Markel Marishta et.al. Johnny Depp and amber heard: how language and societal influences shape power and
discourses
International Journal of Research and Review (ijrrjournal.com) 134
Volume 11; Issue: 2; February 2024
domestic abuse claims over one another. The trial had a duration of roughly 3 months, starting
from April 11
th
and ending on the first of June, in which between these three months, both
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, not only described their personal experiences regarding the
pre-existing abusive allegations, but also moved against one another in an effort to both
discredit the other party, and accuse them of being the aggressor, whilst they themselves were
the victims. While the resulting verdict pointed towards Johnny Depp, the aim of this study
focuses on the multiple discourses that took place both during the trial, and outside of it, while
also observing and analyzing the shifts of power that was present regarding both actors, in
different ways.
The present report is based on Michel Foucault’s theoretical basis of Discourse analysis, which
will be used in the report’s analysis chapter, and also the foundations of the analysis are also
based on a social constructionism point of view, which will be discussed below.
To begin with, qualitative research aims to analyze how individuals understand, experience
and interpret the world around them, through a meaning-making process and not by analyzing
pre-existing and fixed social realities, thus not aiming to generalize results into the mean
population, but differentiate and gain data or results based on individuals’ unique experiences
(Bhatasara et al., 2013; Erslingsson & Brysiewicz, 2013). Considering that people are social
beings, they experience themselves through the mediation of symbolisms, culture and
language, forming a complexity of human experiences, thus making qualitative analysis a great
tool of interpreting these experiences through data analysis (Nowell et al., 2017).
Social constructionism, which can be directly connected with the ideology behind qualitative
analysis, originates from sociology and argues the nature of knowledge and truths as being
socially created and not discovered by the individual’s mind, rather it corresponds with a
collective society’s cultural and historical influences, that makes concepts such as gender, class
and sexuality more fluid than what was firstly believed to be strongly only biological and
immutable (Young & Colin, 2004). Additionally, social constructionism is directly embedded
with critical psychology, as it goes against the mainstream psychology ideology of objective
truths, marking it as a westernized concept, where biological and developmental processes in
regard to gender and society are not the key factors that predict or directly influence
behavior/knowledge (Burr & Dick, 2017).
Structuralism is a term that heavily influenced the sociologist and philosopher Michel Foucault,
in its’ views on how language and culture, operate within a society’s rules and structures around
laws, principles and individual’s behaviors (Khan & MacEachen, 2021). Additionally,
structuralism assesses how language and culture have a relative relation and operate as the
terms subject and object, specifically suggesting that there exists a center, in which it operates
and sustains a whole structure (Khan & MacEachen, 2021). Regarding these claims, every
system such as language, culture, sexuality and gender operate under a structure that consists
of laws, rules and determining factors that conform systems such as gender and sexuality
(Khan, 2018 (as mentioned in Khan & MacEachen, 2021)).
Post-structuralism, contrasts from the initial views of structuralism and focuses in the
interaction between the stimuli and the receiver (Khan & MacEachen, 2021). It uses a
symbolism regarding a reader and a text, in which the text is not passive, but active in the
process and production of meaning, and suggests that a text, which can be replaced with the
term language, is able to create different interpretations to different readers, depending on each
individual’s unique life experiences (Han, 2013). This suggests the notion that objective reality
or objective truth does not exist, rather it depends on the “reader’s” perception of the world,
creating accepted truths, or as Foucault reframed it as discourses (Khan & MacEachen, 2021).
Discourses, as Foucault later developed, was referring to “unwritten” rules, regulations cultural
and structural (as mentioned before) values, that produce and maintain certain behaviors or
subjective truths, which referring to the work of Foucault mainly involved gender norms and