Discourses<\/a>, institutions<\/a> and the social power relations and intra-group tensions and agreements they represent are all very interesting in their own right. \u00a0But now might be a good time to link this back to communication studies. \u00a0Why should we care about discourses and institutions? \u00a0Firstly, discourses and the institutions that produce and propagate them reflect the flow of power and control in society<\/a> \u2013 most of the discourses that we are exposed to reflect the dominant position in society, and conflict between discourses, such as with smoking in the second half of the 20th century, reveal underlying social tensions between those dominant discourses and new and emerging discourses. \u00a0So looking at discourse and institutions reveals for us who may speak, who might be silenced, and why certain groups, activities or relationships are framed in particular ways \u2013 so why might one group frame an individual to be a terrorist and another a freedom fighter could be revealed by understanding the institutional context of the speakers.<\/p>\n Secondly, institutions shape the communicative process. \u00a0The media, particularly the commercial media, operates within institutional restrictions such as policy, copyright, and broadcast practice. \u00a0Certain types of language and even types of signs<\/a> are encouraged within particular institutional contexts, and other types are not. \u00a0So discourses shape our communication and the types of texts we send, and how we understand the texts and messages we receive \u2013 we never communicate in a vacuum<\/a>, we always bring to bear on our communications our context, our social norms, and our prior experiences.<\/p>\n Finally, an understanding of the discourses and their institutions that are active in a society helps us to come to terms with how communication is operating on a macro-level \u2013 so not just looking at individual texts or individual moments of communication, but communication as a whole. \u00a0A good example is a classroom. \u00a0If we were to look at a classroom in this way, you would need to think about the wider institution of education, the relationships and expectations it has in regard to teachers and students, and dominant discourses about knowledge and learning. \u00a0Looking at the classroom this way helps to unpack the classroom-as-institution, and makes clearer the privileges and power it fosters. \u00a0For example, who can speak and who must listen in a classroom is tied to these institutional relationship and supported by discourses of education that are so deeply engrained in us that many of us do not question it until we see other types of educational institutions and the types of discourses they support.<\/p>\nDiscussion<\/h2>\n
\n