Critical discourse analysis (CDA) aims to reveal hidden values and perspectives in language use. CDA explores the connection between language and its social/political contexts. Key principles of CDA are that social issues are constructed through discourse, power relations are negotiated in discourse, and ideologies are produced in discourse. CDA analyzes discourse genres, framing, multimodality, identity construction, and texts from the world wide web. Criticisms of CDA include that it does not sufficiently consider reader interpretation or provide systematic textual analysis.

1. Critical Discourse
Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Group 6
Fira Nursya’bani
Luciyana Dwiningrum
Prita Annisa Utami
Riestia Handayani Part I

2. Overview
• Principles of Critical discourse analysis
• Doing critical discourse analysis
• Critical discourse analysis and genre
• Critical discourse analysis and framing
• Critical discourse analysis and multimodality
• Critical discourse analysis and identity
• Critical discourse analysis and the world wide web
• Criticisms of critical discourse analysis
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3. Critical Discourse Analysis
• Critical Discourse Analysis aims to help reveal
some of the hidden and ‘out of sight’ values,
positions, and perspectives
• CDA explores the connection between the use
of language and the social and political
contexts in which it occurs
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4. Principles of Critical Discourse
Analysis
• Some principles for CDA:
a) Social and political issues are constructed and
reflected in discourse
b) Power relations are negotiated and
performed through discourse
c) Discourse both reflects and reproduces social
relations
d) Ideologies are produced and reflected in the
use of discourse
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5. Doing Critical Discourse Analysis
• CDA includes not only a description and
interpretation of discourse in context, but also
offers an explanation of why and how discourses
work
• CDA might commence by deciding what discourse
type or genre of the text
• The analysis may consider the framing of the text
• CDA, then, takes us beyond the level of
description to a deeper understanding of texts
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6. Cont’d…
At the sentence level, the analyst might consider
what has been:
a) “topicalized” in each of the sentences in the
text
b) “agent patient relations” in the discourse
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7. Critical Discourse Analysis and Genre
e.g Hong Kong government’s promotion: Hong
Kong as ‘Asia’s World City’
Flowerdew (2004)
• A public consultation document
• The Hong Kong annual yearbook
• A video
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8. Critical Discourse Analysis and Framing
Framed: the way in which the content of a text
is presented to the audience
• Foregrounded
• Backgrounded
e.g Huckin (1997)
Newspaper report on a demonstration at a
nuclear test site in the US (page 188)
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9. Critical Discourse Analysis and
Multimodality
• Readings of text are constructed not just by
the use of words but by the combination of
words with other modalities
• The use of multimodal discourse establish a
‘proximity’ to the events and engage people in
the events
Video
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10. Critical Discourse Analysis and Identity
Example:
•How a family use language to create and
socialize each other into a shared family
political identity
• Online communities where social relations
and identities are constructed through
people’s participation and interaction with
each other
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11. Critical Discourse Analysis and The
World Wide Web
• Many works of critical discourse analysis use
texts from world wide web
• There are some problems in using material
from the world wide
– Source
– Authority
– Author
– More than just words
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12. Cont’d...
• There are some advantages in using material
from world wide web
– Easy to find
– A lot of relevant data
– Can be used in research rorpus based
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13. Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis
There are some critics toward critical discourse
analysis:
– Widdowson (1998, 2004)
CDA should include discussion with the producers
and consumers of texts.
– Van Noppen (2004)
CDA does not always consider the role of the reader
in the consumption and interpretation
– Schegloff (1997)
CDA does not provide detailed and systematic
analysis of texts
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14. Cont’d...
– Toolan (1997)
Analyst should be more critical and
demanding of the tools of analysis
– Cameron (2001)
A weakness in CDA is its reliance on just the
analyst’s interpretation of the texts
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15. Cont’d...
There are some suggestions toward critical
discourse analysis:
– Benwell (2005)
Use a textual culture approach in CDA
– Martin (2000); Fairclough (2003)
Use systemic functional linguistics as a tool in CDA
– Mautner (2005a)
Use corpus approaches as a way of increasing the
qualitative dimension of CDA
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16. Cont’d...
– McKenna (2004)
expand CDA by drawing on work such as
schema theory in the area of language and
cognition
– Threadgold (2003)
suggesting the issue of performatifity
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17. Video Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xftIgu0sIgI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i6BzEKhE2Q
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18. Thank you!
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