Fyama Medeiros

In this work we argue that Gender Studies can be seen as part of the new tradition in science, that some authors call post-empirical, which questions the objectivity of knowledge and the impersonality of researchers and which takes the interpretative dimension of social reality as important. In accordance with this tradition, we believe that the use of oral narrative and of discourse analysis can be a rich and powerful instrument to a better understanding of women and men and, thus, can greatly contribute to Gender Studies in Social Sciences, in general, and in Psychology, in particular.

This paper focuses on the discussion of a discursive approach developped as an alternative to the insufficiencies of Content Analysis. Our goal in centered on two main questions: which are the insufficiencies which motivated a discursive approach; in what sense the practices in Content Analysis contributed to the positions assumed by a discursive approach. The conclusions indicate the need of further research on the unsettled relationship between text and context.

This is a brief introduction to critical discourse analysis (CDA), viewing CDA as both a continuation of critical linguistics (CL), practised in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, as well as an international transdisciplinary field derived from linguistics, with an interest in text and in power relations.

In this paper, I present and discuss some important concepts from Michel Foucault's theory of discourse, specially the concepts of statement, discoursive practice, subject and discoursive heterogeneity. From this theoretical reference, I explain the intimate relation between discourse and power, as well as several and complex forms to investigate "expressed things". The aim is to indicate productive contribution of this theoretical and methodological reference to educacional researches which intend to "analyze discourses".