CDA and Evaluation Flashcards
What does CDA stand for?
Critical Discourse Analysis
What does CDA do?
It combines discourse analysis with an explaination of how the latter contributes to social reality and relies on this combination as a tool for social change
What are the tenets of critical discourse analysis? (7)
CDA deals with social issues
Power relations have a discursive nature
Discourse constitutes society and culture
Discourse is an ideological vehicle
Discourse is historically situated
Discourse analysis is interpretive and explanatory
Discourse is a form of social action
Why is discourse a form of social action?
Sociolinguistic conventions both shape social identities and relationships and knowledge and value systems
Who designed the model of a communicative event (1992)?
Norman Fairclough
Explain the model of a communicative event
It contains three levels:
1. TEXT: its analysis deals with the same elements of TL and looks for patterns (in syntax, lexis…)
2. DISCOURSE PRACTICE: its analysis deals with processes of text production/consumption (e.g. editorial processes) and looks for patterns associated with a given topic or activity (e.g. political discourse, media discourse…)
3. SOCIAL PRACTICE: its analysis looks for patterns in both the immediate situational context as well as the society and culture in which the text is produced (e.g. gendered representation of women, racist representation of immigrants…)
What is text analysis?
People have the power to decide what kind of language to use, which means that the language choices they make are never neutral.
Stubbs: “no term is neutral. Word choice always expresses an ideological position.”
Does CDA have limitations?
Its approach is marked by a close link between research interest and political engagement. This intermingling of research and politics can exert negative repercussions on the level of scientific rigor in the analysis of texts
What is “evaluation”?
Evaluation is the broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about. That attitude may relate to certainty or
obligation or desirability or any of a number of other sets of values
What is the main function of evaluation?
The main function of evaluative language is of course to express speaker’s attitudes, feelings and opinions. However these are not merely equivalent to one person’s ideas:
The evaluative expressions of a text may be seen as reflecting, more or less directly, the ideology lying behind that text.
Through what is evaluation primarily realized in speech?
Lexical choices, grammarand relation between textual elements
What are loaded words?
A word with strong connotations which will be deliberately used because of this connotation, in order to evoke favourable or unfavourable reactions
