Critical Discourse Analysis

Norman Fairclough
• Discourse analysis : an exploration of how
‘texts’ at all levels work within sociocultural
practice
• Three central constructs of CDA :
a. text and the study of texture
b. discoursal practices and the concept of ‘
orders of discourse’
c. Sociocultural practices and the concept of
‘culture’
Three-dimensional framework of CDA
• Analysis of (spoken or written) language texts
• Analysis of discourse practice ( process of text
production, distribution and consumption
• Analysis of discursive events as instances of
sociocultural practice
Text and language
• Texts are social spaces in which two
fundamental social processes simultaneously
occur : cognition and representation of the
world and social interaction
• Text in their ideational functioning constitute
systems of knowledge and belief ; and in their
interpersonal functioning they constitute social
subjects ( in different terminologies, identities,
forms of self) and social relations between
categories of subjects
• Language is ‘a machine’ that generates, and as a
result, constitutes the social world
• It means, changes in discourse are a means by
which the social world is changed
• language is structured in patterns or
discourses, a series of systems whereby
meanings change from discourse to discourse
Foucault ‘s definition of power

• Power does not belong to particular agents such

as individuals or the state or the groups with
particular interest; rather, power is spread
across different social practices.
• Power should not be understood as exclusively
oppressive but as productive; power constitutes
discourse, knowledge, bodies and subjectivities
‘what makes power hold good, what makes it
accepted, is simply the fact that it does not only
weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it
traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure,
forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to
be considered as a productive network which runs
through the whole social body, much more than as
a negative instance whose function is repressive’ (
Foucault, 1980 : 119)
• Power is responsible both for creating our social
world and for the particular ways in which the
world is formed and can be talked about, ruling
out alternative ways of being and talking.
• truth  are created within discourses, it is
understood as a system of procedures for the
production, regulation, and diffusions of
statements.
• Truth and power  truth is embedded in and
produced by, systems of power.
• Althusser defines ideology as a system of
representations that masks our true relations to
one another in society by constructing imaginary
relations between them and social formation
• thus ideology is distorted recognition of the real
social relations.
• All aspects of the social are controlled by
ideology which function through ‘ the repressive
state apparatus’ ( e.g the police) and ‘the
ideological state apparatus ( e.g. media)
The role of discourse
• Discourse is constitutive < ------> Discourse is
constituted
• As a social practice, discourse is in a dialectical
relationship with other social dimensions.
• it does not just contribute to the shaping and
reshaping of social structures but also reflect
them
Discourse contributes to the constructions :
- Social identity
- Social relations
- system of knowledge and meaning
 discursive practice : the production and
the consumption of the text

social practice Text : speech, writing,

visual image, or a
combination of these
Dimension of CDA
• All three dimensions should be covered in a
specific discourse analysis of a communicative
events :
a. the linguistic features of the text ( text)
b. Process relating to the production and
consumption of the text ( discursive practice)
c. the wider social practice to which the
communicative event belongs ( social practice)
Analyzing Words and Image
• form : utterance, dialogue, prologue, characters,
characterization, etc . what has been said and
depicted.
• In looking at how images depict people : “How are
people depicted?” and “How are the depicted people
related to the viewer?
• Leeuwen ( 2008) : there are at least three
dimensions to be considered in which the relation is
symbolic and imaginary :
a. the social distance
b. the social relation
c. The social interaction
Social distance
• in pictures, distance become symbolic. People
shown in ‘long shot’ from far away, are shown as
if they are strangers; people shown in a ‘close
up’ are shown as if they ‘one of us’
Social relation
• Related to the angle from which we see the
person, and this includes the vertical angle that
is whether we see a person frontally or from the
side, or perhaps from somewhere in between.
• These angles express two aspects of the
represented social relation between the viewer
and the people in the picture : power and
involvement
• vertical angle as, in one way or another, related to power
differences. To look down on someone is to exert
imaginary symbolic power over that person, to occupy,
with regard to that person, the kind of “high” position
which, in real life, would be created by stages, pulpits,
balconies, and other devices for literally elevating people
in order to show their social elevation. To look up at
someone signifies that the someone has symbolic power
over the viewer, whether as an authority, a role model, or
something else. To look at someone from eye level
signals equality.
• The horizontal angle realizes symbolic involvement or
detachment. Its real-life equivalent is the difference
between coming “face to face” with people, literally and
figuratively “confronting” them, and occupying a
“sideline” position. From such a position, we may be
doing the same thing, e.g., listening to a lecture, but we
don’t actually communicate with each other. Just what
this means precisely will, of course, be colored by the
specific context. What in one context may be “ignoring
each other”
(e.g., sitting next to a stranger in a train) may, in
another, be “experiencing something together” (e.g.,
listening to a concert with a loved one).
Social interaction
examples of pictures