Critical Discourse Analysis Course

Critical Discourse Analysis CourseDr. Doris CorreaUniversidad de AntioquiaEscuela de IdiomasSummer 2011Agenda Classes 1 & 21. Syllabus reading and discussion (objectives, methodology, readings, assignments, assessment, etc)- (30mins)

2. What is DA? Aims, characteristics, approaches , etc (pairs) (50 mins)

3. Examples of CR, CL and MM- (45mins)

Agenda Classes 1 & 25. Approaches to spoken discourse: origins, approaches (30mins)

8. Examples of how to do EC, CA, IS, (120 mins)Activity 2: Hyland (2003)1. What is DA?2. When did it start?3. What were people interested in before?4. What are its aims?5. What are its main characteristics?6.What approaches to DA did he and others mention?Hyland DA- exploring texts for what they tell us about the purposes and functions of language use and the constraints operating on writers in particular contextsStarted in the 30s with Firth

Before: interest only on surface lexico-grammatical features & correctness or on how isolated individuals struggle to create personal meaning

AimsAttempts to situate discourse in the purposes and contexts within which it is constructed and which it helps to construct

Characteristics: Does not just look at how sentences fit together but tries to show how they are related to their contexts

Sees writing as the social actions of community situated members

Sees writers as social actors who bring personal and cultural histories to their writing and particular understandings of the texts they are asked to write

Looks at how particular groups of sts typically express certain meanings and approach rhetorical problems

Links discourse features to issues of writer purpose, identity, audience expectations, cultural schemata, multidisciplinary perceptions, and so on

Studies the meanings writers are trying to express through their choice and arrangement of forms

What approaches to written discourse do Hyland & others mention?

Approaches to written DAHylandCorpus linguisticsContrastive Rhetoric (CR):SFL:Canagarajah: Multiliteracies (Multimodality)

Warschauer : Ethnography and corpus linguisticsActivity 3. Examples:Corpus LinguisticsBloch (2010). A concordance-based study of the use of reporting verbs as rhetorical devices in academic papers. Journal of Writing Research, 2 (2), 219-244.

The studyQ: how can concordancing help writers make decisions refarding which verb to use?Steps: Created 3 corpus: from the text used in the course, from Science, and from more formal research papers published 1995-2002350 words approx from each corpusTotal of 334 articles and over 1053 words. Researched reporting verbs in the literature= 92 verbsIdentified these verbs in the corpora and analyzed their usage in all tenses Using MonoConc Pro 2.0 calculated number of instances of ech word in each of the three corpora and nomralized the numbers per 100.000 wordsChose 41 verbs for further analysisAnalyzed each sentence to see if the verb in fact funcitoned as reporting verbEliminated those verbs not used as reporting and those used fewer than 20 times = 27 verbsThe StudyCreated the following categories: sample sentences containing the verbIntegral and nonintegral sentences: with authro inside and outside the quoteDescriptive and informative sentences: general overviw and those that contained a claim)Writer and author sentences: (claims from the writer and the author)Positive and negative attitude towards claimStregnth of attitude towards claim: strong, moderate, weak

ConclusionsThe corpus has the potential to chart growth patterns such as whether students arguments became more complex as their education advanced, whether students learned to integrate material from different sources in formulating conclusions, and whether students vocabulary became more specialized and precise

Offers researchers the opportunity to quantitatively and qualitatively examine student writing in areas as diverse as writing development, genre variation, and disciplinary differencesExamples CR - Silva 1993Toward an Understanding of the Distinct Nature of L2 Writing: The ESL Research and Its ImplicationsTony Silva. TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4. (Winter, 1993), pp. 657-677

Analyzed 72 reports comparing L1 and L2 writingPurpose: to understand differences between L1 and L2 writing

Example of MultimodalityBezemer, J. & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: a social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25, 2, 166-196.

Had a corpus of learning resources for secondary school science, math and english from 1930s, the 80s, and 2000s, plus digitally represented and online learning resources from 2000 on.The StudyAnalyzed:Sign makers (artists, editors, writers, Ts, sts) and signsInterest of the producer: rhetorical, pedagogical and epistemologicalMeaning and situated useModes: image, writing, speech, moving imageMedium: canvas, book, screenSite of display: booklet, poster, flyerFrame/genre: Type of activityDesign: purpose, audience, designer all brought together

Example Figure 1Transduction: changing modes and mediaQs: What was gained and lost Gained in generality Lost in specificityShifts in arrangementPurpose of writing (headings, commads, definitional statements)Deletions: of actor, etcPurpose: effect of these transductions on learningHow to develop diferent forms of assessmentthat go with representations in different modesImplications for learning materials and environments

Activity 3: Approaches to spoken discourse-Cameron (2003)What approaches to DA did she mention?Where did she say these approaches come from?

Cameron-approaches to spoken discourseAnthropology: Ethnography of Speaking (ES) or (EC)

Philosophy: Pragmatics

Sociology and linguistics: Conversational Analysis (CA)

Linguistics and anthropology: Interactional sociolinguistics (IS)

Linguistics and critical theory: CDAActivity 4. Examples of EC, IS,CAEC: Video III seminarExample ISResponses to complimentsExample CAListening to audios

Analyze: what seem to be the conventions for closing phone conversations?How do these seem to vary depending on age? Familiarity? Etc. Review of approaches to written discourse (Matsuda et al. 2003)Harklau: how generation 1.5 sts writing is interwoven with multiple, unstable and ambivalent identities, as immigrants, young adults, ethnolinguistic minorities and people of colorHow sts and educators resist, accommodate and reshape those positioningsCanagarajahLam 2000- how communication in the new media empowers ESL sts for classroom literacyBelcher and Connor 2001-implication for textuality when writers shuttle between competing communitiesCanagarajah 2002-multilinguality as a resource for the construction of a unique and striking voice in their writingCanagarajah 1998-how the hybrid cultural background of the writer has influenced their negotiation of established genres and conventions for the development of voiceCanagarajahCanagarajah 2002-how one stud avoids bringing in other discourses from her backgound to inform her writing the academy

Canagarajah 1999-how one stud uses oppositional strategies-does not negotiate sufficiently with the established conventions to create a space for his alternative conventions

Li 1999-how she constructed a third discursive space for resolving the conflicts she faced between her native chinese and english discourse

Canagarajah 2002-how the writer infuses the established conventions with their own discourse in an act of appropiation and resistance

WarschauerThe relationship of technology (computer assisted classroom discussions, e-mail exchanges, and web based writing) to SL writing

Lam 2000 the complex issues of identity, culture, audience and media that emerge in new forms of multimodal online writing

Matsuda 2002- the complex nature of voice in online writing

Kress 1998- the relationship of texts to visual elements

Bloch 2001- changing notions of authorship and plagiarism