Text & Critical Discourse Analysis

1. TEXT & CRITICAL
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
LAZARUS GAWAZAH
Namibia University of Science and Technology

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
• A) WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• 1. CORPUS APPROACH TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• 2. DEVELOPING A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PROJECT
• 3. METHODOLOGY IN CDA RESEARCH

3. A). WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• Power relations in a text
• Discourse is a set of statements that construct an object. (Parker, 1992)
• Analysis is the interrogation of the data.
• It is the study of language in text and conversation
• Aims to help reveal some of the hidden and often out of sight values,
positions and perspectives
• Explores the connections between the use of language and the social and
political contexts in which it occurs
• Explores issues such as gender, ethnicity, cultural difference, ideology and
identity and how these are both constructed and reflected in texts
• Detailed text analysis that leads to explanation and Interpretation of the
analysis

4. APPLICATION AREAS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• Discourse is used to shape the world of advertising with crafted texts
• Language, ideology and power in discourse
• Discourse language can be defined as
• Register-language choice dependent on situation
• Tenor-relationship with author/speaker-reader/listener
• Mode-form of communication, spoken, written, graphic/combined
• Requires critical literacy skills-the ability to interrogate texts

5. 1. CORPUS APPROACH TO
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
• A corpus is a collection of spoken or written authentic texts that is
representative of a particular area of language use, by virtue of its
size and composition. (Paltridge, 2006)
• Collection of texts that are usually stored and analysed electronically
• They look at occuraece and recurrence of particular linguistic features

6. KINDS OF CORPORA
• General corpora-sample data for generalised comparison
• Specialised corpora-texts of a particular type such as newspapers
• The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English-a corpus designed
for a particular project
• The British Academic Spoken English-looked at the relationship
between lexical density and speed in academic spoken discourse by
lecturers

7. KINDS OF CORPORA
• The British Academic Written English Corpus-examines students written
assignments at different levels of study
• The TOELF and Written Academic Language Corpus-aimed to provide a
comprehensive linguistic description of spoken and written registers in US
universities
• The International Corpus of English Namibia (ICE-Namibia)- a study of
documenting and determining the variety of English language used in
Namibia for depositing at the ICE bank based at Hong-Kong University
• Example relevant to our study

8. DESIGNING AND CONSTRUCTION OF CORPORA
• Authenticity
• Kinds of texts to include in the corpus
• Size of the texts in the corpus
• Sampling and representativeness of the corpus

9. CRITICISM OF CORPUS STUDIES
• Computer based orientation of corpus studies leads to atomised,
bottom up investigations of language use(Flowerdew, 2005)
• to split into many sections, groups, factions
• Do not take account of contextual aspects of texts, eg social,
communicative purpose of the text, cultural values, formal text
features

10. 2. DEVELOPING A DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS PROJECT
• First, develop a good research question
• With a good idea (Cameroon, 2001). That the project must be about
something that is worth finding out.
• The following handout is about the criteria for developing a discourse
analysis project: (Paltridge, 2006. p.200)

11. Whom do you speak to when choosing a topic?
(Paltridge, 2006)
• Other students
• Colleagues
• Lecturers
• Potential supervisors
• Related research in the library

12. REFINING YOUR TOPIC
• It is rather, a process of going back and forth between the research
questions, the analytical framework, and the data until a
BALANCE
• has been struck between each of these.
• A good research project is “narrow and deep”
• Careful ‘even the simplest idea can mushroom into uncontrollably large
project’
• Turn the topic into a research question

13. Doing a good literature review
• Good ideas come from reading widely from previous research
literature
• Find out what questions can be answered from the discourse
perspective
• Do not be one sided when choosing a research topic

14. KINDS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PROJECTS
• Replication of previous discourse studies
• Using different discourse data but the same methodology
• Analysing existing data from a discourse analysis perspective
• Analysing discourse data from a different perspective
• Considering the validity of a previous claim
• Focusing on unanalysed genres
• Mixed methods discourse studies

15. TYPES OF DISCOURSE STUDIES
• A spoken discourse project
• A written discourse project
• A combination of both

16. 3. METHODOLOGY IN CDA
RESEARCH-POLITICAL DISCOURSE
• 1. Transdisciplinary social research in political discourse
• 2. An approach to the language of new capitalism working in a
transdisciplinary way developed within linguistics
• 3. New capitalism

17. 1. Transdisciplinary social research
• Focus upon a social wrong, in its semiotic aspect
• Identify obstacles to addressing the social wrong
• Consider whether the social order ‘needs’ the social wrong
• Identify possible ways past the obstacles

18. 2. NEW CAPITALISM WORKING IN A TRANSDISCIPLINARY
WAY DEVELOPED WITHIN LINGUISTICS
• Stimulating dimension related to forms of liberation that capitalism
offers
• The forms of security that capitalism offers
• Capitalism invokes the notion of justice or fairness that contributes to
the common good
• Capitalism is a fair dimension of gaining wealth

19. 3. New capitalism/globalisation
• Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) for purposes of discourse
analysis
• Transdisciplinary ways in textual analysis that attempts to maintain
dialogue with social theoretical and research perspectives
• Interdiscursive analysis of texts is a crucial mediating link between
linguistic analysis and social analysis

20. REFERENCES