CDA adel thamery

A S S I S T . P R O F . A D E L A L - T H A M E R Y ( P H D )

D E P A R T M E N T O F E N G L I S H

C O L L E G E O F A R T S

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

Outline

11/24/2014Assist. Prof. Adel Al-Thamery (PhD)

Definition of CDA

Development of CDA

Theoretical Origins

Models:

Dialectical – Relational ( Fairclough)

Socio-cognitive ( Van Dijk)

Discourse Historical (Wodak)

Definition of CDA


According to van Dijk (1998a) Critical DiscourseAnalysis is a field that is concerned with studyingand analyzing written and spoken texts to revealthe discursive sources of power, dominance,inequality and bias. It examines how thesediscursive sources are maintained and reproducedwithin specific social, political and historicalcontexts.


Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse analysiswhich aims to explore often opaque relationships ofcausality and determination between (a) discursivepractices, events and texts, and (b) wider social andcultural structures, relations and processes; toinvestigate how such practices, events and textsarise out of and are ideologically shaped by relationsof power and struggles over power; and to explorehow the opacity of these relationships betweendiscourse and society is itself a factor securingpower and hegemony.

Being Critical


The term ‘critical’ can be particularly associated with theFrankfurt School of Philosophy. The Frankfurt Schoolre-examines the foundations of Marxist thought.Kantian ‘critique’ entails the use of rational analysis toquestion the limits of human knowledge andunderstanding of, for example, the physical world. TheFrankfurt School extends this to an analysis of culturalforms of various kinds, which are seen as central to thereproduction of capitalist social relations. According toJürgen Habermas, a critical science has to be selfreflexive (reflecting on the interests that underlie it)and it must also consider the historical context inwhich linguistic and social interactions take place.

Development of CDA


In the late 1970s, Critical Linguistics was developedby a group of linguists and literary theorists at theUniversity of East Anglia. Their approach wasbased on Halliday's Systemic FunctionalLinguistics (SFL). CL practitioners aimed at"isolating ideology in discourse" and showing "howideology and ideological processes are manifestedas systems of linguistic characteristics andprocesses.". Following Halliday, these CLpractitioners view language in use assimultaneously performing three functions:ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions.


Halliday's view of language as a "social act" is centralto many of CDA's practitioners .According toFowler et al. (1979, 185), CL, like sociolinguistics,asserts that, "there are strong and pervasiveconnections between linguistic structure and socialstructure" However, whereas in sociolinguistics"the concepts 'language' and 'society' aredivided…so that one is forced to talk of 'linksbetween the two'", for CL "language is an integralpart of social process" (Fowler et al., 1979, p. 189).


Another central assumption of CDA and SFL is thatspeakers make choices regarding vocabulary andgrammar, and that these choices are consciously orunconsciously "principled and systematic"(Fowleret al., 1979, p. 188). Thus choices are ideologicallybased. According to Fowler et al. (1979), the"relation between form and content is not arbitraryor conventional, but . . . form signifies content" .Insum, language is a social act that is ideologicallydriven.

Theoretical Origins


CDA, in its various forms, has its academic origins in‘Western Marxism’. In broad terms, WesternMarxism places a particular emphasis on the roleof cultural dimensions in reproducing capitalistsocial relations. This necessarily implies a focus onmeaning (semiosis) and ideology as keymechanisms in this process. Western Marxismincludes key figures and movements in twentieth-century social and political thought – AntonioGramsci, the Frankfurt School, Louis Althusser.Critical discourse analysts do not always explicitlyplace themselves within this legacy, butnevertheless it frames their work.

Gramsci


Gramsci’s observation that the maintenance ofcontemporary power rests not only on coercive forcebut also on ‘hegemony’ (winning the consent of themajority) has been particularly influential in CDA.The emphasis on hegemony entails an emphasis onideology, and on how the structures and practices ofordinary life routinely normalize capitalist socialrelations.

Althusser


Althusser made a major contribution to the theory ofideology, demonstrating how these are linked tomaterial practices embedded in social institutions(e.g. school teaching). He also showed theircapacity to position people as social ‘subjects’,although he tended toward an overly deterministic(structuralist) version of this process which leftlittle room for action by subjects.

Foucault


Directed against such structuralist accounts ofideology, Foucault’s work on discourse has generatedimmense interest in discourse analysis, but alsoanalysis of a rather abstract sort that is not anchoredin a close analysis of particular texts. For Foucault ,discourses are knowledge systems of the humansciences (medicine, economics, linguistics, etc.) thatinform the social and governmental ‘technologies’which constitute power in modern society

Bourdieu


A further influential figure has been the Frenchsociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in particular his (1991)work on the relationship between language, socialposition and symbolic value in the dynamics ofpower relations.

Bakhtin


From within linguistics and literary studies the work ofBakhtin has also been important in discourseanalysis. Volosinov (1973) work is the first linguistictheory of ideology. It claims that linguistic signs arethe material of ideology, and that all language use isideological. As well as developing a theory of genre,Bakhtin’s work emphasizes the dialogical propertiesof texts, introducing the idea of ‘intertextuality’ (seeKristeva, 1986). This is the idea that any text is a linkin a chain of texts, reacting to, drawing on, andtransforming other texts.


Models of Critical Discourse Analysis

Norman Fairclough’s Dialectal-Relational Approach (DRA)


Looking at language as discourse and social practice, someone cannot analyse the text only, not just analyse the process of production and interpretation, but also analyse the texts, processes, and their social conditions. Accordingly, Fairclough distinguishes three stages of Critical Discourse Analysis:

Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text.

Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction ; viewing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation.

Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context with social determination of the process of production and interpretation, and their social effects.

Van Dijk's Socio-Cognitive Approach(SCA)



Socio-Cognitive Discourse Analysis is an approachcharacterised by the interaction between cognition,discourse and society. It began in formal textlinguistics and subsequently incorporated elementsof the standard psychological model of memory,together with the idea of frame taken fromcognitive science. A large part of van Dijk'spractical investigation deals with stereotypes, thereproduction of ethnic prejudice, and power abuseby elites and resistance by dominated groups.

The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)



This approach was developed by Ruth Wodak andother scholars in Vienna working in the traditions ofBernsteinian sociolinguistics and the FrankfurtSchool. The approach is particularly associated withlarge programmes of research in interdisciplinaryresearch teams focusing on sexism, antisemitism andracism. One of the major aims of this kind of criticalresearch has been its practical application


Thank You

Date post:	12-Jul-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	adel-thamery
View:	316 times
Download:	2 times

CDA adel thamery

Documents