Discourse, cybernetics, and the entextualisation of the self

Abstract

This chapter suggests a model for the analysis of digital texts based on principles from cybernetics and mediated discourse analysis. Different technologies of entextualisation make available different methods for gathering data from users, each with their own sets of affordances and constraints. This chapter considers practices of ‘self-tracking’ using digital media just in terms of their consequences for people’s relationships with their bodies, but also in terms of their consequences for people’s relationships with texts and practices of reading and writing. Humans have been creating textual representations of their bodies and their behaviours as a means of self-reflection and self-improvement for thousands of years. Among the approaches to discourse analysis that have been most preoccupied with the role of discourse in mediating human actions and identities is mediated discourse analysis, an approach which focuses less on texts as linguistic artefacts and more on the social actions that people use texts to perform.

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