Language and discourse in East African development networks - Studies in donor driven development

The proposed research approaches qualitative objectives in development practise (participation, empowerment and gender) from a communicative and linguistic perspective. In a first step, starting from historical and theoretical backgrounds, participation, empowerment and gender as concepts in development co-operation will be analysed and defined. A major challenge is expected in approaching the problems of practical implementation of qualitative objectives in development work. Evidence suggests that qualitative concepts play a major role legitimising development planning; nevertheless, in the implementation of concrete programs the realization of such objectives is the exception. The research design is based on the assumption that qualitative social development objectives - more than technical or economic aspects of development - depend on interpersonal interaction and negotiation. At the same time, linguistic and communicative aspects are often ignored in practical development work. The proposed research will focus on these largely neglected areas. The core element of the research will be a textual analysis of oral and written communication that has been recorded in five development networks between 1994 and 2003, based on critical discourse analysis as developed by Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk and Ruth Wodak. The available corpus consists of about 300 pages of transliterated oral and 200 pages of written texts. Additionally, interviews as well as library research will be relied on to gain data on the socio-linguistic context. Critical discourse analysis has over the recent two decades established various fields of inquiry, some of which will be selected for analysis as they are of particular importance in the development context: these include organisational communication, linguistic strategies, identity construction, dominant discourses, and language choice. Analysis will be carried out on linguistic phenomena occurring at the various levels of language and linguistic description. Interpretation of data will then be carried out both within a linguistic as well as within a broader socio-economic framework. From a development-in-practise point of view, a concrete aim will be the identification of recurrent challenging situations as well as a set of successful strategies or alternatives to deal with them. While the objective is not to obtain water-tight all-round "solutions", which qualitative research cannot offer anyway, the complexity of donor-recipient relations will be approached from various new perspectives, the results of which are expected to provide an alternative basis for problem analysis and planning.