Discursive Agency: (Re‐)Conceptualizing Actors and Practices in the Analysis of Discursive Policymaking
本文系统梳理了现有解释性话语分析中关于能动性的理论维度，并提出一个包含政策话语、政治制度、行动者特征和策略实践四要素的话语能动性分析框架，旨在帮助研究者系统探索政策如何在动态话语过程中通过行动者能动性被建构。
Interpretive discourse analysis commonly claims to address the interrelation between actors and discourses. However, the analytical focus of most approaches is on structures (discourses) while much less attention is paid to agency. This paper explicitly addresses discursive agency in two steps. First, we systematically review theoretical and analytical dimensions of agency in existing interpretive discourse analysis approaches. This review reveals a set of shared assumptions; most notably a concept of “trialectic” agency emphasizing the constitution of agency among the individual, the (discursive) structures, and the researcher's interpretation. Second, we propose an analytical heuristic, the Discursive Agency Approach, which is developed on the basis of the review and own empirical data. The proposed approach consists of four elements: (1) policy discourses, (2) political institutions, (3) agents defined via a set of characteristics, and (4) strategic practices. This approach is meant to facilitate a systematic exploration of agency under a discourse perspective, tackling the question of how a policy is constituted through the agency ascribed to its proponents in dynamic discursive processes, and how actors acquire political relevance through discursive means. To enable this goal, we propose distinct research steps and associated methods that link the approach to existing means of analysis.