Concise definition
For Arkoun, discourse analysis is a method for examining how meaning is produced within texts, and how language intertwines with power in shaping what is said and what is prevented from being said. It does not stop at the overt content of discourse, but moves toward the conditions that make this content possible, influential, and dominant within its historical context.
Its place in the project
This concept occupies a central place in Arkoun’s reading of Islamic history, because it connects text to institution, meaning to power, and interpretation to the formation of orthodoxy. It therefore always stands alongside concepts such as power and knowledge, the unthought, historicity, and orthodoxy. It also appears clearly in the book Critique and Ijtihad in Islamic Thought and in the context of The Humanistic Formation of Islam, where it is tied to understanding the formation of meaning within history not as a truth given from the outset.
Example or evidence
This concept is embodied in Arkoun’s tracing of how a religious or intellectual text moves from a field of plurality to a field of codification, and how one reading becomes a standard that regulates others. It also appears when he asks: what did the school reading allow, what did it conceal, and how did the institution intervene to fix meaning and close it off?