Discourse Studies in Human Geography

 

Discourse studies examine the relationship between the constitution of knowledge and truths on one hand, and social power relations on the other. Discourse analyses in Geography examine how images and stereotypes of spaces are created, how spatial identities are constituted, or how spatial normative political decisions are legitimized by reference to particular norms and values.

 

Approaches based on discourse theory can be applied to very different research questions, ranging from geographic urban research, economic geography, to questions of society-environment research. With a focus on power relations, discourse theory approaches have a substantive proximity to Political geography. Theoretically and methodically, this research perspective often focusses on the analysis of language – both on the level of individual texts (e.g. interviews) and on the level of large text corpora (i.e. media coverage on specific topics). At the University of Freiburg, on-going work employs a variety of different discourse-analytical methods, including quantitative analyses of large text corpora and social media.