Official discourse: On discourse analysis, government publications, ideology and the state

by Frank Burton, Pat Carlen

Official Discourse is an unofficial report of theoretical investigations into a specific state practice the publication of reports of official inquiries into law, order and justice issues. The commissions, tribunals and committees of inquiry scrutinized in this book examine problems arising from wrongful imprisonment, police corruption, industrial picketing, and communal rioting and internment in Northern Ireland. In attempting to answer the question Why do government reports take the form they do? , the authors make excursions into linguistics, psychoanalysis and Marxism. This unusual book is the product. Its chapters can be read as a series of discrete essays on government publications, discourse analysis, state and ideology, judicial reasoning, and politics and theory. Taken together, however, the essays can be read as a theoretical deconstruction and elaboration of a specific ideological practice. It is thus an exercise in discourse analysis, an exercise in theoretical work that looks at the relationships between theory and literary production. It is also a critique of official conceptions of law, order and justice.

15 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979