Transcript Language Related Episodes in an Assessment Context

Language and Power: Applying
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to
Second Language Education (SLE)
Selected slides
Ali Hadidi
York University
Dec. 11, 2009
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Objective
• To review several seminal works on critical discourse
analysis (CDA)
• To relate them to second language pedagogy
Purpose
•
To propose practices that can educate ESL learners
about discursive characteristics of the texts they
process
Guiding questions
• What are the theoretical underpinnings of CDA?
• How can critical language awareness through CDA
inform second language learning?
• How can CDA be implemented in Second Language
Education?
General definitions (Richards and Schmidt, 2002)
• Discourse: “ … language … produced as a result of an
act of communication … refer[ring] to larger units of
language [than sentence] such as paragraphs,
conversations, and interviews” (brackets added).
• Discourse analysis (DA): “the study of how
sentences in spoken and written language form larger
meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations,
interviews, etc.”
• Critical discourse analysis (CDA): analysis of “texts
and other discourse types … to identify the ideology and
values underlying them. It seeks to reveal the interests
and power relations” in language use.
Identity, SLE, and ideology
• Learners construct new identities in their learning
experience (Swain and Deters, 2007).
• Identities are informed by not only the syntactic, lexical,
morphological, and phonological elements of the L2
grammar,
• but how they personally “appropriate” (Fairclough, 1995)
this knowledge at a discoursal level.
• Contained in the appropriation of knowledge are the
implicit or presupposed ideologies that learners are
subliminally exposed to.
• Ideology is linguistically (discursively) mediated (Fowler
et al, 1979, p.185, cited in Young & Harrison, 2004, p.3)
Ideology defined
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Althusser (1971), ideology : “the system of the
ideas and representations which dominate the mind
of a man or a social group” (p.158).
Eagleton (1991, p.29) six definitions of ideology:
the process of production of ideas
ideas symbolizing a social group
ideas promoted and legitimized despite opposition
ideas promoted for the benefit of a dominant social
group
the ideas which are distorted and legitimized by the
dominant group
the ideas that are false and are promoted by the
dominant group, but arise from the material
structure of the society
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Exposure to ideology: A double- edged sword, a
dilemma
• It can familiarize learners with the discursive norms and
functions of the dominant social order
• can allow participation and upward mobility in this
order
• But, can surreptitiously expose them to a process of
ideological indoctrination
• passive conformists vs. alert citizens.
• L2 learning, without a critical awareness can promote
and (inadvertently) legitimize the dictates and practices
of the dominant order.
• Example: mainstream media texts as sources of
“authentic” instructional material to foster linguistic and
sociolinguistic competence.
• creating a cauldron of competing pedagogical
forces in the classroom.
Eight principles of CDA, Pennycook
(2001, p.80, citing Wodak, 1996)
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CDA addresses social problems
Power relations are discursive
Discourse constitutes society and culture
Does ideological work
Is historical
Need[s] a socio-cognitive approach
Is interpretative and explanatory
8. Is a socially committed scientific paradigm
Capitalist ideology elaborated Gee,
Hull, and Lankshear (1996, pp. 42-43)
• Old capitalist ideology
• New capitalist ideology
• about commodities and
standardization
• standardized consumption
as the “moral basis” for a
solidarity to consume
commodities that would
allow fulfilling the American
dream
• Promoted one dream
• about customization of
products that are dovetailed
to cater to individual desires.
• promotes a form of diversity
which is an artefact of hightech markets.
New capitalist ideology and education/knowledge Gee et al
(1996, p.52)
• Workplace, which education is ultimately intended for, is a system in
which intelligence is distributed throughout, decentralized and easier
to manage.
• The new workplace similar to a mobat, an MIT robot without a central
brain,
• In mobat decision making is distributed throughout its mechanical
body parts
– distributed cognition
– parts function by efficiently communicating with each other
– mobat more mobile,
– intelligence is decentralized, then when a part breaks down it
can be more easily replaced.
– Similarly, in the new workplace, knowledge is compartmentalized
and distributed,
– In the new workplace communicating this knowledge is more
important (p.58) than individual knowledge
– The vehicle to communicate this knowledge is language
Disclaimer: Fowler (1991)
• The mere use of such devices is not necessarily
ideologically motivated and can be due to
bureaucratic reasons, or the need for brevity.
• Therefore a theory of context is necessary to
interpret the use of lexico-grammatical devices
(van Dijk, 2001).
Transitivity (agentless
passivization, adapted from Fowler, 1991, p.79)
• Plans to privatize hydro discussed
– Who discussed it with whom?
• Foreign detainees declared illegal?
– Who made the declaration?
• Application:
– Brevity?
– Bureaucratic communication?
– Ideologically motivated?
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Nominalization
• He rejected a call to delay the enquiry
(adapted from Fowler, 1991, p.79)
– Who made the call? Who conducts enquiry?
• Quarry load-shedding problem ( a headline
adapted from Fairclough, 1989, p. 50)
– Who is doing the (stone) shedding? Trucks? Who is
accountable?
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Modality (Fowler, 1991, p.86)
• Truth, certainty, probability
– The grits will vote budget down
• Obligation
– Government must take action to curb
terrorism
• Permission
– You can switch the plan
• Desirability
– He was right in endorsing the invasion
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Lexical/semantic maps,
• Vocabulary representation of world for a
culture (Fowler, 1991, p.83)
• Example:
chomped on fingernails … looked on
anxiously ….hoping against hope …blow it
… sit comfortably … in days of yore. …
dark days … correct … disastrous gaffe …
… compound … agony. (National Post, Dec 11, 2008.
p. A.1 )
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Discursive values in CDA Fairclough (1989,
p.112, citing Edelman, 1974)
• Experiential value, covers the content
dimension of meaning, “... a trace of … the text
producer’s experience of the world,” reflecting
his or her knowledge and beliefs.”
• Relational value “is a trace of the social
relationships which are enacted” in discourse.
• Expressive values cover the roles and social
identities in discourse. The values can manifest
themselves in words and syntax.
CDA applied to the teaching of
argumentation: Logical fallacies
• The plea to prove a negative
• Harmon and Wilson (2006, p.57):
– argumentum ad populum (praising the audience),
– argumentum ad hominem (attacking the person),
– non sequitur (the stated antecedent does not
necessitate the asserted consequent),
– post hoc ergo propter hoc (chronological sequence
does not necessitate causality),
– false dichotomy, and false analogy.
• Equip learners with the kind of social cognition,
which Condor and Antaki (1997) define as
“mental processing of information about the
social world” (p. 12).
CDA applied to reading (Handout)
• Cots (2006) introduces an EFL activity that draws on
Fairclough (1989 & 1992)
• Learners reflect on three types of practice: social,
discursive, and textual. (See handout)
• At the social level the activity is designed to “give
learners a view of language, as a situated
phenomenon”.
• At the discourse level, it centres on the identification
of type and genre, intertextuality, propositions,
coherence, audience.
• At the textual level it focuses on the formal and
semantic features of text (Cots 2006, p.339-340).
CDA applied to listening and writing
(Handout)
• go beyond the traditional comprehension
questions that elicit “what the teacher has
in mind.”
• Ask questions about experiential,
interpersonal, and textual meanings. With
a view of Halliday’s functional grammar
(1994)