Build Bright University

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Languages

Discourse Analysis in English 1

Topic 8
Critical Discourse Analysis
Lecturer: Prof. Bede O.C. Uwalaka
 Overview
• Background
• Principles of Critical discourse analysis
• Doing critical discourse analysis
• Critical discourse analysis and genre
• Critical discourse analysis and framing
• Critical discourse analysis and multimodality
• Critical discourse analysis and identity
• Critical discourse analysis and the world wide
web
• Criticisms of critical discourse analysis
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 Critical Discourse Analysis

Background

• Critical Discourse Analysis aims to help reveal

some of the hidden and ‘out of sight’ values,
positions, and perspectives.
• CDA explores the connection between the use
of language and the social and political contexts
in which it occurs.

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 Two Domains of Language
• TEXT/ SENTENCE • DISCOURSE
Text is a message Interpersonal
coded in auditory or activity/ transaction
visual medium between speaker
and hearer
Essays, notices, road Written as well as
signs etc. spoken
Interviews,
commentaries,
speeches, etc.

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 Difference Between Text and Discourse
• According to David Crystal Discourse analysis
focuses on the structure of naturally occurring
spoken language, as found in such ‘discourses’
as conversations, interviews, commentaries and
speeches.
• Text analysis focuses on the structure of written
language, as found in such ‘texts’ as essays,
notices, road signs and chapters.
• According to Geoffery Leech and Michael Short;
‘’discourse’’ is linguistic communication seen as
transaction between speaker and hearer, as an
interpersonal activity whose form is determined
by its ‘’social purpose’’.
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 What Do We Do in Discourse Analysis?
• We analyze and investigate all those features
that are part of the total communicative act:
context of utterance, relationships, mode of
discourse and so on.
• Conversational behavior is observed.
 Conventions of conversation (turn-taking)
 Strategies for beginning and ending a
conversation
 How topics appear and disappear
 How different speech acts (e.g. politeness)
are performed
 To establish underlying norms of
conversation
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 Agenda of Discourse Analysis
• To establish underlying norms of
conversation that people implicitly follow
by
 Conversational behavior is observed
 Conventions of conversation turn-
taking)
 Strategies for beginning and ending a
conversation
 How topics appear and disappear
 How different speech acts (e.g.
politeness) are performed

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 Two Main Areas of DA

• It is centrally occupied with two main

linguistic functions:
 The interpersonal
 Textual
 Linguistic Functions of DA

Interpersonal Textual

 Because it focuses  Because it also

on the way in which focuses on our
we use language as ability to construct
a means of coherent/cohesive
interacting with texts.
others  Texts can be written
or spoken
 Importance of Discourse Analysis
• Since it has a large agenda, it continues to
have a wide appeal
• Language is irreducible part of social life
• In speech behavior not only linguists but
sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists
are also interested.
• DA is helpful in other forms of analysis like
ethnography (the study of races of people)
 Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis
Some principles for CDA:
a) Social and political issues are
constructed and reflected in discourse
b) Power relations are negotiated and
performed through discourse
c) Discourse both reflects and reproduces
social relations
d) Ideologies are produced and reflected in
the use of discourse

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 Doing Critical Discourse Analysis
• CDA includes not only a description and
interpretation of discourse in context, but
also offers an explanation of why and how
discourses work
• CDA might commence by deciding what
discourse type or genre of the text
• The analysis may consider the framing of
the text
• CDA, then, takes us beyond the level of
description to a deeper understanding of
texts
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 Doing Critical Discourse Analysis ctd.

At the sentence level, the analyst

might consider what has been:

a) “topicalized” in each of the

sentences in the text
b) “agent-recipient relations” in the
discourse
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 Critical Discourse Analysis and Genre

e.g. Hong Kong government’s promotion:

Hong Kong as ‘Asia’s World City’
Flowerdew (2004)
• A public consultation document
• The Hong Kong annual yearbook
• A video

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 Critical Discourse Analysis and Framing

Framed:
• The way in which the content of a text
is presented to the audience
 Foregrounded
 Backgrounded

e.g. Huckin (1997)

Newspaper report on a demonstration at
a nuclear test site in the US (page 188)

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 Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodality

• Readings of text are constructed not just

by the use of words but by the
combination of words with other
modalities.

• The use of multimodal discourse establish

a ‘proximity’ to the events and engage
people in the events.

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 Critical Discourse Analysis and Identity

Example:
• How a family use language to create and
socialize each other into a shared family
political identity

• Online communities where social

relations and identities are constructed
through people’s participation and
interaction with each other

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 Critical Discourse Analysis and The
World Wide Web
• Many works of critical discourse analysis
use texts from World Wide Web.
• There are some problems in using
material from the world wide web
 Source
 Authority
 Author
 More than just words

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 Critical Discourse Analysis and
The World Wide Web

• There are some advantages in using

material from world wide web:
 Easy to find
 A lot of relevant data
 Can be used in corpus based
research

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 Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis

There are some critics toward critical

discourse analysis:
– Widdowson (1998, 2004)
CDA should include discussion with the
producers and consumers of texts.
– Van Noppen (2004)
CDA does not always consider the role of
the reader in the consumption and
interpretation

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 Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis

– Schegloff (1997)
CDA does not provide detailed and
systematic analysis of texts
– Toolan (1997)
Analyst should be more critical and
demanding of the tools of analysis
– Cameron (2001)
A weakness in CDA is its reliance on just
the analyst’s interpretation of the texts

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 Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis
There are some suggestions toward
critical discourse analysis:
– Benwell (2005)
Use a textual culture approach in CDA
– Martin (2000); Fairclough (2003)
Use systemic functional linguistics as a
tool in CDA
– Mautner (2005a)
Use corpus approaches as a way of
increasing the qualitative dimension of
CDA
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 Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis

– McKenna (2004)
Expand CDA by drawing on work such
as schema theory in the area of
language and cognition
– Threadgold (2003)
Suggesting the issue of performativity

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