Discourse Futures and Discourse-to-Come: What Role Can Studies of Discourse and Interaction Play in Understanding and Mediating Social Change and Transformation?

This presentation will explore three interconnected issues. First, the relationship between discourse, (inter)action and practice. Second, the assumptions about ‘the future’ that are commonly made in discourse studies. Third, the role discourse studies might play in understanding, designing, implementing and managing democratic social change and transformation, with an explicit focus on shaping a just future. Work in discourse studies will be compared and contrasted with contemporary ideas about governmentality, mobility, infrastructure, social movements, consumption practices, sociotechnical assemblages, and ‘the future’, in order to develop a prefigurative discourse studies for social change that is relevant to the turbulent twenty first century. This exploration of key issues is illustrated with three case studies: (a) reality TV parenting programmes, (b) the “Earth Hour” global media campaign to bring attention to anthropogenic climate change, and (c) the growing ‘transition town’ movement to build resilient local communities given the scenario of future global resource scarcity. Further, a sketch is attempted of the sorts of actions, practices and discourses that may be desirable for us to profile in future research. This includes mapping the mediated discourses and social interactional encounters interleaved with the ever changing practices and powers of, for example, control, freedom, access, mobility, cleanliness, comfort, convenience, consumption, waste, recycling and reuse. The presentation concludes with a reflection on the promise of a ‘discourse–to-come', a promise that is both an injunction and yet unfulfillable.