ENG524 Midterm Bitcoin

Lecture-01 · What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) · Topic-01: Introduction to Discourse Analysis

The term Discourse Analysis was first introduced by Zelling Harris (1952) to examine: the language beyond the level of the sentence, relation between linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour. It looks at patterns of language across texts as well as the social and cultural contexts the texts occur. Ranges from textually-oriented views of discourse to socially-oriented views of discourse. Knowledge about language, beyond the word, clause, phrase and sentence, needed for successful communication. The relationship between language and context. Pragmatic view of language at the core of discourse analysis. The discourse structure of texts. Cultural ways of speaking and writing e.g. cultural ways of buying and selling.

Different Views/Aspects of DA

Discourse as the social construction of reality. Discourse and socially situated identities. The ways we make visible and recognizable who we are and what we are doing always involve more than just language (Gee, 2005, cited in Paltridge, 2008). Discourse and Performance ‘a Discourse is a ‘dance’ (Gee, 2005, p. 19). While we say something, we also do it. Discourse and intertextuality.

Assumptions of Discourse Analysis

Four main assumptions:

a. Language is ambiguous - What things mean is never absolutely clear. All communication involves interpreting what other people mean.

b. Language is always ‘in the world’ - what language means is always a matter of where and when it is used and what it is used to do.

c. The way we use language is inseparable from who we are and the different social groups to which we belong. We use language to display different kinds of social identities. d. Language is never used all by itself. It is always combined with other things such as our tone of voice, facial expressions and gestures when we speak, and the fonts, layout and graphics we use in written texts.

Topic-02: Discourse and Text

Meaning is the most important thing that makes a text; it has to make sense (Halliday). A text, in his view, is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation. And the basis for meaning is choice (Halliday 1978: 137). And the basis for meaning is choice. Different patterns of texture are associated with different types of texts. Devices are structured in a conventional way with a summary of the main points in the beginning and with the details coming later. The study of the social functions of different kinds of texts is called genre analysis. Mitchell (1957) was one the first researchers to examine the discourse structure of texts. He looked at the ways in which people order what they say in buying and selling interactions. He looked at the overall structure of these kinds of texts, introducing the notion of stages into discourse analysis; that is the steps that language users go through. The notion of genre in discourse analysis goes beyond examining the conventional structures and features of different kinds of texts to asking what these structures and features can tell us about the people who use the texts and what they are using them to do. A genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purposes. Most often it is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value. Three important aspects of genres:

a. Genres are communicative events

b. Conventions and Constraints

c. Creativity

Different patterns of texture are associated with different types of texts. Newspaper articles, for example, tend to favor particular kinds of cohesive devices and are structured in a conventional way with a summary of the main points in the beginning and with the details coming later (e.g. see SectionC2).

Topic-03: The Emergence of CDA

CDS developed historically out of Critical Linguistics (CL), an approach to language study developed at the University of East Anglia. CL emphasizes on the role of ideology and power relations in the practice of language use and the persuasive power of syntactic forms, such as the passive and nominalized forms (Kress 1989). Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) is an inter disciplinary approach to language in use - how discourse figures in social processes, social structures and social change. CDS is practiced in a wide range of fields, apart from language studies, such as anthropology, business studies, geography, health studies, media studies, psychology and tourism studies. CDS is not a method of discourse studies, but a group of varying approaches each with distinctive, but also overlapping methods (Wodak and Meyer, 2016). CDA is a linguistic approach that emerged in the early 1990s and is based on the view that discourse - including written and spoken texts -is socially determined. (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (Van Dijk). Investigates how social practices, events and texts are interrelated and arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power (Fairclough, 1995).

CDA as a Method of Research

Views the systematic analysis and interpretation of texts as potentially revelatory of ways in which discourses consolidate power and colonize human subjects through often covert position calls (Locke, 2004).

The Aim of CDA

To help reveal hidden and ‘often out of sight’ values, positions and perspectives underlying texts (Paltridge, 2008). To unmask the strategies of discriminatory inclusion and exclusion in language in use (Wodak, 1992). The use of discourse in relation to social and cultural issues such as race, gender, politics, identity, ideology, etc.

Assumptions of CDA

Language use is always social. Discourse both reflects and constructs the social world. Discourses ‘are always socially, politically, racially and economically loaded’ (Rogers, 2004, p.6).