2. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• Explores the connections between the use of
language and the social and political contexts in
which it occurs.
• It explores issues such as gender, ethnicity, cultural
difference, ideology and identity and how these are
both constructed and reflected in texts.
3. 1. 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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4. 2. Doing Critical Discourse Analysis
• According to Rodgers (2004:2) “Critical
discourse analysis includes not only a
description in context, but also offers an
explanation of why and how discourse work.”
• The analysis may consider:
• The framing of the text
• The notion of foregrounding
• Topicalized of the sentences in the text
• The agent patient relations in discourse
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5. 3. Critical Discourse Analysis
and Genre
e.g Hong Kong government’s promotion: Hong Kong
as ‘Asia’s World City’
6. 4. Critical Discourse Analysis
and Framing
• A further way of doing a critical analysis is to
examine the way in which the content of a text is
framed
7. 5. Critical Discourse Analysis
and Multimodality
• Many readings of the texts are constructed not just
by the use of words by the combination of words
other modality, such as pictures, films, or video
images and sounds.
8. 6. Critical Discourse Analysis
and Identity
• The issue of how identity is constructed in the of
discourse.
9. 7. Critical Discourse Analysis &
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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10. Continued...
• 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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11. 8. 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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12. Continued...
• 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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13. 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
• 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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