4.7 The theoretical lens of discourse analysis
4.7.1 Public stories, private stories and personal stories
The point that I raise in relation to discourse and in relation with feminist theory in investigating the experience of young women's pregnancy is to point out "once a discourse becomes 'normal' it is difficult to think outside it."(Bhana, 2002: 11).Due to the status of normality awarded to certain stories,the private stories also emphasize the normal stories and are strengthened by the telling and retelling of the girls and people around that young women's pregnancy is bad. This is done through everyday encounters with family members,communities,schools and churches. The media and research stamp it. These would be stories that are shared with a few selected individuals. These are stories that mothers and daughters share, stories that aunties have to give to the young girls.
Within this view of discourse there are observations that what participants at specific contexts are bound by is what is admissible within the boundaries of acceptability. There are groups of people who are deemed powerful and so can exercise the power to their advantage (Weedon, 1997). In such cases, the subordinates say what they say to please and buy favors of the dominant members (Mather Undated).
In this manner,strategies of domination operate as well as those of resistance as power circulates and can attach either way (Diamond and Quinby, 1996,quoted in Muwanga - Zake Undated). This implies that discourse can be described as a tool of control over how we experience the world and meaning of what is. In addition, it includes social interactions inclusive of our thoughts,feelings and accepted ways that make us to be with the rest of the people in a specific context (Muwanga -Zake Undated).
Such stories about young women's pregnancy articulate that young women's pregnancy is problematic. The use of stories in the way public narratives are used to hide and mystify the actual occurrences and experiences of individuals is common. The stories
used in that manner use moralistic language to hide what really happens. These would be stories such as the ones in research reports and in conference rooms in relation to young women'spregnancy as constituting a problem. Stories such as
It is surprising though that discourse would be context bound and yet be accepted as the international truth as occurs in young women's pregnancy where these discourses are taken and written about even in research frameworks (Pinkus, 1996). Within discourses, power is exercised in manners that govern and control individuals. This implies that discourses are positions from which people communicate and engage the battles of power that are permitted (Best and Kellner, 1991). In other words, power is embedded in discourse because it has the leisure to label or name by the use of right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable with all that is acceptable and right being socially constructed.
Since discourses make up who we are and how we act, we fail to accept children as sexual beings. The dominant discourses in everyday stories that adults tell young people, attach power to sexual innocence of certain individuals including children and some adults (Epstein and Johnson,1998).
The personal stories that the subordinates tell themselves may be different. The individuals may tell certain elements of their stories but change their stories to suit the context within which they find themselves. For example, the young mothers who participated in a school peer group discussion changed or modified their stories while with school going girls. What they said in the context differed from what they revealed to the researcher (Kidger, 2002). The indication of the change is how both the public and private stories subsume the personal story.
Despite the different categories I just outlined there is a need to realize that the experiences of individuals do not operate in the same manner as to split experience into the personal, private and public. Experience melts all those categories such that all have an influence on each other. Sometimes even to make the distinction becomes impossible.
There are things we tell ourselves, they do not come from nowhere. We have crossed paths that we interpret as ours now and we have come to accept it as us. My use of these categories in this manner is to indicate how that distinction becomes complicated. What
Karabo Mokobocho-Mohlakoana Chapter Four:The Theoretical Inclination of the Study
we always refer to as personal after all, even at that level, experiences are intertwined with all that constitute who and what I am with at that time.
The argument that the personal is political needs serious consideration in the points I raise. It is on the basis of the personal as political that I am influenced that the relationship works from both directions. The personal and the political are forces that work with each other (Mahala and Swilky, 1996). It is on this basis that I argue that the young women should be recognized as a crucial source for rich experience related data.
In this chapter I pointed to the move in social science to view a human being together with the rest and not alone.It is important though to observe that even that collectivism, if teased,we find the composition is focused on individuals. Both groups and individuals learn from each other. The relationship makes us to remember that we all have a potential to learn from each other. My argument to use stories in the young women's pregnancy studies is to invite the personal and the political to support deliberations to bring change for the good of the young women and therefore the countries of the world. Research in this manner will work as a tool for emancipation or freedom from oppression (Morris
1999 and Singh,2000)
According to Foucault,there exists what we call subjugated knowledge.In this regard the issue is that we seem to separate stories and data narrowing the area of public discourse available for considering lived experience as a source of knowledge, and in particular,the lived experience of marginalized groups as with women who are pregnant at a young age.
The other groups of subjugated knowledges are those which Foucault refers to as local popular or indigenous knowledges: "in particular there are those knowledges that are currently in motion but are left without or deprived of the space in which they could be adequately performed. These are knowledges that survive only at the margins of society and are classified as the lowest. They are assessed as lacking status and are untrue."
(Foucault, 1980: 26).
The personal, the private and the public stories may be different from each other. The possible difference in stories therefore directs me to question the issue of power by the following questions; which stories are heard? Which are not heard? Why is this? And
how can the situation be changed? To relate to these questions, I revisit Foucault's conception of power to which I alluded earlier in this chapter.