CDA I: Introduction

2.4.1 Orientation

Critical Discourse Analysis (hence forth ‘CDA’) is the practical investigation of how language use may affirm and indeed reproduce the perspect ives, values and ways of talking of the relat ively power ful, which may not be in the interests

of the socially/econom ic ally relat ively power less. Key to CDA schol ar ship is the rela tion ship between language and power. It is eclectic and inter dis cip-lin ary, consist ing of a set of related approaches which attempt to describe, inter pret and explain how use of language, and other semi otic modes such as images, can contrib ute to such inequal ity. CDA schol ars are espe cially drawn to texts where the socially/econom ic ally disad vant aged are misrep res en ted or ignored by the power ful, e.g. media repres ent a tions of asylum seekers, and impov er ished immig rants. In seeing social inequal ity as a problem, CDA is then a problem- oriented form of discourse analysis (Wodak and Meyer, 2016). Among CDA’s signi fic ant figures are Paul Chilton, Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk and Ruth Wodak. For compen dia of CDA work, see Richardson et al. (2013), Wodak (2013), Hart and Cap (2014) and Flowerdew and Richardson (forthcoming).

CDA’s take on ‘crit ical’ has its roots in the twen ti eth century in the work of the social theor ist and philo sopher Jürgen Habermas, and Frankfurt school theor ists such as Max Horkheimer, and further back to Karl Marx in the nine-teenth century. ‘Critical’ usually means taking issue with how domin ance and inequal ity are repro duced through language use. Reproduction may be unwit-ting. We may be consent ing to an inequit able status quo without being fully aware of how we are talking and acting. This state of affairs where we consent to be led or domin ated – unwit tingly or not – is known as hege mony, a concept gener ated by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, 1971). When language use reflects social inequal ity (e.g. in the speech act at a wedding ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’⁹ as opposed to ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’), CDA argues that sustained use of such unequal repres ent-a tions cent-an do ideo lo gicent-al work in ent-affirm ing hege mony. In CDA, ideo lo gies are repres ent a tions of the world which contrib ute to estab lish ing and main tain ing rela tions of power, domin a tion and exploit a tion.

A salient aspect of CDA is that it is polit ic ally commit ted, with analysts often being actively involved in chal len ging the phenom ena they study.

Indeed, for crit ical discourse analysts, there can only ever be commit ted discourse analysis and so their polit ical stance (usually left- liberal) is often evident in their inter pret a tion of the data they examine. Of course, one does not need the appel la tion of ‘crit ical discourse analyst’ to be crit ical of how language use can be bound up with (ab)use of power. But where a crit ical discourse analysis differs from ‘lay’ critique, as well as uncrit ical reading, is in its ‘system atic approach to inher ent mean ings’, and the neces sity as it sees it to include the ‘self- reflec tion of the research ers them selves’ (Fairclough and Wodak 1997: 279).¹⁰

2.4.2 discourse/Discourse

Usually in CDA, ‘discourse’ has two differ ent but related senses (Fairclough 2003: 3–4). The commu nic a tions scholar James Paul Gee refers memor ably

to these types of discourse as ‘little d’ discourse and ‘big D’ Discourse (Gee, 2014), distin guish ing them by initial lower- case ‘d’ and capital ‘D’ respect-ively. Let me start with ‘little d’ discourse. This is language in use. The ‘little d’ discourse of a conver sa tion refers to the mean ings made in inter ac tion with those features of context which are deemed relev ant, e.g. tone of voice of parti cipants, facial move ments, hand gestures. If the conver sa tion is recor ded, its text would be the tran scrip tion of the conver sa tion. ‘Little d’

discourse can also refer to mean ings activ ated in reading, that is, those mean ings we derive from the text in line with the know ledge we possess, the amount of effort we invest, our values, how we have been educated and social ised, our gender, and so on.

Perhaps ‘discourse’ seems an odd choice for the meaning we create in reading. But reading is, in fact, quasi- dialo gical. As we read, we pose ques-tions of the text: ‘What is the author getting at?’; ‘What are they imply ing by that remark?’; ‘Where is the author taking me?’, and so on. The author

‘replies’ to our ques tions. In reading, we thus make a discourse from a text.

The situ ation we make a discourse in is known as the discourse prac tice.

This will affect the kind of discourse we gener ate from a text. So, for example, a teacher reading a news pa per article at home in their leisure time would be one discourse prac tice. Alternatively, that teacher may use the same news pa per article in order to teach students some thing of the news genre – a differ ent discourse prac tice.

‘Big D’ Discourse is asso ci ated with the work of Michel Foucault, the French social theor ist/philo sopher. Foucault (1972[1969]) describes ‘big D’

Discourses as ways of talking about the world which are tightly connec ted to ways of seeing and compre hend ing it. For Foucault, Discourses place limits on the possib il it ies of artic u la tion (and by exten sion, what to do or not to do) with respect to the area of concern of a partic u lar insti tu tion, polit ical programme, culture etc. For example, differ ent reli gions promote their own Discourses which frame explan a tion of natural beha viour. Some now approve of ‘the big bang’ theory of the universe’s birth (scientific Discourse) but that its genesis was by divine means (reli gious Discourse).

Importantly, for Foucault and for CDA, it is the power ful who ulti mately control Discourse and have the means to (re)gener ate it, such as news pa per moguls.

‘Big D’ Discourse is a more abstract and gener al ised notion than ‘little d’

discourse since it relates to the wider society and culture and how we behave in it – what is known as the sociocul tural prac tice. But Discourse is never separ ate from discourse. There is a two- way rela tion ship. The coali tion of many instances of discourse helps to repro duce and reshape Discourse.

Conversely, Discourse can constrain what we say and how we activ ate meaning from texts in reading or in conver sa tion. So, for example, if a person is serious about their Islamic values (Discourse), this will prob ably affect how they respond (discourse) to a beer advert (text). Figure 2.1 shows

the rela tion ship between the concepts I have just high lighted. As the figure reflects, the socially situ ated nature of text consump tion and produc tion is a funda mental of CDA. Lastly, another assump tion in CDA is that word ings poten tially posi tion target readers and listen ers into partic u lar discourse activ a tions from a text which, in turn, could repro duce Discourse. So, detailed analysis of the text, in order to appre ci ate how this can occur, is a crucial oper a tion for the crit ical discourse analyst.

2.4.3 Argumentation

Any text type which can poten tially promote social/economic inequal ity is worth study ing in CDA. There have been ‘favour ites’, however. Because of their wide circu la tion, and thus marked poten tial for influ ence, news media texts have been a popular focus. Moreover, given CDA’s emphasis on how language use can contrib ute to social/economic inequal ity, ‘it is unsur pris ing that an import ant strand of theor et ical and applied crit ical discourse research should be devoted to the language of persua sion and justi fic a tion’

(Fairclough, Mulderrig and Wodak, 2011: 365). In other words, CDA has seen argu ment at ive texts as ripe for analysis.

Sustained pedago gical focus on argu ment is fairly recent in CDA, Isabela Fairclough and Norman Fairclough being its key developers. One of their aims is to help readers delib er ate on the logical struc ture of polit ical

Figure 2.1 The rela tion ship between text and d/Discourse in CDA.

Process of production Text

Process of consumption '1ittle d' discourse

'big D' Discourse

discourse practice

sociocultural practice

argu ments; this delib er a tion can, in prin ciple, ground decision- making for subsequent polit ical action. Fairclough and Fairclough (2012)’s analyt ical frame work facilitates this. I shall come back to Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) in Chapter 11 in order to flag how the strategies of this book comple-ment it. The pedago gical focus in CDA on the logical dimen sion of argu-ment is recent. Traditional pedago gical CDA has been trained on media and polit ical texts, includ ing polit ical argu ments, where the analyt ical focus is the rhet or ical rather than logical dimen sion. It is to this tradi tion which I now turn.

2.5 CDA II: The rhet or ical dimen sion