CDA

Objectives

01

Define CDA and the concepts involved in it

02

Review some theories that are relevant and contributed to CDA

03

Look into the purposes of and practice involved in CDA

Survey studies about and related to CDA

04

Critical Discourse Analysis

"CDA is both a theory and a method. Researchers who are interested in the relationship between language and society use CDA to help them describe, interpret, and explain such relationships."

"CDA can be defined as a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research programme, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical models, research methods, and agendas. What unites all approaches is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, and political-economc, social, or cultural change in society."

"CDA is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context."

Teun Van Dijk

Ruth Wodak

Rebecca Rogers

What is the "critical" part in CDA?

"CRITICAL" in CDA is often associated with studying power relations. The concept of critical is rooted in the Frankfurt school of critical theory (Adorno, 1973; Adorno & Horkeimer, 1972; Habermas, 1976). Critical research and theory is a rejection of naturalism, rationality, neutrality, and individualism.

The intention of the analyst is uncover power relationships and demonstrate inequities embedded in society.

Another interpretation of the "critical" in CDA is an attempt to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between the form and function of language.

The goal of the analyst is to study the relationship between language form and function and explain why and how certain patterns are privileged over others.

Another interpretation of "critical" is that CDA explicitly addresses social problems and seeks to solve social problems through the analysis and accompanying social and political action.

The intention of the analyst in this view of "critical" is explicitly oriented toward locating social problems and analyzing how discourse operates in to construct and is historically constructed by such issues.

What is the "discourse" part in CDA?

"The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purpose or functions which these forms are designed to serve human affaris" (Brown and Yule, 1983).

"Discourse is, for me, more than just language use: it is language use, whether speech or writing, seen as a type of social practice" (Fairclough,1992).

"Discourse is a set of meanings or "systematically organized set of statements which give expression to the meanings and values of an institution" (Kress, 1985).

What is the "analysis" part in CDA?

Fairclough's (1992, 1995) analytic procedures include a three-tiered model that includes description, interpretation, and explanation of discursive relations and social practices at the local, institutional, and societal domains of analysis.

Societal Domain

Meta-narratives

Policies

Institutional Domain

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

(Political affiliation of the newspaper company, school)

Local Domain

TEXT

(Newspaper, political speech, or board meeting)

What is the "analysis" part in CDA?

It is an analysis of not only what is said, but what is left out -- not only what is present in the text, but what is absent.

The task of the analyst is to figure out all of the possible configurations between texts, ways of representing, and ways of being, and to look for and discover the relationships between texts and ways of being and why certain people take up certain positions vis-a-vis situated uses of language.

American linguistic anthropology - FRANZ BOAS

'Native point of view'

Darnell (2001)

Edward Sapir (1924)

• problematization of difference as 'inequality'

• foregrounding of 'contextual' studies of cultural forms

• Boas and his students saw the discovery (or, better, the (re)construction) of the 'Native point of view' as something that would provide, explicitly and implicitly, a critique of their own society.

• Opposed the 'spurios' American culture witnessed in the 'efficient' but meaningless and unfulfilling routine practices of a phone operator to the 'genuine' culture of Native fishermen from the north-west coast, characterized by complex, meaningful, and culturally as well as individually satisfying practices.

• The Boasians would emphatically abstain from passing value judgements on the cultural practices they observed, claiming groups were fully operational, effective means and that differences between groups were differences in 'standpoint'

William Labov's (1966, 1972) studies on sociolinguistic variation in New York

Basil Bernstein's (1971) thesis identified two different 'codes' in education, understood as structured patterns of language use: an 'elaborate' code, and a 'restricted' code

Sociolinguistics

- "it is a fallacy to equate resources of a language with the resources of (all) users" (Hymes, 1996)

-Speakers' repertoire, which comprises a set of ways of speaking, speech styles, & contexts of discourse, is different.

- INEQUALITY

• Distribution of linguistic resources

Correlations between linguistic varieties and social variables

- differential distribution patterns of language varities and forms of language use in societies

• Languages are complex and layered collections of language varieties

• Thus, for instance, study of English in society should be a study of all the different varieties that, when packed together, go under the label of 'English'.

• Nature of linguistic resources

Linguistic-anthropological tradition and interactional pattern

POWER

Conceptual and Theoretical Frameworks

HEGEMONY

DISCRIMINATION

DOMINANCE

INTERESTS

RACE

IDEOLOGY

SOCIAL ORDER

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

CLASS

GENDER

Critical Discourse Analysis

Macro vs. Micro

SOCIAL GROUPS

Power

Dominance

Inequality

Language use

Discourse

Verbal Interaction

Communication

SOCIAL ORDER

Macro vs. Micro

SOCIAL GROUPS

Power

Dominance

Inequality

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

Language use

Discourse

Verbal Interaction

Communication

SOCIAL ORDER

Macro vs. Micro

Everyday interaction and experience

SOCIAL GROUPS

Power

Dominance

Inequality

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

Language use

Discourse

Verbal Interaction

Communication

SOCIAL ORDER

Macro vs. Micro

Everyday interaction and experience

GROUPS

Social groups, organizations, or institutions

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

MEMBERS

Language-users

Macro vs. Micro

Everyday interaction and experience

PROCESSES

Legislation, newsmaking, reproduction of racism

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

ACTIONS

Social acts of individuals

Macro vs. Micro

Everyday interaction and experience

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Organizations and media institutions

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

CONTEXT

Discursive interaction, e.g. press conference

Macro vs. Micro

Everyday interaction and experience

SOCIAL COGNITION

Those shared with the group or culture as a whole

'social representations'

CDA has to bridge the 'gap'

PERSONAL

Personal memories, knowledge, and opinions

Power as control

Power is seldom absolute.

Power is not always exercised in obviously abusive acts but in the myriad of taken-for-granted actions of everyday life.

Power may be exercised according to various resources employed.

Power of dominant groups, when exercised, may take the form of 'hegemony'.

Discourse-power circle

Find the access to specific forms of discourse

Those groups who control most influential discourse also have more chances to control the minds and actions of others

Action is controlled by our minds

If we are able to influence people's minds, we indirectly may control (some of) their actions

Two basic questions for CDA research (or for your discussion post this week):

1

How do (more) powerful groups control public discourse?

2

How does such discourse control mind and action of (less) powerful groups, and what are the social consequences of such control, such as social inequality?

MAIN TENETS OF CDA

Fairclough and Wodak (1997: 271-80)

1

CDA addresses social problems

2

Power relations are discursive

3

Discourse constitutes society and culture

4

Discourse does ideological work

5

Discourse is historical

6

The link between text and society is mediated

7

Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory

8

Discourse is a form of social action

Goals of CDA

Specific goal

General goal

- relationship between language and society

- relationship between analysis and the practices analyzed

(Wodak, 1997)

Subverts the practices it analyses

-uncovers ways in which social structure relates to discourse patterns, and in treating these relations as problematic

- empowers the powerless; gives voices to the voiceless; exposes power abuse; and mobilizes people to remedy social wrongs

Goals of CDA

Specific goal

General goal

- Openly professes strong commitments to change, empowerment, and practice-orientedness.

Advocates intervention

- should make proposals for change and suggest corrections to particular discourses (Toolan 1997)

CDA in practice (Fairclough (1992) Discourse and Social Change

Discourse-as-text

Discourse-as-social-practice

Discourse-as-discursive-practice

- linguistic features and organization of concrete instances of discourse

- ideological effects and hegemonic processes in which discourse is seen to operate

- discourse as something which is produced, circulated, distributed, consumed in society

Social change

Choices and patterns in vocabulary

Speech acts

New orders of discourse

Grammar

Coherence

Cohesion

Struggles over normativity

Intertextuality

Text Structure

Attempts at control

Resistance against regimes of power

Political discourse

Media discourse

Gender Inequality

Ethnocenticism, antisemiticism, nationalism, and racism

Research in CDA

Conclusion

• Critical discourse analyses deal with the relationship of discourse and power.
• Theoretical and methodological frameworks needed in CDA are sketched to analyze discourse and power. But several theoretical and methodological gaps remain. Integration of various approaches is therefore very important to arrive at a satisfactory form of multidisciplinary CDA.
• Research on CDA are enumerated to give an overview and direction to future studies on the application of CDA.

Activity: Role-playing

Group 1: Will report to their boss that they crashed his/her car.

Group 2: Will tell their sibling that they crashed his/her car.

Group 3: Will tell his or her girlfriend/boyfriend that he/she crashed the car.

Group 4: Will tell their parents that they crashed their car.