Discourse Analysis

Study guide Unit of Learning 5

Principles of critical discourse analysis
Professor Mauricio Martinez

Activity 5 (Collaborative group):

Final Paper: Writing a Critical Discourse Analysis Essay

What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? How does the critical component can be
understood? Which are the most relevant CDA frameworks in academic settings and who
are the authors who have developed them? Why is CDA relevant for Language
Teachers/Learners?
Our goal for Unit of learning 5 is to understand the principles of Critical Discourse
Analysis and its importance for Language Teaching. At the end of the study guide you will
find the detailed description of the graded activity.

Suggested readings:

Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis- Teun Van Dijk

Critical Discourse Analysis- Jaffer Sheyholislami

Key terms:
Access, critical discourse analysis, discourse, dominance, parliamentary debates. power,
racism, social cognition, text.
Before you start

Think about the following:

“Although there are many directions in the study and critique of social inequality, the
way we approach these questions and dimensions is by focusing on the role of
discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance. Dominance is defined
here as the exercise of social power by elites, institutions or groups, that results in
social inequality, including political, cultural, class, ethnic, racial and gender
inequality”.
Principles of critical discourse analysis
Teun A. van Dijk

Preview Questions

When you think of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), what is the first thing that comes to
your mind?

 What is critical discourse analysis ?

 How is it different from other types of discourse analysis?
 What are its aims, special methods, and especially what is its theoretical foundation?

Now that you´ve reflected about these questions, read the paper “Principles of critical discourse
analysis” by Teun A. van Dijk to find out the answer to the questions raised above
What is critical discourse analysis?

“According to van Dijk (1998a) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a field that is
concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive
sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It examines how these discursive
sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical
contexts.”
Critical Discourse Analysis
Jaffer Sheyholislami

How is it different from other types of discourse analysis?

“Unlike other discourse analysts, critical discourse analysts (should) take an explicit
sociopolitical stance: they spell out their point of view, perspective, principles and aims,
both within their discipline and within society at large. Although not in each stage of
theory formation and analysis, their work is admittedly and ultimately political. Their
hope, if occasionally illusory, is change through critical understanding. Their
perspective, if possible, that of those who suffer most from dominance and inequality.”
Principles of critical discourse analysis
Teun A. van Dijk

What are its aims, special methods, and especially what is its theoretical foundation?

“To put it simply, CDA aims at making transparent the connections between discourse
practices, social practices, and social structures, connections that might be opaque to the
layperson.”
Critical Discourse Analysis
Jaffer Sheyholislami

As it was stated brilliantly by Freire & Macedo (1987) “reading the world always
precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world…”
This can be understood as one of the main objectives of education; empowering individuals
to go beyond “reading the word” and being able to develop a critical understanding of the
many texts that make part of our reality (everyday conversations, political discourse,
textbooks or news reports). It is important to examine in more detail which discourse
structures allow the reproduction of dominance in contemporary societies.
Different models/frameworks of CDA

Socio-cognitive model
Dr. Teun Van Dijk

“He believes that one who desires to make transparent such an

ideological dichotomy in discourse needs to analyze discourse in
the following way:

a. Examining the context of the discourse: historical, political or

social background of a conflict and its main participants
b. Analyzing groups, power relations and conflicts involved
c. Identifying positive and negative opinions about Us versus
Them
d. Making explicit the presupposed and the implied
e. Examining all formal structure: lexical choice and syntactic
structure, in a way that helps to (de)emphasize polarized group
opinions”
Critical Discourse Analysis by Jaffer Sheyholislami

Discourse Sociolinguistics
Ruth Wodak

a. Discourse "always involves power and ideologies. No

interaction exists where power relations do not prevail and
where values and norms do not have a relevant role"
b. "discourse … is always historical, that is, it is connected
synchronically and diachronically with other
communicative events which are happening at the same
time or which have happened before"
c. Readers and listeners, depending on their background
knowledge and information and their position, might have
different interpretations of the same communicative event.
d. "THE RIGHT interpretation does not exist; a hermeneutic
approach is necessary. Interpretations can be more or less
plausible or adequate, but they cannot be true"

Critical Discourse Analysis by Jaffer Sheyholislami

 Critical Language Study
Norman Fairclough

He described the objective of this approach as "a

contribution to the general raising of consciousness of
exploitative social relations, through focusing upon
language"
“CDA of a communicative interaction sets out to show that
the semiotic and linguistic features of the interaction are
systematically connected with what is going on socially, and
what is going on socially is indeed going on partly or wholly
semiotically or linguistically. Put differently, CDA
systematically charts relations of transformation between
the symbolic and non-symbolic, between discourse and the
non-discursive”
Critical Discourse Analysis by Jaffer Sheyholislami
Socio-cognitive and Socio-cultural approach
James Paul Gee

“Language is not only to be seen as a tool to communicate

information but also to support social activities, social
identities and affiliations within cultures and institutions.
When we speak or write we can design and build what we
have to say as it is suitable to a particular situation. In other
words, we create the situation but the situation also
influences us in terms of how we speak. Gee identifies
seven "building tasks", i.e. areas of reality that we construct
when we speak or write”

Review of An Introduction to Discourse Analysis by Patricia E. Zoltan

Reflect
Now that you have read about the different frameworks and their evolution, answer the
following questions:

 How do you see these frameworks have changed over time?

 What conditions do you think made it possible for the theories and methods of CDA or
discourse analysis to emerge in social sciences and in education?
 What approach to critical discourse analysis do you find more interesting? Why?
 In what ways do you see CDA useful to the field of education?
Discourse structures and strategies in understanding

“Although we need to know much more about the details of discourse-based attitude
formation and change and about mode attitude relations, we may speculate about
some of the overall features of these properties of discourse and social cognition.
Thus, we have seen that the reproduction of dominance in contemporary societies
often requires justification or legitimation: it is just necessary or natural that we have
privileged access to valuable social resources.

Principles of critical discourse analysis

Teun A. van Dijk

Principles of CDA

Principles of CDA, outlined by CDA practitioners (Fairclough, 1995a; Kress, 1991; Hodge &
Kress, 1993; Van Dijk, 1998a; Wodak, 1996) can be summarised as follows:

1. Language is a social practice through which the world is represented.

2. Discourse/language use as a form of social practice in itself not only represents and
signifies other social practices but it also constitutes other social practices such as the
exercise of power, domination, prejudice, resistance and so forth.
3. Texts acquire their meanings by the dialectical relationship between texts and the social
subjects: writers and the readers, who always operate with various degrees of choice and
access to texts and means of interpretation.
4. Linguistic features and structures are not arbitrary. They are purposeful whether or not the
choices are conscious or unconscious.
5. Power relations are produced, exercised, and reproduced through discourse.
6. All speakers and writers operate from specific discursive practices originating in special
interests and aims which involve inclusions and exclusions.
7. Discourse is historical in the sense that texts acquire their meanings by being situated in
specific social, cultural and ideological contexts, and time and space.
8. CDA does not solely interpret texts, but also explains them.
 Video workshop (not graded)

Watch the video 7. Critical Discourse Analysis Presentation and answer the following
questions.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Presentation

 What are some of the Theoretical assumptions of CDA?

 Who are some of the key players in CDA?
 In regards of Educational Research who are the most prominent scholars? Are you
familiar with their approaches on CDA?
 Check the analysis Kalianne does on a conversation based on Gee´s Framework. Which
conclusions does she draw from the analysis? Do you agree or not? Why?

Additional resources

Here you can find some additional resources to have an in-depth understanding and application
of CDA. Click on the links to find out more,

>Companion Website for An Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis in Education

>Supplementary videos

Interviews
>Interview with James Gee
>Interview with Norman Fairclough
>Interview with Gunther Kress
Activity 5: (Collaborative group)
Final Paper Writing a Critical Discourse Analysis Essay

Objectives
 Interpret and analyze a piece of discourse that deals with issues of cultural
and/or global diversity in a variety of forms.
 Develop an advanced understanding of critical discourse analysis and critical
language awareness.
 Use written discourse to develop and present meaningful and interesting ideas.

Doing a discourse analysis essay (in groups)

1. Begin your work by selecting one of the following pieces of discourse:

 A newspaper article
 Data from an interview conducted at school (transcript)
 A video from the Internet (transcript)

I encourage you to try and find a piece of discourse that interests you, so as to make your
analysis more meaningful to you. Once you have selected your piece of discourse, you are
ready to begin analyzing it. Before you start, answer the following questions:

Answer these questions in case you selected
a newspaper article:
1) Who is the author? What can you find out
about them?
2) Who is the intended audience (Who did the
author intend to persuade/speak to)? How do
you know?
3) Where/when was the article published?
4) What is the author’s thesis? What did he/she
intend to convince readers of?
5) How is jargon being used/not used in the
article?
6) How effectively is the argument presented?
Do you think readers would be convinced of the
author’s thesis after reading? Why/why not?
7) How does the author make use of power in
their writing? What rhetorical moves are at
play?
Answer these questions In case you selected
an interview or a video.
1) Who are the participants? What can you find
out about them?
2) Who did the author intend to
persuade/speak to?
3) Where/when did the conversation take
place?
4) What’s the main topic of the conversation?
5) How is jargon being used/not used in the
conversation?
6) How effectively are arguments/ideas
presented? Do you think participants would be
convinced? Why/why not?
7) How do the participants make use of power
in their discourse? What rhetorical moves are at
play?
Once you’ve thoughtfully analyzed the piece of discourse with the above questions, you can
begin to analyze. Select three of the seven building tasks by Paul Gee, you will perform an
in-depth analysis of three of these categories.

1. Significance 5. Politics
2. Practices (Activities) 6. Connections
3. Identities 7. Sign Systems and Knowledge
4. Relationships

From here, you will work to create a thesis related to the presence of language, rhetorical
strategies, and power in the pieces of discourse. To support your thesis, you should rely
heavily on textual evidence from the pieces of discourse. It`s important to, not only quote
but, explain any evidence from the texts you provide. You will use a combination of direct
quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing from your texts; however, any time you reference
the articles, you must:

1. Introduce the source (the first time you use it)

2. Provide the textual evidence (quote, summary, or paraphrase)
3. Cite the information (in-text citations)
4. Explain what the textual evidence you provide means (what is the author saying here?)
5. Discuss how the evidence connects to the building tasks you are analyzing (do not
assume your readers see the connection)

Length requirement (not including Works Cited): 1500 words minimum

Structure of the analysis

1. Selection of the Text
- Reasons for Selection
2. Analysis of the text
- Analysis of 1st selected building task
- Analysis of 2 selected building task
- Analysis of 3rd selected building tasks
3. Implications for Language Teaching
- What are the implications of analysis for Language Teaching/Learning?
4. Conclusions.
5. References

Upload your analysis to the corresponding section on the virtual room.

Copyright: Adapted from Sarah Polo, Disc 200: The Tech Enterprise
Mauricio Martinez-2017