Would you like to learn how to find and recognise frames? This week we are going to apply the knowledge about frames to analysing text. We are going to go through the basics of frame analysis and watch a video to find out the frames. Can you identify why the term "greenhouse effect" did not prove effective in convincing Americans to act against global warming? I

1. Week 3: frame analysis
Cognitive discourse
analysis

2. What is a
frame?
Frames are everywhere
around us. They are the
conceptual models that
allow us to make sense of
the world.

3. Can you choose not to use
frames?

4. Can you choose not to use
frames?
There is no such thing as “choosing” to use frames. You can
learn how to recognize frames or not, but your understanding
of discourse will be affected by discourse frames either way.

5. Examples of frames

6. • what: a container that
typically holds liquids.
• properties: graspable (comes
in a size and shape
compatible with a typical
human hand)
• associated body
movements: reaching,
grasping, lifting toward your
mouth, drinking from it
• associated logic:
• it must contain liquid in
order to drink from it
• if you drink all of the liquid,
it will be empty
• you cannot drink from it if it
is not located near to or in
contact with your mouth
a cup

7. • what: an institution that contains
people who improve the health of
other people
• associated locations: the operating
room, the emergency room, the
recovery room, the waiting area, and
patient areas
• associated roles: doctor, nurse,
surgeon, orderly, patient, visitor,
receptionist, janitor, etc.;
• associated actions: operations,
taking temperature and blood
pressure, checking charts, emptying
bedpans
• associated logic:
• you go there as a patient if you are
ill or injured
• if you are in a hospital then your
health is improving
a hospital

8. „operating room” only makes sense when we know what a hospital is

9. What is frame analysis?
Finding frames in discourse and understanding their
consequences
• what they highlight
• what they hide
• what logic they demand
• who becomes the villain / the hero

10. challenges for frame analysis

11. challenges for frame analysis
One big challenge of
discussing frames is that we
have to use frames to
reason about them.
This means we have to
evoke a conceptual model of
something familiar to explain
something that is not.

12. challenges for frame analysis
For example, if we describe the
process of learning about and
understanding frames as an
uphill climb we are evoking the
frame of a journey, more
precisely a mountain hike.
This makes us expect difficulties
(the hill is steep) but also believe
that the journey is finite (the hill
has a top you can reach). But
learning about frames may not
be either of these things!

13. are frames obvious and
deliberate?
• the dominant story frame is rarely obvious and/or
explicitly identified by the reporter or speaker
• many times reporters are not even aware of how a
story is framed - it simply feels "natural" to cover
stories in a certain way
• critical watching / reading is a habit you can
develop to become aware of frames

14. conducting frame analysis
source: How to do a frame analysis of news media

15. conducting frame analysis
source: How to do a frame analysis of news media
This exercise shows you how different
linguistic choices affect your understanding of
the story. Read the three articles and think:
who is the hero of the story? who is the
villain? what are your feelings towards the
people in the story? did your feelings change
when you read different accounts of the
story?

16. An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten
repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother
went to cash her welfare check. A neighbor
responded to the cries of the infant and brought
the child to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was
treated and released into his mother's custody.
The mother, Angie Burns of Milwaukee, explained
softly, "I was only gone five minutes. I left the door
open so my neighbor would hear him if he woke
up. I never thought this would happen in the
daylight."
Rats Bite Infant

17. An eight-month-old Milwaukee boy was treated and
released from St. Joseph's Hospital yesterday after
being bitten by rats while he was sleeping in his crib.
Tenants said that repeated requests for exter-
minations had been ignored by the landlord, Henry
Brown. Brown claimed that the problem lay with the
tenants' improper disposal of garbage. "I spend half
my time cleaning up after them. They throw the
garbage out the window into the back alley and their
kids steal the garbage can covers for sliding in the
snow."
Rats Bite Infant: Landlord,
Tenants Dispute Blame

18. Rats bit eight-month-old Michael Burns five times yesterday
as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat
epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods labeled the
"Zone of Death." Health officials say infant mortality rates in
these neighborhoods approach those in many third world
countries. A Public Health Department spokesman
explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short
staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs. The
result, noted Juan Nunez, M.D., a pediatrician at St.
Joseph's Hospital, is a five-fold increase in rat bites. He
added, "The irony is that Michael lives within walking
distance of some of the world's best medical centers."
Rat Bites Rising in City’s
"Zone of Death"

19. • let’s see how different
frames can be used to
report the same story
• what words are used to
evoke the frame?
words
& frames

20. An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten
repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother
went to cash her welfare check. A neighbor
responded to the cries of the infant and brought
the child to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was
treated and released into his mother's custody.
The mother, Angie Burns of Milwaukee, explained
softly, "I was only gone five minutes. I left the
door open so my neighbor would hear him if he
woke up. I never thought this would happen in
the daylight."
Rats Bite Infant

21. What’s the frame?

22. What’s the frame?
Who is in the story?
• teenage mother
• child
• neighbour
Who is to blame?
• ignorance, youth and lack of personal
responsibility

23. An eight-month-old Milwaukee boy was treated and
released from St. Joseph's Hospital yesterday after
being bitten by rats while he was sleeping in his
crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for exter-
minations had been ignored by the landlord, Henry
Brown. Brown claimed that the problem lay with the
tenants' improper disposal of garbage. "I spend half
my time cleaning up after them. They throw the
garbage out the window into the back alley and their
kids steal the garbage can covers for sliding in the
snow."
Rats Bite Infant: Landlord,
Tenants Dispute Blame

24. What’s the frame?

25. What’s the frame?
Who is in the story?
• landlord
• tenants
• child
Who is to blame?
• a child suffers in a dispute between landlord
and tenants

26. Rats bit eight-month-old Michael Burns five times yesterday
as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat
epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods labeled the
"Zone of Death." Health officials say infant mortality rates in
these neighborhoods approach those in many third world
countries. A Public Health Department spokesman
explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short
staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs. The
result, noted Juan Nunez, M.D., a pediatrician at St.
Joseph's Hospital, is a five-fold increase in rat bites. He
added, "The irony is that Michael lives within walking
distance of some of the world's best medical centers."
Rat Bites Rising in City’s
"Zone of Death"

27. What’s the frame?

28. What’s the frame?
Who is in the story?
• health officials
• expert (doctor)
• child
Who is to blame?
• rat bites are a sympton of a public health
crisis facing a poor community - public
policy is to blame

29. 1) Establish the context - in
what circumstances was the
story reported?
2) What is the: medium,
message, genre?
3) What is the title of the
piece? What story does it tell?
4) Which frames are activated?
5) What’s the logic of the
frames? Who is the
protagonist/hero, who is the
victim, who or what is to
blame?
6) What is put in focus?
7) What stays hidden?
Step-by-step
frame analysis

30. Task: political marketing
Watch this video: "The Story of Us".
Analyse the frames used in the video. You
can base your analysis on the questions on
the next few pages.
source of the questions: politicseastasia.com

31. 1. Establish the context:
• What is the context of the video: when and where was it made, who
is the intended audience, what is the distribution channel and language
• Background check: who/what organization produced the video and
what is their general political position?
2. The medium and the message. The medium in which information is
presented is the crucial element that shapes meaning. Reading an article
online is not the same as reading it in a printed newspaper, or in a
hardcover collection of essays; watching a video on youtube is different
than watching it via facebook or on TV)
• What is the medium you are analyzing?
3. The genre. Are you analyzing an editorial comment, and op-ed, a
reader’s letter, a commentary, a news item, a report, an interview, an ad,
an election spot, or something else? Establishing this background
information will later help you assess what genre-specific mechanism your
source deploys (or ignores) to get its message across.
• What is the genre of the discourse piece?
4. What’s the title of the material?
• Is it deliberate? What did the author intend it to mean?
adapted from: politicseastasia.com

32. 5. What’s the story?
• Is there a protagonist? Who is it (the viewer or someone else?
• Who are the villains, who are the good guys?
• What is the source of conflict?
6. Find the frames!
• Watch the video once. Name the main topic(s) discussed.
• Think about your impressions and emotions. What emotional reactions
did you have during the videos and when (liked an argument,
disagreed/ agreed with a statement, felt a sense of need, urgency or
danger, felt a sense of community etc.)
• Which words / images did you find most powerful? These are most
likely to evoke frames. Can you identify the frames they evoked?
7. Examine the structure: look at the structural features of the texts.
• Can you identify how the argument is structured: does the text go
through several issues one by one? Does it first make a counter-factual
case, only to then refute that case and make the main argument?
• Consider how features of the video guide the argument, and what role
the introduction and conclusion play in the overall scheme of things.
adapted from: politicseastasia.com

33. 8. Identify linguistic and rhetorical mechanisms
• Word groups: are there many words from a shared background? For instance,
military language, business language, or maybe the text resembles the way young
people speak. Words make a difference! The same event can be described in terms
of war eg. „we conquered the mountain” vs. religion „we were graced with the
possibility to see the view from the mountain top”.
• Grammar features: who or what the subjects and objects in the various statements
are. Do you see any patterns, for instance frequently used “we” and “they”? Can you
identify who are the „good guys” and who are the villains? Is passive voice used?
Passive voice deletes the actors from the situation, dissolving any responsibility! A
statement like “we are under economic pressure” is very different from “X puts us
under economic pressure”. Make these strategies visible through your analysis
• Rhetorical and literary figures: does the text contain: allegories, metaphors,
similes, idioms, and proverbs? How do they shape the argument?
• Direct and indirect speech: does the text quote anyone? What is the context of the
original quote? Is it taken out of context? What role does it play now?
• Modalities: see if the text includes any statements on what “should” or “could” be.
Such phrases may create a sense of urgency, serve as a call to action, or imply
hypothetical scenarios.
• Evidentialities: does the material present some statements as facts? Look for
phrases like “of course”, “obviously”, or “as everyone knows”. What kinds of “facts”
the text actually presents in support of its argument? One of the strongest features of
discourse is how it “naturalizes” certain statements as “common sense” or “fact”,
even if the statements are actually controversial.
adapted from: politicseastasia.com

34. 9. Identify cultural references: Does your material contain
references to other sources, or imply knowledge of another subject
matter?
10. What can you learn from the way the piece was stylized?
• linguistic choices (e.g. "gunned down" vs "accidently hit by stray
fire”)
• modes of reference (e.g. "Obama" vs "President Obama”)
• use of quotes and attribution ("avowed socialist Bernie Sanders";
"so-called Peace Movement")
11. Explain the underlying assumptions and logic of the frames
you discover:
• What is the logic of the frames?
• What do these frames imply is important (e.g., fund raising
success in political campaigns, common sense, medical
coverage, justice, equality etc)?
• What do they take for granted? (e.g., if the stock market goes up
it is good for the country)
12. What do these frames exclude from discussion?
adapted from: politicseastasia.com

35. End of week 3