Discourse analysis – Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Question 1

What’s Discourse analysis?

Answer 1

• the main aim is to link changes in language with changes in society and culture = social theory of language
• necessary convergence of linguistic methods of language analysis with social and political theories

Two messages:

• Explicit (what’s written in the comic): “in her home”, “the housewife of 2000”, “her daily cleaning”
• Implied message: Innovations are technological, not social (gender roles).

Discourse analysis focuses on revealing the implied message in communication
* Studying explicit text to find the implication

Discourse = language in action

• A way to take things apart;
• Analysis of language in action; moving from one point to another;

Question 2

Two possible perspectives in discourse

Answer 2

AGENCY

• discourse “in the hands” of actors;
• discourse as a means to achieve something else (a resource)
• Emphasizes enabling role of discourse; discourse is a means to achieve their aims
• Used not just to inform; used to achieve political, social, economic aims

STRUCTURE

• actors “in the hands” of discourse
• discourse as a macro-object
• creates a horizon of action
• Opposite of agency
• Actors don’t use discourse for aims, but discourse uses actors for its aims
• Actors are in the hands of discourse;
• must conform to the rules of discourse to be able to communicate; must obey the rules to express what they want
• We can’t think behind discourse; gives us limits of thinking

Question 3

Varieties of discourse analysis

Answer 3

• Critical discourse analysis
• Foucauldian discourse analysis
• Conversation analysis
• Linguistic discourse analysis
• Text linguistics
• Psychological discourse analysis
  (and many more)

Question 4

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Answer 4

CDA connects social analysis of discourse with a linguistic analysis of texts.

• How discourse is embedded in social contexts and society
• “linguistic analysis of texts” = explicit

“Critical” in CDA means that it focuses on language in action as a strategy how to achieve and conserve the unequal and unjust distribution of power in society, as well as ways how the subordinate groups resist this unjust inequality.

• Subgroup of discourse analysis
• Not neutral evaluation of what’s happening in society
• Takes stand that society is not just; many features of society are unequal

Question 5

Insufficiency of sociolinguistic analysis (SA)

Answer 5

SA studies discursive effects of inequalities not their causes: people of different social strata speak differently not because of their “nature” but because their distinct positions are created through their distinct use of language

• The amount of talking to children reflects the linguistic culture/habitus of their parents’ class
• • The more you talk to your kids, the more words they learn
• Social structure is reproduced by means of language/discourse
• The differences are not “because of” but “in order to”.

Focuses on connection between social structure and use of language; not unequal distribution of power

CDA critises SA that their approach isn’t sufficient to reveal the true nature of inequalities and society

• CDA says this observation doesn’t reflect the social structure, which is creating and producing inequalities
• CDA argues that the difference comes from different use of language within each of these groups; the patterns are a result of social structures

Question 6

Norman Fairclough

Answer 6

Developed a critically textually oriented discourse analysis

He draws on systemic functional grammar developed by Michael Halliday:

Language is a system that fulfills functions; it enables us:
1. to construct our experience
(the ideational function)
** How language enables us to construct and express our experiences

2. to enact social relations
   (the interpersonal function)
   ** How we select people to address our communication
   ** Or first we select someone and then decide how/what we want to communicate
3. to combine these two constructs together in coherent text
   (the textual function)
   ** Combination enables us to create text

Question 7

Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of discourse

Answer 7

A discursive event

1. textual practice
   * * textual (linguistic) analysis
   * * (ideational function)
2. discursive practice
   * * analysis of speech event
   * * (interpersonal function)
3. social practice
   * * sociological/political analysis
   * * (textual function)

Not reflected mechanically, but the idea of 3 functions of language transformed into these three practices of discourse

Question 8

We can analyze four domains of textual practice

Answer 8

1. Vocabulary
2. Grammar
3. Cohesion
4. Text structure

Question 9

Analyzing Vocabulary

Answer 9

A “word work” = “working with words” = using vocabulary to reproduce unequal distribution of power in society

• Positive and negative connotations
  EX: terrorist vs. freedom fighter)
• Metaphors – like applying terms from natural phenomena domain to social domain
  EX: wave of immigrants released from detention…
• Scientific, professional terminology or jargon – reproduces power of expertise over layman’s knowledge
  EX: an innovative set of management practices,
  deflationary mindset;
• Euphemisms – masking the real message and by using the implied message
  EX: suboptimal outcome = failure

Question 10

Analyzing cohesion

Answer 10

Not necessarily a strong element of conserving of strategy conserving unequal distribution of power because cohesion is used by by everyone who wants to convince other people or a listening audience it is; Used by both good guys and bad guys

how clauses are linked together into sentences (esp. in public speeches)

• Alliterations (repeating the first letter/sound of each word)
• Repeating words, using near-synonyms, conjunctive words (therefore…)
• Strong cohesion is used to evoke collective emotions and to create a sense of unity between the elite and masses.

Question 11

Analyzing Grammar

Answer 11

modality - certainty, possibility, willingness, obligation, necessity, ability (can, may, need, should, have to, must…)

• • Giving message that someone is either active or passive
• • It’s not our will but we’re forced to do it; implied message (we must)

active and passive form, e.g. people were not given information vs. we did not inform people
** Not taking responsibility

direct and indirect speech - quoting experts and authorities or paraphrasing them, quoting vernacular language of low status groups

nominalization, e.g. legalization vs. legalize

• • “We want to legalize it” - more active; using we; connecting speaker (us) with activity
• • “We’re for legalization” - separates speaker from activity a bit

Question 12

Analyzing text structure

Answer 12

Architecture of text:
in some situation some architecture of text is required

What elements or episodes are combined in what ways and what order to constitute a specific discursive event (medical, job, research interview, news report, scientific article…).

• • in research interview or in medical interview there are different architectures or genres
• • The form of the genre or architectural scientific article is very difficult to learn and to master
• ** Once we master it we dominate the field because we can publish easily
• ** For people who are not able who are just entering the science for them it is difficult to do to write a scientific article
• ** So the tech structure also functions as a form of conserving dominance and subordination in social structure

Narrative vs. non-narrative texts.
** or sometimes the narrative text is is required sometimes not

Long vs. short texts.

• • Or sometimes be neat or short text works better than long text and sometimes is vice-versa
• • this is also how to how to conserve social structure
• ** for example long texts are for people who have time to read it;
• ** if you want to make some information inaccessible for people who have no spare time or with difficulties of reading we write it in in the form of or be communicated in the form of long text because we know that these people will not read it or not listen to it because of their inability to read on text or because they don’t have time

Question 13

Discursive practice: 3 rules governing text

Answer 13

Rules governing text =

1. Production (“author”)
   * not anybody is allowed to be author of something; rules exclude some people from being authors
2. Distribution (medium)
   * who has access to some text and not (free or no? bound to a publisher?)
3. Consumption (reading, listening)
   * who’s capable of reading or listening (because of language, cost, etc.)

Question 14

Political, economic relevance

Two important notions for analyzing social practice

Answer 14

Social practice is understood as an issue of unequal distribution of power in society and the related issues of ideology and hegemony as a tool for maintaining and changing power asymmetry.

1. ideology
2. hegemony

Question 15

Ideology

Answer 15

ideologies are embedded in discursive practices and materialize so the institutions

• a form of how discursive practices are embedded or rooted in institutions or are connected to institution that some some practices are controlled through institutions
• Institutions decide who can write, read some things
• for example gender ideology is related to institution that control gender relationship
• ideology is not only about ideas about stereotypes but how these third types are promoted and kept by institutions

Question 16

Hegemony

Answer 16

… is ruling elites’ (leaders’) organized consensus of opinion among different social groups or categories incorporated as a common-sense (Antonio Gramsci)

• if that the ideology is understood as something natural
• opinion of ruling elite is taken as a common sense that
• What elites think is desirable
• what Oxford Cambridge Harvard etc are doing is the best what we can do and we must follow me must aim to be as they are
• this is typical hegemony that power ideology is or practices of ruling elite is taken as a common sense
• Politically, many countries once wanted to be like USA

Question 17

Issues with Fairclough’s three-dimensional model

Answer 17

1. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is rather a proposal for multidisciplinary enterprise than an integrative model.
   * Not like a prescription for analysis
   * Difficult to find a reader for something so specific or some analysis in so much detail
   * For political scientists, what’s written at a textual level isn’t interesting
   * Proposals might include all these levels but not a great research instrument
2. There is a risk of confusion in understanding of this multi-level analysis as an omnipotence of discourse (taking epistemology for ontology).
   * All these levels together we start thinking that everything is discourse; nothing outside of discourse
   * Confusing the levels of analysis with reality
   * Can’t explain all reality with these three levels

Question 18

The representation of social actors in discourse

What are the ways social actors are represented in a particular discourse?

Answer 18

Theo van Leeuwen

• exclusion – passive form; we don’t know which actor did it
• role allocation - actor vs. receiver of action
• Indetermination - blanket term that doesn’t list specifics; Indetermination occurs when social actors are represented as unspecified, ‘anonymous’ individuals or groups.
  typically realised by indefinite pronouns (‘somebody’, ‘someone’, ‘some’, ‘some people’)
• Determination - determination when their identity is, one way or another, specified.
• Nomination - using someone’s proper name
• Categorization - making a group of people
• Abstraction - reduced to numbers “foreigners”; occurs when social actors are represented by means of a quality assigned to them by the representation. For example, poor, black, unskilled, Muslim or illegal’ migrants are referred to by means of the term ‘problems’ so they are being assigned the quality of being problematic, and this quality is then used to denote them
• Objectivation - occurs when social actors are represented by means of reference to a place or thing closely associated either with their person or with the activity they are represented as being engaged in.

Question 19

How does a discourse construct the social?

Answer 19

1. it influences social identities, subjectivity, and selves
2. it has impact on relations among people
3. it contributes to the knowledge and beliefs

Question 20

Theo van Leeuwen

Answer 20

Not all actors are represented in the same manner in discourse and by

• by unequal distribution of roles and identities and labels of actors in this course we can give a message which conserve unequal distribution of an unjust distribution of power in society
• so through unequal distribution of unequal or through strategic strategic oppression of social actors in this course we can promote unequal distribution in power in society; we can conserve unjust throw types and so on

Question 21

Why is sociolinguistics unable to reveal the nature of inequalities in society?

Answer 21

SA studies discursive effects of inequalities but not their causes. By not considering societal constructs, the SA approach isn’t sufficient to reveal the true nature of inequalities and society.

In the example from the presentation, SA focuses on the connection between social structure and use of language, but not the unequal distribution of power. But for CDA, it’s important to search for causes. CDA reveals that people of different social strata speak differently not because of their “nature” but because their distinct positions are created through their distinct use of language. Ultimately, these patterns reflected intentional strategies of class structure.

Question 22

How can grammar be used to construct or reproduce inequalities in society?

Answer 22

There are many grammatical tools that can be used to impact how something is read and is often used to construct or reproduce inequalities in society. Modality gives a message that someone is either active or passive. By using a word like “must” the writer implies that the action was not our will but we’re forced to do it. Writing in the passive voice is a great way to avoid responsibility or remove actors from the action itself. For example, “mistakes were made” or “people weren’t informed” are two ways of admitting something went wrong, while also not putting the responsibility on anyone. Two other examples of grammatical tools include direct and indirect speech, and also nominalization. These are some of the most popular forms of using grammar for a particular agenda.

Question 23

Write an example of how discursive practice create or reproduce unequal distribution of power in society.

Answer 23

Discursive practice has created and/or reproduced unequal distribution of power in many situations that require lengthy terms of service or contractual agreement. Technology and social media are two examples that immediately come to mind. Many people even joke about the number of times that they will sign off on a User Agreement without even opening it, and I believe almost everyone is guilty of it. Because those companies know that nobody will actually read those documents, it’s easy for them to retain an immense amount of power over our personal data. It’s also clear that these companies have no intention of helping users understand their rights, nor do they intend to help users take more control over their own data. This is a classic example of using long, confusing, and unclear text to make information less accessible.