those framed by the critique. This critical approach to discourse yields patriarchal forms of knowledge that reconstitute the omniscience of sci-

ence through its construction as objective and neutral (Harding & Hin- tikka, 1983);’ and subject’s construction of intention is dematerialized and transformed into a third-person account that itself is authorized precisely because it is third person.

Fairclough (1 989) offers an alternative to the “intentionalists”:

The main weakness of pragmatics from a critical view is its individualism: “action” is thought of atomistically as emanating wholly from the individual, and is often conceptualized in terms of “strategies” adopted by the individual speaker to achieve her “goals” or “intentions.” This understates the extent to which people are caught up in, constrained by, and indeed derive their individual identi- ties from social convention, and gives the implausible impression that conven- tionalized ways of speaking or writing are “reinvented” on each occasion of their use by the speaker generating a suitable strategy for her particular goals. (p. 9)

Here Fairclough critiques pragmatics for its reliance on the “strategic” relationships between intention and action, advocating a focus on the conventions for speaking, instead of intentions. For example, the cultural approaches to communication often describe and account for the speech customs of a given community. While the focus on conventions for speaking can, in fact, obviate the instrumental relationship proposed by speech act theory between intentions and talk, it does so by obliterat- ing a focus on intention, for it is the general, rather than the specific, the norm, rather than the idiosyncratic, that is described. The absence of intentions in the critical analysis of conventions is also problematic due to (1 ) the level of analysis; ( 2 ) the nature of the critical descriptions; and (3) epistemology that is enacted. As to the level of analysis, the conventionalist perspective often favors a focus on global, macrolevel social structure and, in so doing, dematerializes the intentions people attribute to self/other, uprooting the meaning of their actions.

As for the nature of the critical descriptions, there is an inevitable determinism built into the conventionalist critique (which parallels the tautological nature of resistance and false consciousness): circular causality replaces linear causality, reproduction, rather than resistance becomes the focus. Yet the result is still tautological. In describing “reproduction,” dominant discourses are described as maintaining their dominance by “eclipsing,” “marginalizing,” “subverting,” “coopting,” “silencing,” “incorporating,” and “transforming” discourses that challenge their authority. Critical analysis of conventions for speaking, such as Willis’s (1981) study of Britain’s educational system, all too often yield accounts of disembodied discourse that is anthropomorphic in its intent to dominate. Agency is located in the discourse itself (or the state as an agent of discourse); subjectivity is displaced, objectified in the “signs” (speech conventions) that render persons incapable of altering the conditions of their own oppression.’

As for the epistemology, “conventionalists” also construct themselves

in patriarchal relation to those they profess to emancipate by erasing subjectivity (once again, on either side of the scientific frame). By smoothing irregularity and denying singularity, critics in this tradition bury any evidence of their relation to the critique and, in that moment, claim their privilege and authority to speak for others.

Problematically, critical discourse analysis that focuses on conventions for speaking marginalizes the actors’ abilities to do more than reconstitute the dominant ideology; conventions for speaking are critically assessed for their role in reproduction, while resistance itself is described as a practice leading to the continued oppression of the disen- franchised. Consequently, transformation of the dominant ideology by everyday discourse and interaction, at local levels, cannot be addressed by examining conventions for speaking because the local , everyday discourse is understood to be at the service of the dominant ideology.” Thus, critical discourse analysis that focuses on conventions for speaking, as Fairclough advocates, does show how dominant ideologies are reproduced, but it cannot account for the ways persons in conversation, at local levels, can transform or alter the discourses that contribute to their own domination and marginalization.

When are acts in everyday life acts of resistance and when are they simply acts of accommodation? When are persons victims of dominant ideologies and when are they agents, intervening in their domination, transforming the discourses that victimize them? These questions arise from the dichotomous focus in critical discourse analysis on intentions and conventions-either persons are subjects, that is, agents, or objects, that is, “inscribed” in discourse; in both approaches, power and ideology are either conceptualized as a function of the intentions of actors (in- ferred from speech acts) or as a function of the conventions of discourse that reconstitute themselves- ways of speaking that both reproduce the dominant discourse and constrain contestation to it. The former is consistent with approaches to critical analysis that focus on processes of resistance (Scott, 1985), while the latter is characteristic of approaches that focus on the reconstitution of dominant ideologies (Hall, 1987). In the former, persons are subjects in action; in the latter, persons are objects of discourse. Both sets of descriptions are constructed on assumptions about the relation between intentions and action: in one case, intentions are manifest in actions; in the other case, persons act without intentions - resistance is ineffective at best, and at the worst, contributes to the reconstitution of the dominant ideology.

The sharp dichotomy between passive (objects) and active (subjects) in critical discourse analysis fails to provide accounts of action that can simultaneously describe persons both as agents and as inscribed into a unique moment in social life. If persons are agents, critical discourse analysis describes their actions as “strategies,” “plans,” or “goals” on the assumption that a means-end relationship can be established between

intentions and action. If persons are not described as agents they are simply recipients of others’ actions, prisoners of dominant ideology.

Mitchell (1990), criticizing Scott (1985), discusses our use of this subject/object dichotomy as a function of our “metaphors of power” that create and sustain a Cartesianism at the core of our critical endeav- ors: these systems of opposition include “material vs. ideological, actions vs. words, observable versus hidden, coerced versus free, base versus superstructure, body versus spirit” (Mitchell, 1990, p. 8).”

Built into the theory (of power), therefore, is the latent notion of a subjectivity or selfhood that preexists and is maintained against an objective material world, and a corresponding conception of power as an objective force that must somehow penetrate this nonmaterial subjectivity. (Mitchell, 1990, p. 8)

The subjectivity latent in our metaphors of power sustains the rhetoric that presumes a structural relationship between intention and action, which, in turn, sustains the dichotomy between intention and convention. In this way, the attribution of intentions remains central to metaphors of power: either persons are acting with intention to subvert their own domination (or dominate others) or persons are nonagents, coopted by the dominant ideologies enacted through conventions for speaking (rules for organizing interactions).

Huspek (in press) attempts to dissolve this subject/object, resistance/ reproduction Cartesianism by describing the role of resistance in the reproduction of dominant ideology: he saves the actors as subjects by attributing strategies based on their interests; he describes the constraints on resistance by accounting for the ways “speakers of subordinate groups and classes come to incorporate . . . dominant values and reproduce them in and through their everyday discourse” (p. 29).

However, despite Huspek‘s attempt to dissolve the dichotomy between resistance and reproduction (between actors as subjects and actors as objects), he still constructs actors as subjects in terms of their (inner) interests/strategies, and he constructs actors as objects in terms of the dominant values reproduced by the workers through their daily interaction. In both cases, mental states function as indicators of resistance and reproduction. But in neither case does Huspek use discourse itself as an indicator of either reproduction or resistance. The absence of sequenced interactive data insures that critical analysis will continue to reflect and reconstruct the Cartesian distinctions at the core of Huspek‘s notion of power; we are unable to witness the ways workers transform or reconstitute the dominant discourse in and through interaction with superiors.

This problem is a function of the way Huspek has conceptualized resistance as a function of intentions and reproduction as a function of the absence of intentions (and the presence of false consciousness). In critical discourse analysis, “resistance” and “reproduction” are defined

in relation to prevailing meanings of “power”; talk about power requires the creation of actor/action relationships in talk in which a noun (pro- noun) is located in a subject position, rather than object position;” as Mitchell has noted; as everyday critical analysts of power, we are required to account for effects, which requires we create causes that, in turn, must be, from a grammatical standpoint, subjects. The subject/ object dichotomy, in turn, perpetuates the reproduction/ resistance dichotomy as analysts are forced to distinguish power and its effects through intentions.

These Cartesianisms constrain critical discourse analysis: power, as the will to dominate/subvert, requires a “strategic” relationship to action (as in the discourse of “resistance”), while power, as hegemony, as structure, (reproduction) all too often eclipses the reflexive role persons play in transformation of the very same ideology in which they are enmeshed. If we reconceptualize power as the process in which material subjectivi- ties13 are constitutedl transformed, the focus of critical analysis ceases to be the “effects” of either intentions or discourse, and it becomes possible to focus on the evolution of subject positions in conversation. If power is the process of the (contingent and incomplete) legitimation and contestation of and by subjectivities, it cannot be distilled into a particular convention or intention, for the legitimacy of persons is a function of a complex social / discursive process. However, it can be located within the specific (and local) discursive construction and contestation of these subjeaivities, processes that “appear” where the meaning of action is at issue.

Intention as Discursive Practice Due to the pervasiveness of the Kantian or tran~cendental’~ view of intention that presumes that intentions are in the heads of individuals, distinct from material practices, intentions as discursive artifacts have not been studied. In Anscombe’s (1 960) Intention, intention is conceptualized as a discursive practice, a language game in which actors use “because of’ or “in order to” to account for actions:

The term “intentional” refers to a form of description of events. What is essential to this form is displayed by the results of our inquiries into the question “Why.” Events are typically described in this form when “in order to” or “because of” is attached to their descriptions: “I slid on the ice because I felt cheerful.” (Ans- combe, 1960, pp. 3-4)‘’

As Anscombe notes, the discursive construction of intent requires that we imbue actions with directionality-that is, actions must be moving toward the production of some effect. The linear equations between actions and effects are established via because of or in order to logics; it simply is not enough to state what actions are performed (“He kicked

the ball”) - discussions of intent must unfold the effect of that action (“He kicked the ball into the goal and his team won the game”), that is, the team won because of the kick or he kicked the ball in order to win. Simply kicking the ball does not establish intentionality; the subject’s actions must have directionality.16

Because of or in order to formulations can be either explicit, as in the examples above, or implicit, in the logic that persons construct to connect actors to their actions. This logic can be unfolded, jointly constructed over a set of turns, as the data in Pomerantz’s (1978) study of “blaming” and Atkinson and Drew’s (1984) study of “accusation” sug- gest; these researchers have shown that responsibility and blame are interactively accomplished. Or this logic can be provided within one turn, as the Scott and Lyman (1968) note in their description of the “account” or “explanation.” Or still a third possibility is that the logic that connects actors to actions is not constructed at all, in which case the absence of the logic provided by because of or in order to is often socially problematic; as Scarry (1985) points out, the torture victim is often not told why he or she is a “threat to the regime,” in which case there is no reason, linked to consequences, no logic that connects actor to action; it falls to the victim to construct the relation between the pain and their actions, and their torturer’s actions.”

The because of and in order to formulations provide the logic that creates actor-action relationships, relationships that are central to narrative process and structure. Intentions attributed and displayed, in any form, establish persons as either subjects in or objects of the action referenced, as either agent or victim; this is due to the way that intentions operate as structural causal connectors between antecedent conditions and outcomes in narratives (Sarbin, 1986). Antecedent conditions are events that are defined in and by the narrative as those that lead to or caused the outcome. The ordering of events into causal sequences functions to constitute narrative time; intentions, as causal connectors, contribute to the construction of narrative time and establish the relation between the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” of any story or account, that is, the characters, the action, and the reasons for that action.

Because intentions attributed provide the causal connections between actors and their actions, they are central to the “positioning” process in discourse in any context that requires persons to explain their actions.” Obviously, some interactional contexts or episodes do not call for intention talk, for example, greetings-that is, persons do not link themselves to their action, in discourse. The reports that astronauts make of their experiments with fire in zero-gravity lack intention talk: “The flames were pearl-shaped and moved slowly.” On a more terrestrial plane, “The closet is clean” also lacks intention talk-neither action nor actor is referenced and the discursive consequence is not benign: the absence of intentions contributes to the systematic effacement of subjectivity and

has been particularly notorious in scientific discourse, where “scientists” erase intentions (on both sides of the scientific frame) (Love, 1991).19

Across divergent contexts, intention talk, similar to Scott and Lyman’s (1968) notion of “account,” enables persons to manage breaches in the social order and explain or forecast their actions.20 Whether as an account or an explanation,2’ intention talk enables persons to describe their actions while unfolding the social / moral context for interpreting that action via the language game of intention. For example, when a man says, “I hit her to keep her in line” in the context of a conversation in a bar with his friends, not only is he accounting for his action as intentional, that is, positioning himself as an agent, he is also participat- ing in the construction (reconstitution) of the moral order in which it is “good” for a man to “keep his wife in line.” This explanation does not “repair” the social order, for, in the bar context, there has been no “untoward” action.

However, when the same man appears in a court or a men’s support group for batterers, the intention talk changes dramatically: “I didn’t mean to hit her-I don’t know what came over me . . . I guess that I just get so mad that I can’t control myself. I never meant to hurt her.” The man constructs himself as a victim, passive in the wake of his powerful emotions, within a moral context in which hitting your wife is “bad.” In both cases, the intention talk does more than just bridge the gap between expectation and action; it helps to construct the moral context for the interpretation of action and locates the speaker and others in that moral context - as either subjects or objects.

For this reason, intention talk is logically different from Scott and Lyman’s (1968) notion of “accounts”-I would argue that the former subsumes the latter. While “justifications” and “excuses” are accounts that appear very similar to intention talk in form, in fact, they are speech acts that rely on intention talk to establish the relationship between actors and their actions, creating and displaying agent/victim (subject/ object) positions for actors in discourse, “locating one’s position or non- position in a narrative configuration” (Feldman, 1991, p. 15).

This process is quite visible in certain forms of speech acts, including, but not limited to, justifications and excuses. For example, accusations, requests, explanations, promises, threats, apologies, and so on, can all be displays of intention talk as actors construct/display the causal connections that link themselves to their actions.22 Thus intention talk, as a language game, is necessary to the illocutionary force of many speech acts, not because of the intentional nature of language, as Searle argued (1983), but because of the constitutive process through which persons become endowed with a location in discourse. To understand intention as a language game is to examine intention as a practice in discourse, as persons “position” themselves as subjects in or objects of action, regard- less of whether actions discussed are untoward or not.23 And it is in the

positioning process that the politics of intent become empirically available as a tool for critical description.

Intentions and the Politics of Position Davies and Harre (1989), Fairclough (1989), and Shotter (1989) have described communication as the process through which actors position themselves, “indexing” self and others in social space (Harre, 1984).24 This process involves the interactional [“dialogic” in Bakhtin’s (1981) sense] co-construction of intentions for self and others in discourse: to be “positioned” or to “position” self requires that persons connect actions to self/other, in some evaluative framework, attached to some consequences.2s

Actors do this by displaying/ attributing intentions (“in order to” and “because of”) that are rejected, denied, qualified, redefined, reframed, reaffirmed, and so on, by others, in interactive sequences,26 in narrative structures. Because intentions displayed and attributed position persons as subjects or objects in discourse, the attribution and display of intention is central to the political processes through which persons are legitimized and/or delegitimized in talk: the active indexing of persons in discursive space is a disciplinary practice, in that positioning subjeaivities in moral/ social space involves “regimenting” embodiments via his- torical/causal frameworks (Feldman, 1991, p. 8). From this perspective, attributed intentions function as disciplinary structures that contain, cir- cumscribe, and, indeed, imprison persons in specific locations in discourse. But the “prison” is never total-persons can and do move toward the construction and elaboration of alternate positions in discourse, for self and for others.

Contexts in which intentions are contested, negotiated, assigned or displayed in discourse can be broadly categorized, following Habermas (1979, 1987), as contexts in which validity claims are created and prob- lematized. However, different from Habermas, I would argue that what is either valid or not valid is not a claim (some propositional content) but the social location, the position of actors in social/temporal/moral space.27 Valid or legitimate social positions are themselves a function of the emergent moral order that is conjointly constructed and frames the course of any conversation; the construction of legitimate positions, constructed as such in the context of dominant narratives, often accompan- ies the construction of delegitimate positions, from which the dominant narrative derives its legitimacy.28 For example, Rodney King was described as “resisting arrest,” which in and of itself positions King as culpable, responsible for his own beating; this story simultaneously positions the police as appropriate, simply trying to do their (thankless and dangerous) job. So the nature of the intentions attributed (and elaborated) serve to constitute persons as legitimate or delegitimate.29

However, at a metalevel, legitimacy is also contingent on the accounts of persons’ capacity to have intentions in the first place. Consider Cha- nock‘s (1992) account of the role of British statutes in South African legal history; he notes how the imported statutes drained “rationality” as an attribute from black criminals and with it, the capacity for blacks to have intentions:

As far as [the state] was concerned, responsibility meant only liability for acts done; there was no presumption of rationality, rather the reverse. Barbarian free will was not the same as civilized free will, but a form of determined action in itself. (p. 29)

This construction of blacks lead to the reversal of the onus of proof in the Cape Act #23, 1879: courts could “detain” and require that blacks prove themselves to be innocent - the courts’ presumption was guilt! The vagrancy laws that authorized the movement and detention of blacks by the white regime rested legally on the statutory construction of blacks as inherently vagrant, that is, purposeless and aimless. Thus intentions (or their genetic absence) is used to constitute racial distinctions and is central to disciplinary power (Sarat, 1992).

We saw the same discursive construction in the trial of the officers who beat Rodney King; according to the police, King’s drugged state robbed him of the capacity to control himself (to have intentions, to be rat i~nal) ,~’ and in this way, legitimated the beating. From this perspective, the construction of King as “out of control” reversed the onus of proof in the trial of the police officers who beat King (and, in fact, that trial is often named as “the Rodney King trial”-as if it were King, rather than his assailants, who was on trial!) Intentions are thus central to the evaluative schemas used in the production of racial discrimination and violence (Butler, 1990; Scarry, 1985).31 Williams (1991) notes:

one of the things passed on from slavery, which continues in the oppression of people of color, is a belief structure rooted in the concept of black (or brown or red) anti-will, the antithetical embodiment of pure will. We live in a society in which the closest equivalent of nobility is the display of unremittingly controlled wil-fulness. To be . . . [described] a s unremittingly will-less is to be imbued with an almost lethal trait. (p. 24)

With respect to the nature of the intentions attributed, as well as persons’ (described) capacities to “have” intentions, legitimate and delegitimate positions in discourse are dependent on the attribution of intention(s), and thus central to what Gramsci (1971) calls “the war on position,” waged as a struggle for legitimacy.

The struggle for legitimacy involves the social construction of a moral order for the evaluation of action and depends on the prior existence of a moral framework within which actors can be positioned. In this way,

evaluative frameworks can never be created anew, autonomous from any previous moral order. Intention is central to the “war on position” not only because it locates persons within a moral framework but because intention talk contributes to the “ordering” of morality. If, indeed, intentions are central to the politics of position in discourse, the critical project can be reimagined so as to avoid the pitfalls of the intentionalist’s and the conventionalist’s perspectives.

Implications for Critical Discourse Analysis In my view, the challenge for critical analysts is to develop methods for discourse analysis that can describe the struggle over position without “reading” intent off of actions or obscuring the participation of persons in the construction of material subjectivity. In my view, the focus on intentions attributed in discourse avoids the problems associated to the intentionalists and conventionalists by (1 ) offering a level for analysis that escapes both essentialism and determinism; (2) promoting nontauto- logical critical descriptions; and (3) establishing a research position, an epistemology, that is nonpatriarchal. The Analytic Level of Critical Analysis By attending to the disciplinary role of intentions in discourse, critical analysis takes place at discursive sites where there are junctures and fissures, where the meaning of action is determined in and through the construction and contestation of intentions; these are sites where action is enframed in normative discourse, sites where subjectivity is constituted and effaced or erased. For example, when Powell and the other police officers were tried for the criminal beating of Rodney King, their attorneys worked to disrupt the intentions attributed to the police by the videotape. The attorneys expertly did this by breaking up the narrative of the video, discussing one frame at a time; with each frame they constructed the police’s intention to fulfill their professional duty and protect the public. Taken collectively, the blows told another story- the police were out of control in their violence toward King; however, frame by frame, the intention to harm could be reconstructed as an intention to subdue and control, essentializing the character of the police, stabilizing the meaning of the blows. The defense attorneys’ critical analysis of the videotape focused on the connection between surface and deep structure, between individuals’ actions and their underlying intentions. It worked in the courtroom-the police were acquitted; it did not “work” on the streets-the violence erupted in Los Angeles.

The courtroom, the news account of the riots, the conversations about the riots, the “urban policy” discussed by Bush, are all sites where intentions are constructed and contested, where the meaning of action is made determinate and subjeaivities are materialized/dematerialized. The defense understandably protested that the jury not be allowed to see the pictures of King taken after the beating for that would have consoli-

dated the narrative in which the police were trying to harm King; it would have also brought King’s injuries, his pain, into the courtroom and materialized him as a person. The effacement of subjectivity was even more obvious during the riots-in many conversations I had with people, they accounted for the riots not by referring to the anger and the despair of the oppressed black community but instead constructed the rioters as either motivated by greed or even worse, as wild animals, running uncontrollably through the streets, wreaking havoc simply because they could. In both cases, the subjectivity of the blacks collectively and individually was erased, as the dominant culture enframed them in a narrative not of their own making.”2 This is one example of how a focus on the intentions attributed at sites where they are constructed and contested yields a critical account that itself materializes the subjectivity of those excluded or enframed by the intentions attributed by others.33 In the courtroom and on the streets, the intentions attributed to police and King were central to the construction and consolidation of both legal and legitimate positions. In sum, the examination of intention as a discursive practice generates a focus not on individuals or on macrostruc- tures, but on interaction in contexts where the meaning of action is determined and stabilized. The Nature of Critical Description A focus on intentions can yield critical descriptions of the evolution of the intentions attributed. Power is not static-those who are enframed by others’ narratives usually reorganize the meaning of their own actions by assigning, reassigning, contesting, reframing intentions. I f participants in a conversation have access to the conversation, changes they make in intentions attributed to selflothers will be elaborated by others in the conversation and the intentions will evolve; for example, if Rodney King had testified (in the criminal trial of Powell and the others), perhaps intentions he attributed to himself would have been elaborated by others; however, there are many contexts, like the court, in which persons have no (or limited) access to the conversation, in which case the intentions they attribute to themselves and others will remain unelaborated by the collective, as was the case with Rodney King (in the criminal

Even so, conversations about a conversational collective will inevitably take place outside the collective, and these conversations inevitably evolve the intentions attributed to selflother. So even though Powell and the others were acquitted of criminal charges for the beating of Rodney King, there remain many conversational collectives in which the police are constructed as racist; these conversations will surely contextualize the fatal beating of Malice Green by police in Detroit.3s Given that there are limited transformations of intentions, that is, there are limited kinds of intentions that can be attributed to the police, it is likely that the defense will once again break the beating down into parts to recontextu- alize the action and construct Green as “drugged” or otherwise “out of control.” If the defense is not able to do this, I predict that the black

community as a whole will be invoked as a character in the drama in order to justify the fear that led to the use of excessive force.36 In any case, by examining the evolution of the intentions attributed, critics can generate accounts of the discursive processes in which the meaning of action, made indeterminate and redetermi~~ed,~’ is evolved. A focus on this evolutionary process yields a kind of critical account that is not tautological but rather dependent on the specific intentions elaborated in social contexts. The Epistemology of the Critique Analysis of the role of intentions in discourse generates a position for critics that is nonpatriarchal in that subjects’ intentions (attributed to self and other) are centralized; that is, the connections that persons themselves make to their own actions are validated. From this perspective, research practice is not only respectful of the lifeworld of subjects, but in fact research itself is an intervention; that is, researchers participate in the elaboration and evolution of the intentions persons construct for self and other. In some contexts, persons have no intentions attributed to self and other; that is, they can make no sense out of a set of events. When this is the case, persons are not able to have a position in their own discourse, and they dematerialize them~elves.~~ In other contexts, persons articulate intentions for themselves that are not elaborated by others, as was certainly the case for Rodney King (in the criminal trial); in still other contexts, intentions attributed to self are elaborated by others and, in the process, transformed. This is exactly what the defense in the King trial was able to do: they began by refuting the claim that Powell and his fellow officers intended to harm King and then proceeded to “deconstruct” that narrative in a frame-by-frame analysis. The result was not only that Powell and the others were acquitted but that King’s pain and victimization were vaporized. From this perspective, the riots were the rematerialization of King’s subjectivity, as the black community, by its own account, responded violently to the “injustice.” Critical research that materializes the subjectivities of persons actively constitutes research subjects as subjects and is consistent with feminist approaches to criticism (Young, 1990).

Conclusion In order to critique racism, critical analysis must go beyond the study of either the intentions of the oppressors or the speech conventions of the oppressed-oppressor discourse system. The videotaped beating of Rod- ney King refuses, refutes, and denies any necessity for the discussion of “false consciousness,” “reproduction,” and “resistance”; violence, and its correlate - pain, intrudes on our academic fields and demands to be named as intentional, immoral, and unnecessary. The L.A. rioters named it as such while the legal system resecured its privilege to control and discipline through violence. After all, “it’s really bad out there.”

It was precisely because this tape challenged the authority of the police that its meaning became contested, both in and out of court. The tape and its interpretation quickly became a site for contestation, not in some Weberian fantasy where persons struggle to impose their will; the struggle is more deadly than a contest of wills. The struggle is over legitimacy and all the material consequences that go with it, like freedom, money, shelter, and food. As I have noted, legitimacy is, in turn, dependent on the moral / relational positions persons occupy in discourse; in turn, these positions are a function of the intentions attributed.

But the struggle for legitimacy (and the struggle against racism) occurs also at a metalevel, where, in institutional discourses, African-Americans are constructed as will-less and vagrant - subhuman precisely because they are constructed as incapable of having intentions. Instead, their actions are a function of drugged states (internal causes) or social conditions (external causes) - in either case the condition for subjectivity, intention, is absent. It is this level of racism that is perhaps more sinister because it contextualizes any and all accounts that African-Americans make of themselves in institutionalized settings. From this perspective, the remedies that result from “civil rights” (like EEO/AA law), are ineffective because they do not legislate the conditions for legitimized positions in discourse-they do not insure humanity. From this perspective, perhaps racism is better addressed by “human rights,” which legitimizes the oppressed by constructing them as human, capable of having intentions.

It is because intentions attributed are so central to the construction of legitimate and delegitimate positions in discourse that I have argued for their analysis; while I do not claim that this form of critical analysis will end racism, I do think that these critical descriptions are more likely to generate change, if for no other reason than they describe not what people are trying to do (and reconstituting the authority of the critic) but what people actually do, which is constitute self and other in moral frameworks for the evaluation of action via the attribution (and negotiation) of intentions.

Sara Cobb is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the Uni- versity of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106. Author

’ See Time, May 11, 1992, for a description of the trial in an article entitled “The Anatomy of an Acquittal,” p. 30.

Many formal legal procedures are designed as means to assess critically the validity/ legitimacy of some aspect of social life. As such, law is a method for critical analysis. From this perspective it is interesting to examine the role that intentions have in both civil as well as criminal proceedings. For example, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act provides the basis for EEO/AA law; it is interesting to note that most Title VII suits are brought under the “disparate treatment” doctrine that requires that the plaintiff prove that the employer intended to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, ethnic origin, or religion. So the connection between “racism” and intention is built into the legal doctrine that is

designed to prevent discrimination. But even Clarence Thomas noted in the nomination hearings that EEO/AA law makes it difficult for the plaintiff because intent is very difficult to prove.

Reviewers of previous drafts have consistently expressed concern that by naming intentions as artifacts of discourse, I am somehow denying that they “live” inside individuals. I do not deny the ability to construct goals and move systematically toward them nor am 1 suggesting that persons do not act to protect their interests. I am suggesting that the presumed instrumentalism that has provided the logical connection between intentions and action in the analysis of discourse is not helpful to the critical endeavor.

For a thorough review of the way issues related to power and ideology have been treated in discourse analysis, see Thompson’s (1983) Studies in the Theory of Ideology, specifically the section, “Ideology and Methods of Discourse Analysis” (pp. 73-147). Yet another example of this approach to power in communication is present in some of the feminist research; as Cuklanz and Cirksena (1991) have pointed out, there are strands of feminism, most notably the “liberal” and the “radical”, that essentialize both men and women in the process of creating an account of women’s oppression by men. (A notable exception is the feminist research that begins with the “difference” thesis and, in so doing, bypasses discussion of power altogether, such as Gilligan’s (1982) In a Different Voice.) For a review of Marxist approaches to critical analysis, see Hall’s (1985) “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates.” Hall traces the “split” inherited from Marxism between reproduction and subjectivity, noting that the former describes material relations and the latter, the “inside” of persons. In both cases, the state or individuals are imbued with the intent to dominate. ’ For example, Grice’s (1975) “conversational maxims” have been used by others (notably Bowers, Elliot & Desmond, 1982) to study “devious messages” or instances in conversation where actors intend to distort communication. This theoretical organization locates ideology in the intentions of actors. This is also true of Goffman’s work (1971), elaborated by Brown and Levinson (1978) where the focus is on “face-saving” devices; the inherent assumption is that persons manage conversation in order to present themselves favorably. Theoretically, “face saving” functions as a meta-intention, a generic intention. Haley (1969) also assumed that persons need to dominate interaction and in this way he has described relational struggles as struggles over who makes the rules in relationships. These approaches to the analysis of talk are somewhat different, but they all locate ideology inside the heads of individuals.

By noting that action is symbolic, I am not hinting that discrimination is therefore a “joint” accomplishment in which victims contribute to their own oppression- systemic (circular) descriptions of oppression always terminate in a/political explanations (Goldner, 1988). I am suggesting that oppression is action that is symbolized in ways that reduce, delete, deny the meaning that victims assign to their own experience. Reduction, denial, and deletion appear in social contexts where the intentions of actors are constructed1 contested, for it is these sites where the legitimacy of social actors is negotiated. ’ “Real resistance . . . embodies ideas or intentions that negate the basis of domination itself’ (Scott, 1985, p. 292). I remain confused-how can I tell the difference between the discourse that reproduces the state’s interests and discourse that resists those interests? Even when discourse comments on itself as an instance of resistance or reproduction, it may often be the case that such metacommentary is itself coopted and I remain unable to differentiate the two. * Consistent with speech act theory’s assumption that speech is the manifestation of actors’ intentions, “false consciousness” (ideology) is what masks or hides true intentions. Thus critical approaches to discourse that fall from speech act theory, such as Habermas’s ( 1987) Theory of Communicative Action, connect emancipation with intentionality: critical analysis is required to expose “true” intentions. Yet, as I am arguing, “true” intentions cannot be read off action and thus the critical projects that fall from speech act theory are at least nonempirical, if not themselves oppressive.

Willis’s (1981) study exemplifies critical research that focuses on conventions for speaking; his ethnography of working class boys in England shows how their everyday talk serves to reconstitute the dominant ideology that keeps the “lads” on the shop floor, in working dass jobs. This study is important because it examines the dynamic (discursive) processes through which dominant ideology is reconstituted; it shows how the ‘‘lads” conmbute to their own oppression in the context of the class struggle. In this way, they

are not agents but sites for colonization, as Willis himself notes, “Agents’ intentions do not proceed from themselves, but are bound up in the complex way in which structures are inhabited in cultural forms” (Willis, 1981, pp. 201-203). l o See Chick‘s (1985) study of the interactional accomplishment of discrimination in South Africa; his ethnographic analysis of speaking in the classroom identifies cultural differences between the white teacher and the black students that lead to differences in conventions for speaking. Apartheid is thus reduced to culturally based differences in speaking conventions. This study, in fact, demonstrates that a focus on conventions for speaking obliterates the necessity for discussing power and ideology.

Habermas’s (1987) distinction between “rational-purposive” and “communicative action” indeed is a good example of this Cartesianism at the core of critical theory. See Thompson’s (1983) critique of this distinction in the section entitled “Toward a Theory of Action,” pp. 139-149. I would also add that Habermas’s distinction between discourse and action is, again, another example of a Cartesianism in critical theory. I’ Tully (1989) argues that critical reflection, as accounts about power, can themselves be described as a language game or discourse-based practices. l 3 See Feldman’s (1991) discussion of the subjectivity of the body and the materiality of the subject in his Chapter 1, “Artifacts and the Instruments of Agency,” p. 7. l4 By “transcendental view,” I am referring to the legacy from Kant that contributes to maintain consciousness (and intentions) inside the head, and therefore, outside the parameters of material practices. Is Persons construct intentions for self and other via these formulations; but the contestation of intention can take an additional form-a metaintention talk: persons use “meant to” or “tried to” (also in the present tenses) to discuss their actions explicitly. For example, “I was only trying to brush the hair from her eyes” or “I meant to call you yesterday” are forms of intention talk that occur once tntentions have already been established in discourse, that is, once the relationship between intention and action has become a focus. This meta-form can be seen when intentions are being contested. See Anscombe (1960) for discussion of the complex permutations that can be used to display and attribute intention. l 6 I am arguing that agency and intentionality are two different phenomena-agency can be (and has been) conceptualized as subjects in action that can be identified by grammatical features such as syntax and verb transitivity. [See Halliday (1978) and Trew (1979) for grammatical perspectives on agency.] In this way, agency has been studied as a linguistic phenomenon. However, intentionality requires agency and directionality - subjects in action must be producing effects. For this reason, intentionality cannot be studied grammati- cally-intentions must “occur” at or above the level of the sentence, in discourse. There- fore, intentions can be described as a discursive phenomenon, while agency remains a linguistic phenomenon.

The absence of the because of or in order to formulations not only disrupts victims’ abilities to construct stories for themselves, it also is perhaps the most effective way to instill mass terror in an oppressive regime. See Scarry (1985) and Sluzki (1990) for discussions of the relationship between discourse and political repression. ’* Obviously, there are other “devices” in discourse besides intention talk that are central to the “positioning” in discourse: Harre’s (1 984) description of indexical pronouns, Shot- ter’s (1984) description of the role of moral orders in social accountability, and Zerilli’s (1991) description of the use of the female body in self-representation all detail aspects of discourse that are used toward the construction of positions. I am not suggesting that intention talk is the only way in which persons are positioned in discourse, but I am arguing that it is yet another dimension along which critical analysis can take place.

My intent, in this article, is to reduce the effacement of subjectivities in critical research by taking seriously the intentions attributed in a given social context as constitutive of that social context. ’O Anscombe’s treatment of intention as a language game is very similar to Mills’s (1975) treatment of motive: “Motives may be considered as typical vocabularies having ascertain- able functions in delimited social situations. . . . Motives are accepted justifications for present, future or past programs or acts” (Mills, 1975, p. 162). Motives provide the vocabulary used in intention talk and so, in this way, they are of different logical types.

Scott and Lyman (1 968) differentiate “accounts” from “explanations,” arguing that accounts are in response to some “untoward action” while explanations are not. ” Toulmin’s (1958) discussion of justificatory arguments suggests that intentions operate

within argument as “warrants” or “statements . . . which can act as bridges, and authorise the sort of step to which our particular argument commits us” (p. 98). Intentions bridge the data, or argument, to the conclusion, authorizing the steps for making the connection between data and conclusion. However, intentions could also operate as the “backing” for a warrant; in both cases, they authorize the link between the data and the conclusion. But 1 would argue that outside the parameters of justificatory argument, intentions continue to operate as a warrant for action. Consider, “I am going to the store to get some bread” (in order to). Even if this is not a context for argument, the implicit intention (to get the bread) explains the connection between the actor (“I”) and the action (“going”). In my view, whether intentions are used in discourse to forecast or to explain/justify, they function performatively to construct a position for self (and other) in social space. See Harre’s (1989) description of the role of conversation in the construction of “people space.” 23 Following Pearce and Cronen’s (1980) use of “hierarchy,” perhaps we could conceptualize language games as hierarchically organized, that is, perhaps language games can be understood as “nested” one within another. For example, the enactment of a certain episode may require a certain language game that, in turn, may set up certain conventions for speaking about relationships. If language games can be understood as nested, I would argue that intention talk is a “doing” in language that enables other “doings” in language, such as justifications, denials, excuses, accusations, promises, and so on. In this way, intention talk provides a context for “doing” other language games. ” Following the social constructionist literature on communication, I am presuming that communication is a process, constitutive of social relations, anchored in material practices. Corollary assumptions are that meaning is negotiated through interaction, that meaning evolves over time, and that meaning is constructed via sets of (fluid and contingent) rules that have both an individual and interpersonal dimension. For elaboration of these assumptions see Pearce and Cronen’s (1980) Communication, Action and Meaning: The Creation of Social Realities.

I am not arguing that intention talk and narrative form are synonymous; narratives, such as the “big bang theory” of the origins of the universe, may not include any intention talk, that is, no structural/logical connection between actors and their actions. There are obviously narratives that do not require the display of the relationship between actors and their actions in order to hnction coherently. No doubt, cross-cultural analysis would yield descriptions of cultures in which the stories told do not use intention talk. However, in my experience, there are many social contexts in which intention talk is predominant in narratives, such as courtrooms, social workers’ offices, student-teacher conferences, political debates, attorneys’ offices, and a wide array of everyday conversations in which participants order relationships by assigning responsibility and blame. In summary, I would say that intention talk and narrative are of different logical types - the former is a subgroup of the latter. 26 Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson’s (1974) work on “turn taking” provides a model for understanding the relationship between interactional sequences and the attribution and display of intentions in talk. For example, “one-turn-at-a-time” allocation, that is, “local allocational means” is perhaps the turn-taking system in which intentions are displayed and negotiated, whereas, the preallocation model (used in ceremonial talk) perhaps accom- panies contexts where there is a more formulaic construction of, and less negotiation of, intentions. Although these are quesrions/concerns that can only be answered empirically, it is interesting to posit a relationship between the construction of intentions and turn-taking structures in talk. ’’ Habermas (1987) refers to “validity” in terms of truth; I would use this word as synonymous with “legitimacy.”

I use “dominant discourse” to refer to discourse that operates as foundational for the production of consensus (Gramsci, 1971; Taylor, 1971).

As Michael Huspek noted when he read earlier versions of this article, to conceptualize intention as a language game may well invoke the pragmatists’ position on the relation between intention and action, that is, the intentionalist’s approach to CDA. But I am not suggesting that persons strategically use intention talk to legitimate their positions in discourse- intentions attributed are not simply conventions for speaking employed in the struggle over positions- they are the constitutive and material connections between actors and actions that function (temporarily) to consolidate the meaning of action and the frames for evaluating that action. They are constitutive of the positions in discourse, as well as the grounds for legitirnacy/delegitimacy.

’O I find it fascinating how King’s intentions were variously and contradictorily constructed: on the one hand he was beaten because he was out of control (a dangerous drugged black) yet the beating itself is evidence of his control of the violent episode, according to the jury. ’’ Huspek (1993), in his discussion of “dueling discourses,” notes that discourses are “antagonistically” related and interdependent. This description of the relation between discourses would be a useful place to examine racism or sexism. ” Martin Chanock (1992) makes the point in his research on the legal structure of apartheid that there is a profound disconnection between the legal constructions of blacks by whites and the self-constructions of blacks; intentions attributed by whites are dissonant fabrications that contribute to separate local experiences from legal institutions. What he is suggesting is that white law is not embedded in the black culture. I can only assume that this is no accident-to maintain control, the white regime would need necessarily to ex- clude the experience of blacks and disconnect them from the institutional discourses that evaluate them. 33 I am not connecting this critical perspective (a focus on intentions attributed) with the ethnographic method. I agree with Feldman (1991): “Needless to say, the realist representation of a dialogic encounter is a simulation as culturally specific and morally ethnocentric as any other narrative mode of forging presence (as is the Western concept of dialogue)” (p. 284). 34 By “collective,” I am referring to the set of persons that engaged in the mutual attribution of intentions. Each collective always has other collectives nested within it; thus, every conversation is an elaboration or permutation of a conversation elaborated in another level of the collective. ’’ They certainly contextualized the civil trial of Powell and the others for the beating of Rodney King. When King testified, it stabilized the intention of the police to harm King, as King’s intention to survive was connected to his actions, that is, he kept trying to get up when he feared for his life. 36 This has already happened. One police officer involved in the beating reportedly said, “Nobody knows what it’s like out there” (The Berkshire Eagle, November 7,1992, A-3). ’’ Fineman’s (1988) study of the “best interest doctrine” is a good example of critical analysis that manages to track the evolution in the conventions for speaking by examining the local, specific legal arguments. She described how the discourses of the helping profes- sions have not only colonized legal forums but have wrought substantive reforms that then have been “masked” as procedural reforms. ’* Battered women often do this, as they are not able to account for “why” they are beaten. See Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule’s (1986) book Women’s Ways of Knowing for a good description of what they call “silent women” who speak as if they are not subjects. These women are nonagents, passive in the account of their own victimization.

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a critique of critical discourse analysis: deconstructing and reconstructing the role of intention

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