Discourse Analysis implies the analysis of discourse. Usually Critical or Discourse Analysis is defined as a deconstructive reading and as an interpretation of a problem or text. According to van Dijk (2001: 352) it allows to focus on the relationship between power and discourse, studying the way in which social power is performed, reproduced, and (un)accepted by textual and oral conversation in the social context. Consequently, it is not easy to present a single definition of Critical or Discourse Analysis as a research method. Indeed, Discourse Analysis can be define as a way of approaching and thinking about a problem not by providing unequivocal answers, but by allowing asking ontological and epistemological questions. Additionally, it is more than a methodology tool because it always conveys an interpretation. Thus, this paper draws attention to the relation between multiple types of discourse in case-study research project where self-representation has a significant meaning. In this study on self-representation concerning two specific Portuguese artists, Photography, Paintings and Installations expose artists’ symbolic presence and often artists’ self is confused with its visual (re)presentation. Gradually no clear distinction between the iconic sign and its referent was possible to ascribe. A subsequent divergence between artists’ personal discourses – this is not my body – and the evidence of the images i.e. artists’ self-representation, is detectable resulting in apparently contradictory observations. Accordingly, and since the evidence of the visual icon (artist’ body-image) was not enough to deconstruct his associated discursive (aesthetic) institutionalized character, it has been decided to analyze textual discourses (through MAXQDA) as documental attestation of those divergences, presenting an analysis of what is seen and said, and what is actually interpreted and reproduced in discourses. In other words, it focuses on the differences between personal discourses and other (legitimized) discourses about these specific cases comparing them with evidences of visual images.

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Discourse Analysis; Body-representation; Visual Meanings