Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, ON, Canada.
Fam Process. 2017 Sep;56(3):669-685. doi: 10.1111/famp.12294. Epub 2017 May 10.
Family therapists and scholars increasingly adopt poststructural and postmodern conceptions of social reality, challenging the notion of stable, universal dynamics within family members and families and favoring a view of reality as produced through social interaction. In the study of gender and diversity, many envision differences as social constructed rather than as "residing" in people or groups. There is a growing interest in discourse or people's everyday use of language and how it may reflect and advance interests of dominant groups in a society. Despite this shift from structures to discourse, therapists struggle to locate the dynamics of power in concrete actions and interactions. By leaving undisturbed the social processes through which gendered and other subjectivities and relations of power are produced, therapists may inadvertently become complicit in the very dynamics of power they seek to undermine. In this article, we argue that discourse analysis can help family therapy scholars and practitioners clarify the link between language and power. We present published examples of discourse analytic studies of gender and sexism and examine the relevance of these ideas for family therapy practice and research.
家庭治疗师和学者越来越多地采用后结构主义和后现代的社会现实概念，挑战了家庭内部稳定、普遍的动态观念，倾向于将现实视为通过社会互动产生的观点。在性别和多样性的研究中，许多人认为差异是社会构建的，而不是“存在”于个人或群体中。人们越来越关注话语或人们日常使用语言的方式，以及它如何反映和促进社会中占主导地位的群体的利益。尽管这种从结构到话语的转变，治疗师仍在努力在具体的行动和互动中找到权力的动态。治疗师如果不干扰产生性别和其他主体性以及权力关系的社会过程，他们可能会无意中成为他们试图破坏的权力动态的共谋。在本文中，我们认为话语分析可以帮助家庭治疗学者和从业者澄清语言和权力之间的联系。我们呈现了关于性别和性别歧视的话语分析研究的已发表例子，并探讨了这些想法对家庭治疗实践和研究的相关性。
