Transcript CrITIcal DIScourse AnalysIS

CRITICAL DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS
Paltridge 2007
What is critical discourse analysis (CDA)?
• Hyland (2005:4) acts of meaning making are always engaged
in that:
• they realize the interests
• the positions
• the perspectives
• the values
of those who enact them
The aim of CD is help reveal some of the hidden values,
positions and perspectives.
CDA examines the use of discourse in relation to social and
cultural issues, such as race, politics, gender, identity
and asks why the discourse is used in particular way and
what the implications are of this kind of use.
What is CDA?
• CDA assumes that
• language use is always social
• discourse both reflects and constructs the social world
• A critical analysis explores issues such as gender,
ideology and identity and how these are reflected in
particular text
• To do CDA, the first step is analysis of the use of
discourse, the second step is explanation and
interpretation of the discourse. The final step is
deconstruction of the text, tracing ideologies and
assumptions underlying the discourse and link them to
different views of world, experience and beliefs.
Principles of CDA (Fairclough and Wodak,
1997)
• Social and political issues are
constructed and reflected in discourse
• Power relations are negotiated and
performed through discourse
• Discourse both reflects and reproduces
social relations
• Ideologies are produced and reflected in
the use of discourse
Social and political issues are constructed
and reflected in discourse
• Singapore’s “Speak Mandarin” campaign (Teo, 2005)
• The aim of the campaign:
• to connect Chinese Singaporeans with Chinese cultural traditions.
• To help counter “negative effects of westernisation.
• To attract foreign investment, especially from China
Headlines:
Mandarin: Window to Chinese Culture
Speak Mandarin, It’s an asset
Speak Mandarin: Your Childern’s Future Depends on You
• Cool and contemporary relevance of Mandarin
• The discourse of campaign constructs the view of
Mandarin as a language that has both social, cultural,
and economic value for the people of Singapore.
Power relations are negotiated and
performed through discourse
• Conversational interaction: who controls
conversational interaction, who allows the person
to speak, how they do this.
• Radio show: caller-host
• Callers-set the opinion on the line
• Hosts- challenge the opponent to expand on and
account for their claims (e.g., yes? So)
Discourse both reflects and reproduces
social relations
• Social relations are both established and maintained
through the use of a discourse.
• Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair in the media: a lawyer, a
wife, a working mother and establish a relationship
between her and public and especially other working
mothers.
• Presentation in media: A success story of Cherie Blair for
managing her role as a working mother-negative terms for
working mothers shift to different views of women with
children who work.
Ideologies are produced and reflected in
the use of discourse
• Representing and constructing society, such as relations
of power, relations based on gender, class and
ethnicity.
• Brewster (2005)- negative attitudes towards non-standard
social dialects of English  negative views of the people
who are speaking non-standard dialects
• Mallinson and Brewester  US restaurant workers’ view
of customers / white workers view black customers in
negative terms. They use streotypes to form their
expectations about future interactions to black customers
and other African-Americans.
• Discourse of difference (Wodak, 1997): speaking in black
customers and distancing themselves from them.
Ideologies are produced and reflected in
the use of discourse
• The workers’ use of discourse privileged their own race
and social class, reflecting their ideological, streotyped
views of both groups of customers.
• CD studies aim to make connection between social and
cultural practices and the values and assumptions that
underlie the discourse.
• They try to reveal what people say and do in their use of
discourse in relation to their views of world, themselves
and relation of each others.
• CD maintains that the relationship between language
and meaning is never arbitrary in that the choice of
particular genre or rhetorical strategy brings with it
particular presuppositions, meanings, ideologies and
intentions.
• Example: complaining about your neighbour
• Choose an appropriate genre:
• neighbourhood mediation session
• complaint in a televison chat show
Example: compalint about a single mother > others’
prejudice against single mothers> our own biases
and moral judgments about them as an added
rationale for complaining about the neighbours.
Key focus in critical discourse studies
• To unite text with the discourse and
sociocultural practices that the text reflects,
reinforces and produces.
• Discourse simultaneously involves each of
the following dimensions:
Texts > discourse practices > sociocultural
practices
Doing CDA
• Decide discourse type or genre
• Consider the frame of the text- perspective
• foregrounding — emphasized issues
• Backgrounding — played down topics
• Deal with topicalization at the sentence level
• Determine connotations of particular words and
phrases
• Identify the words which express degree of
certanity and attitude