Technological University Dublin ARROW@TU Dublin Doctoral Applied Arts 2020-2 A Discourse Analysis of Reputational Construction in the Field of Online Contemporary Art Magazines Tommie Soro Technological University Dublin Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/appadoc Part of the Art and Design Commons Recommended Citation Soro. T. (2020) A Discourse Analysis of Reputational Construction in the Field of Online Contemporary Art Magazines, Doctoral Thesis, Technological University Dublin. DOI: 10.21427/cs3g-qh75 This Theses, Ph.D is brought to you for free and open access by the Applied Arts at ARROW@TU Dublin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral by an authorized administrator of ARROW@TU Dublin. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License A Discourse Analysis of Reputational Construction in the Field of Online Contemporary Art Magazines By Tommie Soro BFA (Hons), MFA A Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) Technological University Dublin Supervisors: Dr. Tim Stott and Dr. Brendan K. O’Rourke Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media February 2020 Abstract The bases of artistic reputation have been widely debated within the sociology of art and art history. Remarkably, however, little has been said of the role discourse might play in the construction of artistic reputation. An obstacle to addressing this research gap is that discourse analytic approaches have been developed to analyse evaluation and the construction of legitimacy but not the construction of reputation. Attending first to this research gap in discourse analysis, the thesis combines Field Theory and Discourse Analysis to develop a Discursive Field Approach that can analyse the discursive construction of reputation in a cultural field. Using this approach, the thesis attends to the research gap in the literature on artistic reputation by addressing the research question: How is reputation constructed through discourse in the field of online contemporary art magazines? This breaks down into the following sub- questions: How do OCAMs acquire the capacity to discursively construct reputation? How is the discursive construction of reputation by OCAMs regulated? How is reputation linguistically constructed by OCAMs? How do OCAMs propose the value of different symbolic resources within the artworld? And, how do internal and external structures in the field of OCAMs affect OCAMs’ construction of reputation? This thesis proposes that online contemporary art magazines acquire the capacity to construct reputation through the possession of key symbolic resources and their use of communication technologies, that their construction of reputation is regulated by field-specific norms, that they linguistically construct reputation through performative statements and supporting linguistic devices, and that the opposition between cultural and commercial discursive practices in the field of online contemporary art magazines comes to bear on the value of different symbolic resources in the artworld and the artworld’s relationships to legitimating fields. Declaration of Ownership I certify that this thesis which I now submit for examination for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others, save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. This thesis was prepared according to the regulations for graduate study by research of the Technological University Dublin and has not been submitted in whole or in part for another award in any other third level institution. The work reported on in this thesis conforms to the principles and requirements of the TU Dublin's guidelines for ethics in research. TU Dublin has permission to keep, lend or copy this thesis in whole or in part, on condition that any such use of the material of the thesis be duly acknowledged. Signature __________________________________ Date _______________ Candidate Acknowledgements I must first thank Dr Tim Stott and Dr Brendan K. O’Rourke for their initial interest in the research project and their invaluable input and guidance over the last four years. I would also like to thank Dr Tomas Martilla for the productive advice he provided in his capacity as external examiner for my confirmation examination in 2018. I must also thank Dr Jens Maesse and Dr Johannes Angermuller, who generously provided their time to talk through some of the details of their conceptual frameworks. I must give special thanks to GradCAM researcher Martin McCabe for his assistance with the design of the research project and with funding proposals, and for his continuing support throughout the PhD process. I must also thank my cousin and dear friend Dr David Banks for his patient encouragement and his instruction in matters of academic writing. I would also like to thank my wife Namse Soro for her advice and assistance with editing the thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my mother Margo Banks for her unending support. Abbreviations OCAM Online Contemporary Art Magazine ICT Information Communication Technology CDA Critical Discourse Analysis YBAS Young British Artists BFA Bachelor of Fine Arts degree DRA Dialectic Relational Approach SKAD Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Analysing Discourse BDA Bourdieusian Discourse Analysis P&V Corpus Prosody and Voice Corpus MI Mutual Information EnTenTen13 English Web Corpus 13 HHI Household Income Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION....................................................................18 1.1. Introduction………………………………………………………...……..19 1.2. A Discursive Field Approach………………………..………………......20 1.3. Thesis Outline………………………………………………...…………..22 CHAPTER TWO: ARTISTIC REPUTATION AND ART DISCOURSE……25 2.1. Introduction……………………………….………………………..……..26 2.2. Artistic Reputation…………………………………………………….....27 2.3. Art Discourse……………………………………………….…………….37 2.3.1. A View of Art Discourse………………………...……………..37 2.3.2. Features of Art Discourse………………………………………39 2.4. Conclusion…………………………………………...…………………...48 CHAPTER THREE: THE PRODUCTION OF ARTWORLD REPUTATION…………………………………………………………………….50 3.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………….....51 3.2 Macro Context…………………………………………………………….51 3.3. Key Roles in the Artworld’s Reputational Economy…………………….56 3.4. Structural Dynamics of Reputational Production.………………………..63 3.5. Key Resources of Artworld Reputation…………………………………..70 3.6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………..........79 CHAPTER FOUR: A DISCURSIVE FIELD APPROACH……………...…….81 4. 1. Introduction…………..……………………………….…….....................82 4.2. Conceptualising Fields……………………………………………………83 2 4.2.1. Capital…………………………………………………………......83 4.2.2. Habitus…………………………………………………………….88 4.2.3. Field……………………………………………………………….90 4.2.4. Field Dynamics……………………………………………………97 4.3. Approaching Discourse………,………………………………………...104 4.3.1. Critical Approaches to Analysing Discourse……………………104 4.3.2. Discourse According to Field Theory…………………………...110 4.4. A Field Theoretical Framework for Language Study…………………...113 4.5. Bourdieusian Discourse Analysis………………………….....................126 4.6. A Conceptual Framework to Analyse the Discourse of a Field………...130 4.7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………131 CHAPTER FIVE: METHODOLOGY…………………………………………132 5.1. Introduction…….…..…………………………………………………....133 5.2. A Discursive Field Methodology …………………………......……...…133 5.3. Corpora……………………………………………………………….…134 5.4. Field Analysis…………………………………………………………...138 5.4.1. Forgoing Ethnography………………………………………...139 5.4.2. Methods of Field Analysis………………………………….…141 5.5. Discourse Analysis……………………………………………………...146 5.5.1. Corpus Linguistics, Interdiscursivity, and Epistemic Goods….146 5.5.2. Analysing Features of OCAM Discourse…………………..…151 5.6. Qualitative Text Analysis………………….………………………...….159 5.7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………167 3 CHAPTER SIX: THE FIELD OF OCAMS AND DISCURSIVE POWER…169 6.1. Introduction…………………………………………….……………..…170 6.2. The Field of OCAMs……………………………………….……….…..171 6.3. The Bases of e-flux’s Discursive Power………………………………..175 6.3.1. E-flux’s Field Position and Composition of Capital……….……175 6.3.2. E-flux’s Dispositions and Orientation…………………………...180 6.3.3. E-flux Genres and Dispositions………………………………….182 6.3.4.E-flux and ICTs…………………………………………………193 6.4. Analysing ARTnews’ Discursive Power………………………………..200 6.4.1. ARTnews’ Field Position and Composition of Capital………….200 6.4.2. ARTnews’ Dispositions and Orientation………………………...206 6.4.3. ARTnews Genres and Dispositions……………………………...217 6.4.4. ARTnews and ICTs……………………………………………...224 6.5. The Bases of OCAMs’ Discursive Power and the Structure of the Field………………………………………………………………………….228 6.6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………233 CHAPTER SEVEN: DISCURSIVE FIELD NORMS…………………………234 7. 1. Introduction……….………………………………………………….....235 7.2. Voice……………...……………………………………………………..236 7.3. Semantic Prosody………………………………...…...………………...247 7.4. Classification Schemes………………………...………………………..249 7.5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………....257 4 CHAPTER EIGHT: SUPPORTING LINGUISTIC DEVICES………………259 8.1. Introduction…………………………………………………..………….260 8.2. Relations of Equivalence and Difference………………....…………….261 8.3. Legitimation Strategies……………………………………..………...…265 8.4. Hedges……………………………………………………..……………275 8.5. Feints…………………………………….……………………………....280 8.6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………284 CHAPTER NINE: PERFORMANCES OF REPUTATION………………….286