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Question 1: Discourse Analysis

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Discourse Analysis

คำถาม Your position on the linguist’s role toward a belief in an objective reality, even while acknowledging the social construction of language in the world. You maintain that if you look for hegemonic power, you will find it and that CDA “needs to suggest ways of solving problems of power resulting from a particular discursive practice” and “on the effects or the outcome of power or what power does to those involved in text production and consumption.” What would a discourse analysis that attended to those aspects look like? What methods would it use? What features would be prominent, if any? How would it differ in actual practice from CDA? What would you gain and what would you lose?

คำตอบ

Recognising CDA’s intention to move the linguistic field into a domain of social and political relevance, I here present an introductory version of CDA that aims to suggest possible linguistic ways of solving problems relating to power, domination, and inequality. To be more specific, my version of CDA must not only 1) analyse text on a strictly linguistic ground but also 2) be prescriptive to a certain extent, so that it offers an alternative text that balances asymetrical power relations, if any, in the original text. However, I must emphasise that whether this alternative text is actually put into practice by the public is outside of the realm of this discourse analysis.

The traditional CDA rationale (e.g. in Fairclough (1989)) raises one issue concerning the interrelationship of language and ideology. This has to do with the way in which dominant ideologies become ingrained in everyday discourse. They become rationalized as “commonsense” assumptions about the way things are and the way things should be. A process of naturalization takes place to the extent that people are often no longer aware of the hierarchies and systems which shape their social interaction. Fairclough offers the following useful illustration of one type of naturalization:
The conventions for a traditional type of consultation between doctors and patients embody ‘common sense’ assumptions which treat authority and hierarchy as natural---the doctor knows about medicine and the patient doesn’t; the doctor is in a position to determine how a health problem should be dealt with and the patient isn’t; it is right (and ‘natural’) that the doctor should make decisions and control the course of the consultation and of the treatment, and that the patient should simply and cooperate and so on. (Language and Power, 2)

Ideology, Fairclough goes on to argue, is embedded in the language use to structure this type of social encounter. By foregrounding the linguistic code employed in such contexts, analysts can “demystify” and “denaturalize” what normally passes us by as real-time participants in everyday interaction. Ruth Wodak (1997), in “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Doctor-Patient Interactions,” makes this clear: “Both the ideological import of particular ways of using language and the relations of power which underlie them are often unclear to people. Critical discourse analysis aims to make more visible these opaque aspects of discourse” (reproduced in Toolan (2002) vol. II, 341).

The same point is also voiced by Theo van Leeuwen (1993):

Critical discourse analysis is, or should be, concerned also with the way in which these things [discourse as the instrument of power and control as well as instrument of the social construction and reality] are done in and through language, the way in which linguistic analyses can bring to light, for instance, inequalities between addressers and addressees… (“Genre and Field in CDA”, reproduced in Toolan (2002), vol. II, 193)

From all the quotations above, we see that all CDA practitioners recognise the importance of language, where ideologies are encoded. However, because there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between forms (linguistic
items) and meaning (hidden ideologies), a lot of analysts risk going too far, seeing features of major ideological significance in inconsequential, prosaic discourse. Consider, for instance, Hodge and Kress’s (1988) deconstruction of the word “tinnie,” an Australian English term for a tin of beer: “tins of beer, in spite of their phallic
shape and association with male drinking and male solidarity, are classified with the ‘ie’ of implicitly feminine solidarity, as safe objects of male desire” (Social Semiotics, 102). Upon reading this comment, I was surprised to find
that Kress, a follower of de Saussure’s structuralism herself, overlooks the assumption concerning the arbitrariness of the signified and the signifier. Moreover, it is not clear how an analyst can generalise her reading of the word
to other words containing ‘ie’ and to other cylindrical containers---whether it is so shaped because of the male ideology.

Without doubt, such an analysis as presented above is open to criticism. For example, H. G. Widdowson (1995) says:

“if you are ideologically committed you will be inclined to imply that your interpretation of a text is the only one which is valid, that it is somehow in the text indeed, needing only to be discovered, uncovered, revealed by expert exegesis. What is actually revealed is the particular discourse perspective of the interpreter. (reproduced in Toolan (2002) vol. III, 144)

I see this comment as very valuable for my version of discourse analysis, which must be grounded strictly in linguistic analysis. The analyst must begin with the neutral assumption of text analysis, for example, that it is possible that a text might or might not exhibit unequal power relations, and even if there are such relations, the less powerful party might not always be taken advantage of. To do analysis with a biased view---such as “power is bad,” “politicians are manipulators,” “the media are an ideology-reproducing machine,” “doctors are always powerful in the doctor-patient relations”, and so on---is at best simplification of social structures and patterns of relations. Clearly, power relations are pre-defined and then confirmed by linguistic features claimed by the analyst to yield a corresponding explanation on power relations.

In cases where the analyst should find social problems represented linguistically in the text, then the next step is to offer a linguistic way of solving that problem. This is because the objectives of CDA are not only an awareness of the reciprocal influences of language and social structure of which laypeople are unaware (Fairclough (1989), Van Dijk (1993)), but also a path towards emancipation. “CDA sees itself as politically involved research with an emancipatory requirement: it seeks to have an effect on social practice and social relationships, for example, in teacher development, in the elaboration of guidelines for non-sexist language use or in proposals to increase the intelligibility of news and
legal texts” (Tisscher et al, 147). So, simply by describing what is going on in a text is not sufficient for CDA; the analyst needs to make constructive suggestions as to how a text should be amended to alleviate power inequality. For example, in Fairclough’s analysis of the Sheffield and Newcastle advertisements for an academic position (1993), he claims that there is an ongoing struggle about how universities are to function and to be understood in late modern Britain. On the one side are forces that press for a redefinition of the universities in which they become institutions in which products are bought, sold and negotiated (like a new university such as Sheffield), whereas the old university like Newcastle tends to maintain the boundary between university and corporate sector and reproduces a more traditional definition of what universities are and should be. He concludes his analysis, saying that
this case is, I think, an interesting one in terms of struggles to restructure hegemony within the order of discourse of higher education…it will be interesting to see whether and how the two orders of discourse begin to unify, and whether and how a struggle develops around the traditional advertising practice….it will also be interesting to monitor the responses of potential applicants to different advertising styles. (reproduced in Michael Toolan (2002)),85)

What Fairclough is doing here, at best, meets only one objective of CDA---critical language awareness---a term coined by Fairclough himself. The other objective of CDA is lacking here, and it lies in the last line of the above quotation: “it will also be interesting to monitor and responses of potential applicants to different advertising styles” (emphasis my own). This is exactly what I want my version of CDA to offer---the ways in which a text should otherwise be shaped or phrased, how other signs (pictures, graphics, and so on) can be re-arranged, cut off, or edited for the better. Simply put, the analyst must suggest an alternative text for the problematic/ideology-loaded one.
In short, a potentially effective version of CDA must offer the following: linguistic analysis and strict textual evidence, and suggestion for an alternative text. Diagrammatically,
description (linguistic analysis)-->interpretation (based on textual evidence gained from the first step)-->evaluation (if necessary, make textual changes).

This version of CDA is clearly compatible with Fairclough’s three-dimensional model: text (linguistic analysis)-->discursive practice (producing and consuming text)-->social practice (what texts tell about the social world).

...........................ตัดตอน...............
In this paper, I present how CD can be done in a simple manner. First, all the description and analysis should be linguistically-based, because we are talking about how ideology/power are realised in discourse (i.e. language in use). Second, discourse analysts must suggest a way of solving ideological problems in discourse, if any, and again it should be in the form of linguistic changes. Let me end this essay with a comment from Toolan (1997, reproduced in Toolan (2002) vol. III):
CDA will specify, as a direct corollary of its uncovering of inequality and hegemony in discourse, how a particular communicative event---e.g. a doctor-patient interaction or a radio news broadcast---can be changed, corrected, so as to minimize inequality, hegemony, and control. This may well involve a reconfiguration of the situation and the order of discourse; that is, prescriptions for reform may involve far more than local changes of verbal form. But the scope of prescriptions is a secondary issue to that of their possibility, which CDA unequivocally affirms. (“What is CDA and Why…?”, 226)

Works Cited

Fairclough, N. Language and Power. London: Longman, 1989.

Fairclough, N. “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse:
the Universities.” Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics.
Vol II. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 61-103

Hodge, R. and G, Kress. Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988

Leech, Geoffrey and Short, Michael. Style in Fiction. London: Longman, 1981.

Talbot, Mary. Language and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.

Titscher Stefan, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak and Eva Vetter. Methods of Text and
Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 2000.

Toolan, Michael. “What is Critical Discourse Analysis and Why are People Saying Such
Terrible Things about It” Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in
Linguistics. Vol III. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 219-241

van Leeuwen, Theo. “Genre and Field in Critical Discourse Analysis: A Synopsis.”
Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol II. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 166-199

van Dijk, Teun. “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Critical Discourse
Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol II. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 104-141

Widdowson, H. G. “Discourse Analysis: A Critical View.” Critical Discourse Analysis:
Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol III. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 131-147

Wodak, Ruth. “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Doctor-Patient Interaction.”
Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol II. Ed. Toolan, Michael. London: Routledge, 2002. 340-364

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