Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective [1 ed.] 9781608767724, 9781607413202

Citation preview

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Languages and Linguistics Series

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS SERIES

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective Thao Le, Quynh Le and Megan Short (Editors) 2009. ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Languages and Linguistics Series

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

THAO LÊ QUYNH LÊ AND

MEGAN SHORT

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

EDITORS

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Critical discourse analysis : an interdisciplinary perspective / [edited by] Thao Le and Megan Short. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60876-772-4 (E-Book) 1. Critical discourse analysis. 2. Critical discourse analysis--Social aspects. I. Le, Thao, 1948- II. Short, Megan. P302.C6856 2009 306.44--dc22 2009004753

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.  New York

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

CONTENTS

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Preface

ix

Part I

Introductory Aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis

1

Chapter 1

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

3

Chapter 2

Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis Thao Lê and Megan Short

17

Chapter 3

Systematic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang

27

Chapter 4

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits Alison Lee

37

Chapter 5

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse: When the ‘Tripwire Critique’ Is not Enough Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

49

Chapter 6

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

65

Chapter 7

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

79

Chapter 8

Being Self-Critical in Research as a Meaning Making Process Quynh Lê and Thao Lê

91

Part II

Critical Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines

99

Chapter 9

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Language Planning (LP): Constraints and Applications of the Critical in Language Planning Joseph Lo Bianco

101

Exploring the Relationship between Social Epidemiology and Critical Discourse Analysis Quynh Lê

119

Chapter 10

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

vi Chapter 11

The Internet: A Critical Perspective Daniel Rolf

127

Chapter 12

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities Geraldine Castleton

137

Chapter 13

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity Megan Short

151

Chapter 14

Being Critical about Metaphor Daniel Rolf

163

Chapter 15

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors Júlia Todolí

171

Chapter 16

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

183

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis: Disentangling Exhibition Narratives Sotiria Grek

201

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective Peter James Gleeson

213

Part III

Critical Discourse Analysis across Cultures

225

Chapter 19

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric: Insights into the Speeches of Political Figures in the Vanguard of Nigeria’s “June 12” Crisis Adeyemi Adegoju

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Contents

227

Culture and Globalisation: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

247

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’: The Discursive Construction of America as Global Policeman in the New World Order Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

257

Chapter 22

Charismatically (Re)Constructing New Zealand Identity Philippa K. Smith

Chapter 23

Indonesian Islamist Media: A Struggle Against or A Legitimacy of the Dominant Ideology? Rianne K. Subijanto

279

Power, Language, and Literacy Education: The Case of Early Reading and Writing in China Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

291

Chapter 24

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

269

Contents

vii 305

Index

307

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Contributors

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

PREFACE Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a relatively new field in the academic world. Thus it has its advantages and disadvantages. The first advantage is that it can draw a great deal of insights, conceptually and methodologically, from a range of well-established disciplines such as linguistics, history, sociology, philosophy, and psychology to enhance its role in dealing with discourse analysis in a critical and vigourous manner. Another significant gain of CDA as a new field is its multidisciplinary nature. CDA does not sit squarely in any specific discipline as the issues it deals with are multidimensionally complex and therefore require an interdisciplinary approach and perspective. However, as an emerging academic field, CDA has also attracted criticism in terms of its methodology, use of terminology, ethical and political stance. Constructive criticism has enhanced the development of CDA as an important academic field and gives CDA new windows to enhance its perspectives and evaluate its roles in research. The title of this book ‘Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective’ is purposely chosen to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of CDA. The book is divided into three parts: Part I is about some introductory aspects of CDA. It gives readers some basic ideas about CDA as an emerging field. Part II is on CDA across different subjects and disciplines such as language education, information technology, and health sciences. Part III deals with CDA across cultures. It includes the use of CDA in examining social and linguistic issues in different lands and cultures such as Spain, Nigeria, Indonesia, New Zealand. One of the criticisms against CDA is that it is rather European-orientated as its theoretical foundation is deeply rooted in Western intellectuality. It is hoped that the chapters in part 3 make a contribution to the widening role of CDA across not only different disciplines but also different cultures. The editors of this book are grateful to Nova Science Publishers for its interest in promoting CDA as an important field of academic inquiry. We would like to express our profound appreciation of the chapter authors in this book. They have worked extremely hard to enhance the quality of this book.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

PART I

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTORY ASPECTS OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: AN OVERVIEW Thao Lê and Quynh Lê ABSTRACT Discourse Analysis (DA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have attracted great attention in various academic disciplinary due to their interdisciplinary nature and focus on the relationship between texts and its social context. DA and CDA are very interrelated conceptually and methodologically as both deal with common issues and topics and use the same linguistic concepts in describing and explaining discourses. This chapter presents an overview of CDA. It attempts to answer the questions: What is Critical Discourse Analysis? How is CDA viewed by different scholars? It also discusses fundamental concepts in CDA such as discourse, power, social practice.

Keywords: discourse, power, social practice, intertextuality, linguistics, context, social justice

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION The title of this book ‘Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective’ first appears ‘redundant’ in the sense that Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) itself is interdisciplinary. However this title is deliberately chosen for a number of reasons. Firstly, it reminds that CDA is interdisciplinary. It does not belong to a single discipline. Secondly, it wants to reinforce the view that CDA not only uses a variety of methods developed in various disciplines but also it is not confined to a specific range of topics normally ‘belonging’ to a particular discipline. Thirdly, this book includes chapters contributed by authors of different linguistic, cultural and disciplinary backgrounds. Finally, it responds to van Dijk’s (2002) call for “multidisciplinary CDA: a plea for diversity”. Thus, CDA in this book should be seen broadly viewed as critically orientated discourse analysis across disciplines and cultures.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

4

An introduction to CDA can be made in two ways. A simple way to approach CDA is to examine certain concepts which are important to the understanding of the meaning of CDA. This approach is lexically orientated as it examines each key term in its own right and gradually relates them to the whole concept of CDA. For example, we may start to define what ‘discourse’ means and to ask why it is important to be ‘critical’. In this way, we need to focus on the basic terms which are most essential for understanding what CDA is. Interestingly some of these basic terms are often discussed in dichotomy such as power and empowerment, social justice and injustice, use and abuse, construction and deconstruction etc. Some of these basic terms are also used as members of a lexical complex structure such as power, authority, control, dominance, hegemony etc. Thus it is impossible to meaningfully discuss each term without mentioning the other members. Another approach to introduce CDA is to examine the broad theoretical context in which CDA has emerged. Though individual terminology is still very important to the understanding of CDA, it is insightful to examine the theoretical background and historical development which have shaped CDA. In the academic world, an approach or a field does not come from nowhere. Its development has emerged from some influential orientations. This chapter focuses on key concepts in CDA and its mainstream and the following chapter will provide different insights into the foundation of CDA.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The main mission of CDA is to examine social injustice which is manifested in various social practices and to take a stance against social abuse, racism, social prejudice and discrimination against dominated or marginalised people with less power. According to Fairclough (2003), CDA is fundamentally critical social research aimed at better understanding how societies work and produce both beneficial and detrimental effects, and particularly how to end or mitigate detrimental effects. For him the following questions need to be raised:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

• • • •

How do existing societies provide people with the possibilities and resources for rich and fulfilling lives? On the other hand, how do they deny people these possibilities and resources? What is it about existing societies that produce poverty, deprivation, misery, and insecurity in people’s lives? What possibilities are there for social change which would reduce these problems and enhance the quality of the lives of human beings? (Fairclough, 2003, p.202).

Before delving further into the emergence of CDA as a new field of academic inquiry, it is necessary to ask the question: “what is the difference between Discourse Analysis (DA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)”. The simple answer is that that the former is “analysis of discourse” whereas the latter takes a critical stance. Discourse analysis has been widely used in linguistics and other disciplines. However, it is not uniformly accepted among discourse analysts. In the opening of his book on text, context and pretext, Widdowson (2004) made the following remark about the uncertainty of the term “discourse analysis”.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

5

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Although discourse analysis has been a busy field of activity for many years, there is a good deal of uncertainty about what it actually is. The generally accepted view is that it has something to do with looking at language ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ the sentence; this is hardly an exact formulation (p.1).

Linguistic analysis is the analysis of language. Similarly discourse analysis is the analysis of discourse. While linguists have a clear conception of what language is, it is not the same with “discourse”, which is vaguely described as something larger than a sentence. Harris (1952), a prominent linguist in the fifties, wrote an article entitled “Discourse Analysis”, which extends the scope of traditional linguistics from sentence to discourse. However, Harris treats discourse very much in the same way linguists treat clauses and sentences in terms of grammaticality. The term discourse is used widely and sometimes vaguely in CDA and other disciplines. In her book entitled “Discourse”, Blommaert (2005) explains that there is a long tradition of treating discourse in linguistic terms, either as a complex of linguistic forms larger than the single sentence which is often interpreted as “text”, or discourse as language-in-use which is linguistic structures actually used by people in real life. For instance, Stubbs (1983) discourse analysis deals with language use involving units larger than sentence/utterance, with the interrelationships between language and society as language cannot be divorced from its social context and with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication. Stubb’s definition refers to “language in use” and this has opened up further extension of the concept “discourse” to include text and talk. Van Dijk’s early work in text linguistics and discourse analysis already shows an interest in texts and discourses as basic units and social practices. Like other critical linguistic theorists, he traces the origins of linguistic interest in units of language larger than sentences and in text- and context – dependency of meaning (Wodak, 2002, p.7). Later, Van Dijk (2008) points out that “discourse is not only analysed as an autonomous verbal object but also as situated interaction, as a social practice, or as a type of communication in a social, cultural, historical or political situation” (p.3). Thus, discourse is not only viewed as a linguistic unit but also as an event or a social phenomenon. Gee (2005, pp.21-26) makes a distinction between “Discourse” and “discourse”. The term “Discourse” with a capital ‘D’ is used as “ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognisable identity”, whereas the word “discourse” with a little ‘d’ means language-in-use or stretches of language (like conversations or stories). While Gee views of “discourse” in term of a capital ‘D’ and a small ‘d’; Fairclough (1995, p.135) defines “discourse” on the basis of abstract and count nouns. According to Fairclough, “discourse” as an abstract noun (always in singular) denotes language use conceived as social practice, whereas “discourse” (in singular or plural) as a count noun denoting way of signifying experience from a particular perspective. Johnstone (2008) notes that the use of “discourses” in the plural form has been influenced by Foucault in the sense that discourses involve patterns of belief and habitual action as well as patterns of language. In a Foucaultian view of discourse in terms of social practices, discourse has its regulatory nature in the sense that it defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. Thus, we find that discourse constructs the topic and governs its meaning. As McAuley (2003, p.54)

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

6

points out, a discourse sets about defining its own truth. It defines what can be said about a particular subject, what can be seen as the logic of an argument, and what are understood as the acceptable premises in such argument. This reading of discourse has important consequences for understanding power. Foucault has a special place in CDA, however, because not only do his conceptions of power and governmentality link in a fairly straightforward way to the commitment to “unmasking”, but his rather extended notion of discourse (to include texts, the organisation of knowledge, worldviews, etc.) also allowed researchers to go beyond oral performances and written documents (Kendall & Wickham, 2006, p.5). The general tendency of discourse analysis is to describe and hopefully explain the nature or structure of a discourse as a unit. Linguistic features and communicative interaction and behaviours are often treated as primary objects of analysis. It is generally about text or language in use. For example, in undertaking a discourse analysis of a primary class, we may raise the following questions for data collection and analysis: • • • • •

What is the purpose of the session (e.g., teaching spelling, storytelling) What is the context (e.g., traditional classroom or open-class)? Who are participants or actors in the discourse? What are the dominant patterns of interaction? How do they use language specific to this context?

The main object of discourse analysis is text. However, Johnstone (2008) points out that it is important to go beyond texts to search for features or factors which affect or determine texts. According to her, discourse analysis works outward from text to an understanding of their contexts, trying to uncover why multiple texts they study are the way they are and not other way. Taylor (2001) describes four approaches to discourse analysis: • •

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

• •

The first approach focuses on language in use to discover how it varies and to relate this variation to different social situations and environments, or different users; The second approach focuses on the activity of language use, rather than the language itself; The third approach looks for patterns in the language associated with a particular topic or activity (e.g., language associated with social work or nursing); and The fourth approach looks for patterns within much larger contexts, such as those referred to as “society” or “culture”.

The four approaches mentioned above give useful insights to the role of DA analysts. However, it is impossible for DA researchers to be separate from their research as the main goal of discourse analysis is not always simply description of the status quo but social critique, and sometimes, intervention. This indicates a movement from discourse analysis to CDA as pointed out by Johnstone in the following statement. Analysis involves various ways of systematically taking things apart or looking at them from multiple perspectives or in multiple ways. Discourse analysis is thus a methodology that is useful in answering many kinds of questions of questions, both questions that linguists traditionally ask, and questions asked by people in other humanistic and social-scientific

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

7

disciplines. All uses of discourse analysis are not always descriptions, but the end goal of discourse analysis is not always simply description of the status quo but social critique, and sometimes, intervention (Johnstone, 2008, p.30).

The last sentence in Johnstone’s quotation opens a new window moving discourse analysis into CDA: it is about social critique and intervention. Van Dijk (2004) views this movement as follows:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CDA is a movement of – theoretically very different - scholars who focus on social issues and not primarily on academic paradigms. We typically study the many forms of (the abuse of) power in relations of gender, ethnicity and class, such as sexism and racism. We want to know how discourse enacts, expresses, condones or contributes to the reproduction of inequality. At the same time, we listen to the experiences and the opinions of dominated groups, and study the most effective ways of resistance and dissent (p.26).

The term ‘critical’ marks the difference of CDA from other academic fields or sub-fields such as discourse analysis, applied linguistics, and pragmatics. It should not be seen simply as an adjectival derivative of the noun ‘criticism’. Of course criticism occurs in various CDA discussions. ‘Critical’ is also seen in other disciplines such as critical literacy, critical pedagogy, critical psychology and anthropology. According to Rogers (2004), “critical is often associated with studying power relations. CDA analysts’ intention is to uncover power relationships and demonstrate inequities embedded in society” (p.3). Critical also signals “an attempt to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between the form and function of language” (p.3). Van Dijk (2008) prefers the label “Critical Discourse Studies” (CDS) instead of the generally adopted label “Critical Discourse Analysis” for the reason that “CDS is not a method of discourse analysis. There is no such method. CDA uses any method that is relevant to the aims of its research projects and such methods are largely those used in discourse studies generally” (p.2). Gunnarson (1997) uses the term “Applied Discourse Analysis” (ADA) to signal a focus on the application of discourse analysis in various fields. According to Gunnarson, ADA is a subfield of applied linguistics (AL). It emphasises the significance of effective communication among professionals in different sections of society, which can be related to the ongoing differentiation and specialisation of the academic and non-academic worlds (p.285). Basically, ADA deals with the spoken and the written sides of communication in the real world. Applied linguistics “has travelled from structuralism to social constructivism, and the longer the journey has lasted the more AL has come to be integrated with ADA” (p.286). Gunnarson illustrates how ADA can be used to examine communication in a number of settings such as educational, legal, medical-social, academic, and science settings. The term ‘critical’ in CDA is not well received by some. According to Martin (2007), social problems are best dealt with by taking a more positive approach. Thus, Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) has been introduced to mark a (re-)focus of energy in the direction of positive discourse analysis involving, among other things, analysis of discourse which attempts to make the world a better place (Martin 2007; Martin & Rose 2003). Macgilchrist (2007) applied PDA in her study to illustrate how radical reframing can be used to contest dominant discourses. In this way, PDA is viewed as focusing on positive changes as the main

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

8

research agenda. PDA should not be seen as a counterpart of CDA in the sense that CDA is “negative” whereas PDA is “positive”. PDA should be seen as a shift of focus from CDA. However, one wonders whether the term ‘positive’ is needed as one would expect that all academic inquiries aim at contributing to knowledge and it does not matter which orientation is used. Thus, “positive” is inherent in every academic approach and should be linguistically unmarked in topic titles and labels. Otherwise we would see similar labels such as positive linguistics versus critical linguistics, and positive literacy versus critical literacy. Having discussed the link between DA and CDA, now it is appropriate to examine what CDA is about. According to Fairclough and Wodak (1997, pp. 271-280), CDA is based on the following tenets: • • • • • • • •

CDA addresses social problems Power relations are discursive Discourse Constitutes Society and Culture Discourse does ideological work Discourse is historical The link between text and society is mediated Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory Discourse is a form of social action.

Fairclough (1992) presents a three-dimensional conception of discourse in discourse analysis: text, discursive practice and social practice. In his view, this conception of discourse is an attempt to bring together three analytical traditions. These are “the tradition of close textual and linguistic analysis within linguistics, the macrosociological tradition of analysing social practice in relation to social structures, and the interpetivist or microsociological tradition of seeing social practice as something which people actively produce and make sense of on the basis of shared commonsense procedures” (p.73). According to Blommartert (2005), Fairclough introduces a methodological blueprint for CDA in practice. It provides the following three-dimensional framework for conceiving of and analysing, discourse.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

• •

Discourse as text: It is about the linguistic features and organisation of concrete instances of discourse. It involves choices and patterns in vocabulary, grammar (e.g., transitivity, modality), cohesion and text structure (e.g., episode marking, turn-taking system). Discourse as discursive practice: Discourse is seen as something which is produced, circulated, consumed in society. Discourse as social practice: It is about the ideological effects and hegemonic processes in which discourse is seen to operate (p.29).

Thus, in Fairclough’s model, CDA researchers need to take the following tasks: description, interpretation, and explanation.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview •

•

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

9

Description: CDA focuses on the textual-linguistic features of the materials. The researcher adopts the participants’ categories in his/her description but he needs to make his/her interpretive framework explicit. Interpretation: It is about the way in which participants arrive at some kind of understanding of discourse on the basis of their cognitive, social and ideological resources. Explanation: It is about the researcher drawing on social theory in order to reveal the ideological underpinnings of lay interpretive procedures. Social theory creates the distance necessary to move from ‘non-critical’ to ‘critical’ discourse analysis (Blommartert 2005, p.30).

This holistic understanding of CDA can also be explained in terms of van Dijk’s (2004, 2008) dichotomy of micro-level and macro-level of analysis. In his view, language use, discourse, verbal interaction and communication belong to the micro-level of the social order. Power, dominance and inequality between social groups are typically terms that belong to a macro-level of analysis. CDA has made great contributions to a range of academic fields due to its multidisciplinary approach. However, CDA can be seen as a relatively new academic field and it has also attracted criticism on a number of aspects. According to Blommaert (2005), there are two kinds of criticisms against CDA. The first kind of criticism is specific comments on methodology and analytical approach; and the second kind is “general criticisms relating to the potential offered by CDA for becoming a critical study of language” (p.29). Widdowson (2004) questioned the effectiveness of CDA on a number of aspects. He agrees that the critical perspective of CDA is immensely important as it engages scholarly enquiry with matters of immediate and pressing concern in the non-scholarly world such as power abuse, dominance, and inequality. He raised both general and specific criticisms of CDA and its advocates. There are some common grounds on which literary criticism, critical linguistics, and stylistics work. Thus CDA is not fundamentally different. According to Widdowson, what CDA does is to modify “the procedures of literary hermeneutics along more explicit linguistic lines and applying them to non-literary texts” (2005, p.131). Another criticism against CDA is that “although the crucial importance of context is acknowledged in principle, there is little indication that it is taken seriously in practice in the CDA work of Fairclough and others” (p.138). This is the factor which marks the difference between Fairclough and Wodak. With a strong background in sociolinguistics, Wodak’s CDA model is “fundamentally concerned with contextualising and historicising” of texts, which is essential in her discourse-historical approach. However, according to Widdowson, the analysis sample used in Wodak’s discourse-historical approach still shows that “the recording of the situation to which this text relates is very sketchy” (p.141). In his opinion, “what we have here, in short, is not the specification of setting and context as a necessary precondition on interpretation, but ready-made interpretations which, in effect, serves as a kind of pretextual priming, designed to dispose us to read this text in a particular way” (p.142). To Widdowson, it is not an analysis but an interpretation. As Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) plays an important role in CDA, Widdowson is critical of the way Fairclough’s handling of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in CDA. His concern is that “it does not apply this grammar with any degree of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

10

systematic rigour” (p.144) as what happens is that “analysts of this persuasion get high mileage out of a few selected features of the grammar and leave the rest aside” (p.144). Another concern is CDA collapses semantics and pragmatics. Pragmatics is fundamentally about language in use, language function and action. Widdowson also questions the way in which Fairclough handles the three meta-functions developed by Halliday. Blommaert (2005) raises the following concern about CDA in general: •

• •

The linguistic bias in CDA: Blommaert points out that CDA, particularly Fairclough, focus great attention on linguistic analysis, with his adoption of Systemic Functional Linguistics in CDA. Its closure to particular kinds of societies: Major CDA works are Europeanorientated. Its closure to a particular time-frame: There is hardly any analysis of historical developments in CDA.

It is true that major CDA works were European-orientated in its early stage of development. However, the picture has changed as more and more CDA discussion and research starts to deal with issues across disciplines and cultures. Rogers (2004, p.14) summarises the following criticism against CDA. •

•

•

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

• •

Political and social ideologies are projected into the data rather than being revealed through the data. This means that analysts begin their analysis knowing what they are going to “find” before they begin, and their analysis simply confirms what they suspected. There is an unequal balance between social theory and linguistic method. Depending on the background and training of the analysis, the analysis may more strongly attend to descriptions of language or the context in which the language use unfolds. Many discourse analyses are extracted from social contexts. This is the case in many discourse analyses conducted on political speeches, government documents, and new paper reports. Methodology is not systematic or rigorous. Little attention has been paid to the non-linguistic aspects of discourse such as activity and emotion.

One would be sympathetic to the concern that “political and social ideologies are projected into the data rather than being revealed through the data”. However, this can be perceived both as a strength and weakness of CDA. It is a strength in the sense that CDA analysts take their stance in conducting research. They need to declare their own ‘social’ identities and ideologies and prepare to challenge themselves against ideological interference. It can also be seen as a weakness if the hidden agenda of the analysis is covered and criticism is selectively treated to protect mainly the researchers and their institution. This is in itself against CDA principles. CDA, like other critical social sciences, therefore needs to be reflexive and self-critical about its own institutional position and all that goes with it: how it conducts research, how it

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

11

envisages the objectives and outcome of research, what relationships researchers have to the people whose social lives they are analysing, even what sort of language books and papers are written in (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999, p.9).

On the concern that ‘methodology is not systematic or rigorous’, this is the risk that an interdisciplinary approach has to take as it is not a single approach which has a solid developmental path, for example the development of Generative Grammar or SFL in linguistics. Fowler (1996, p.8) is concerned about methodological weaknesses inherent in CDA qualitative approach to language study, stating that, although a range of text types have been studied, they tend to be fragmentary and exemplificatory. As CDA is a multidisciplinary approach, CDA proponents are “united” in their voice against social injustice and social abuse. They may not be “uniformed” in adhering to a mainstream of research approach. Those with a linguistic background may focus their analyses on linguistic features whereas those with a sociological background may pay more attention to issues at the “macro-level”. While there are criticisms on some aspects of CDA, this does take away the recognition that CDA has made significant contributions to the understanding of social structures and power, particularly about social injustice. Thus, for understanding what CDA is about, it is important to identify several key concepts which underlie CDA.

KEY CONCEPTS IN CDA We may say that understanding some fundamental concepts in a subject such as biology and mathematics is an important step in understanding that subject. In reviewing the literature dealing with CDA, we often encounter familiar terms repeatedly mentioned in relation to CDA. There are many widely used terms in CDA such as text, intertextuality, discourse, social practice, hegemony. They will appear repeatedly in many chapters of this book. In this introductory chapter, three broad social concepts are selected as they are seen as forming the basis of CDA and its mission: social power, ideology and social practice. The following chapters will deal specifically with linguistic and methodological concepts.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Social Power People are social beings in the sense that we are something to someone in different social contexts. When we address people by their first names or titles, it shows the social relationship between them and us. A person can be simultaneously in many social roles such as father, sister, teacher, neighbour or friend. Power is inherent in each social role. According to van Dijk (2008), “power in this sense is not inherently bad. Society would not function if there was no order, no control, no checks and balances, without the many legitimate relationships of power” (p.17). CDA is more interested in social power than individual power in an interpersonal relationship. Social power is associated with a group, community, and institution. Social power is often manifested in social control in terms of resources such as social status, expertise, knowledge and authority. Social power can be institutionalised in a social structure such as the power in government organisations, religions, armed forces,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

12

communities. This is a form of explicit manifestation of social power. There are written and unwritten laws and regulations which govern social interactions among social units. Explicit manifestation of institutionalised social power is important mostly to those who are directly involved in the discourse in which social power is there to regulate social activities. However CDA is much more interested in the implicit manifestation of power which is not clearly marked or coded but can strongly control discourse and discourse (re)production. In Structure of Discourse and Structure of Power, van Dijk wrote: Power is directly exercised and expressed through differential access to various genres, contents, and styles of discourse. This control may be analysed more systematically in terms of the form of (re) production of discourse, namely, those of material production, articulation, distribution, and influence (p.22 ).

Why is CDA so interested in the concept of power in its analysis? When we talk about power, we need to consider power in terms of power sharing: Who has the most power or more access to power than others? Who suffer due to lack of power? How are they treated? In answering such questions, we actually deal with the concept of “inequity” in power sharing and as a result of dominant power. Power is not only a way to control the acts of other people, but also their minds, and such mind control, which is again at the basis of action control, is largely discursive. In other words, discourse plays a fundamental role in the cycle of the reproduction of social power (van Dijk 2004, p.25).

Ideology

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Ideology is intrinsic in CDA. Metaphorically it is like the co-existence of trees and forest. It is impossible to talk meaningfully of one without explicitly or implicitly mentioning of the other. CDA is empty or meaningless if ideology is absent in it. Ideology is about our worldview, metaphorically our lenses through which we see people, social issues, activities and events. Generally it is used to designate our beliefs, values and constructs our personal principles which guide our daily lives. Ideology is inherently encoded in texts, often manifested in lexical choice, cliché, presuppositions and implicatures. The following examples illustrate the underlying ideologies in texts. • • •

Mary is a woman, but she can drive well. As your director, I want you to protect the reputation of our company at all costs. Social justice should be included in any discussion on religion.

The above texts do not only express sentence meanings. Underlying them are values and attitudes of specific social actors in a social discourse. According to Luke, the outstanding task for CDA is to provide detailed analysis of cultural voices and texts in local educational sites, while attempting to theoretically and empirically connect these with an understanding of power and ideology in broader social formations and configurations.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

13

According to van Dijk (1995) ideologies are basic systems of fundamental social cognitions and organising the attitudes and other social representations shared by members of groups. Thus, ideologies indirectly control the mental representations (models) that form the interpretation basis and contextual embeddedness of discourse and its structures. He explains the link between ideology, discourse and social practice as follows: The crucial concept of ideology I proposed is defined in terms of the fundamental cognitive beliefs that are at the basis of the social representations shared by the members of a group. Thus, people may have ideological racist or sexist beliefs (e.g., about inequality) that are at the basis of racist and sexist prejudices shared by the members in their group, and that condition their discourse and other social practices. We thus at the same time are able to link ideologies with discourse, and hence with the ways they are (discursively) reproduced, as well as the ways members of a group represent and reproduce their social position and conditions in their social cognitions and discourses (van Dijk 2004, p.27).

Social Practices The term “social practice” appears repeatedly in various writings on CDA. According to Fairclough (2003), the term “social practices” refers to stable and durable forms of social activity, which are articulated together to constitute social fields, institutions, and organizations. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, social practice is a component of the three-dimensional framework introduced by Fairclough (1992). Discourse as social practice is about the ideological effects and hegemonic processes in which discourse is seen to operate. Van Dijk (1997) in discussing discourse as interaction in society points out several instances of social practices as follows:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

‘social practice’ usually implies a broader social dimension of discourse than these various acts accomplished by language users interpersonal interaction. For instance, an interaction between doctor and patient, between teacher and student, as well as a parliamentary debate or a courtroom sessions, are not only complex forms of institutional dialogue. They constitute, or are inherent parts of, the more complex discursive and social practices of teaching, providing health care, legislation and ‘doing’ justice (p.5).

As CDA is interested in the concept “hegemony”, social practices are embedded in hegemony. As a result, social practices are often readily accepted as “obvious” or “natural” in social context. This could lead to social discrimination and abuse. Tuomela (2002) defines social practices in terms of the interlocking mental states of the agents. Thus, social practices manifested in the form of customs and traditions, are building blocks of society on which social institutions are constructed. Van Leeuwen (2008) views social practices as socially regulated ways of doing things. For him, social practices are “regulated to different degrees and in different ways, or through traditions, or through the influences of experts and charismatic role models or through the constraints of technological resources used” (p.7).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

14

Thao Lê and Quynh Lê

CONCLUSION Discourse analysis has become a solid branch of linguistics and has attracted linguists, particularly sociolinguists, to the attention of language in social and cultural context. Recently, Discourse analysis has brought researchers from various disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, health, psychology and education together to deal with issues which require interdisciplinary viewpoints. The emergence of CDA marked an expansion of DA into CDA, changing the role of an analyst from descriptive analysis to about social critique and intervention social critique and intervention. In an attempt to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between the form and function of language, CDA aims at unearthing the intricate relationship between power, dominance and social inequality in different social groups.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing discourse. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary Introduction pp. 258-284. London: Sage. Gee, P. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method, London: Routledge. Gunnarsson, B. (1997). Applied discourse analysis. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 285 – 312). LA: Sage. Harris, Z. (1952). Discourse analysis. Language, 28, 1-30. Kendall, G & Wickham, G (2006) Problems with the Critical Posture? Foucault and Critical Discourse Analysis. In C. Hopkinson, & C. Hall (Eds.), Proceedings Social Change in the 21st Century 2006, pp. 1-8. Brisbane: Carseldine QUT. Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis. London: Blackwell. Luke, A. Introduction: Theory and Practice in Critical Discourse Analysis. Retrieved October 14, 2008 from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/Luke/SAHA6.html Macgilchrist, F. (2007). Positive discourse analysis: Contesting dominant discourses by reframing. CADAAD Journal, 1(1), 74-94. Martin, J. R. (2007). English for peace: Towards a framework of peace sociolinguistics: response. World Englishes, 26(1), 83-85 Martin, J., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. London, New York: Continuum. McAuley, J. (2003). An introduction to politics, state and society. London: Sage Publications. Rogers, R (2004). An Introduction to critical discourse analysis in education, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse analysis, Oxford: Blackwell.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis: An Overview

15

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Taylor, S. (2001). Locating and conducting discourse analysis research. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor & S. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analysis, pp. 43-59. London: Sage Publications. Tuomela, Raimo (2002). Philosophy of social practices: A collective acceptance view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Dijk, T. (1995). Discourse semantics and ideology. Discourse & Society 5(2), 243-289. Van Dijk, T. (1997). Discourse as interaction in society. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction pp. 1-37. LA: Sage Publications. Van Dijk, T. (2002). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds): Methods of critical discourse analysis pp.95-120. London: Sage Publications. Van Dijk, T. (2004). From text grammar to critical discourse analysis (a brief academic autobiography). Retrieved October 10, 2008 from http://www.discourses.org/cv/ From%20text%20grammar%20to%20critical%20discourse%20analysis.pdf Van Dijk, T. (2008). Discourse and power. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, H. (2004). Text, context, pretext: Critical issues in discourse analysis. Melbourne: Blackwell. Wodak, R. (2002). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its development. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp.1-13). London: Sage Publications.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

LINGUISTICS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Thao Lê and Megan Short ABSTRACT Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is interdisciplinary as it deals with issues across disciplines and its methodology is not confined to a single subject. However, linguistics undoubtedly plays a key role in the development of CDA. The contribution of linguistics to CDA is essential as many concepts and insights are derived from different branches of linguistics such as sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and psycholinguistics. CDA is often seen by linguists as a component of linguistics. Thus, it is important to examine how linguistics contributes to CDA, conceptually and methodologically.

Keywords: sociolinguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, discourse

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and linguistics are two different disciplines but they are to some extent inseparable. Social scientists and philosophers have long been interested in social issues such as ideology, social justice, power and control, hegemony and social practice, which have also attracted the attention of modern linguists, particularly those who work in critical linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It is not uncommon to see that (Critical) Discourse Analysis uses linguistic forms and functions to analyse text and discourse. It is virtually impossible to discuss text and discourse without reference to linguistic concepts such as grammatical structure, semantic categories, metaphors, speech act, verbal stereotypes etc. This is the reason why Discourse Analysis has been included in modern linguistics.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Megan Short

18

We see CDA as bringing a variety of theories into dialogue, especially social theories on the one hand and linguistic theories on the other, so that its theory is a shifting synthesis of other theories, though what it itself theorizes in particular, is the mediation between the social and the linguistic – the ‘order of discourse’, the social structuring of semiotic hybridity (interdiscursitivity) (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999, p.16).

For a book on CDA, it is important to include a chapter on linguistic aspects to provide readers with some theoretical and practical backgrounds to enable them to make some connection to the use of linguistics in CDA. Thus this chapter gives an introductory presentation of major aspects of linguistics which are useful for understanding how (Critical) Discourse Analysis works. The presentation covers the following areas of linguistics which are directly or indirectly used in CDA: general linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. As Systemic Functional Linguistics has received special attention in CDA, a full chapter is devoted to the link between Systemic Functional Linguistics and CDA.

GENERAL LINGUISTICS

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Linguistics tends to have a long tradition of treating the sentence as the fundamental unit of language. Grammar theories such as tagmemics, generative transformation grammar, and case grammar focus on morphology and syntax in which sentence structure is of primary importance. As language structure is strongly associated with sentence structure, human beings are metaphorically viewed as syntactic beings. Tests of language ability also reflect this trend. Learners are tested on their acquisition of syntactic complexity which determines the order of syntactic development from simple sentences to complex ones. For example, an active sentence is less complex than a passive sentence. Question structure is more complex than declarative sentence structure. The focus on syntax has limited linguists to explore the function of language in communication. People do not communicate in individual sentences. Though a paragraph may include some sentences, a combination of sentences does not necessarily constitute a paragraph or a text. Linguistics has expanded its scope beyond sentence structure to include ‘discourse’ in its analysis. The following diagram shows different linguistic units which are hierarchically positioned in a traditional linguistic analysis. Sound Morpheme Word Phrase Sentence Discourse While linguists generally agree on the definition of linguistic units such as morpheme and sentence and it is relatively easy to identify such units in a structure, it is not so with the unit “discourse”, which is often identified as paragraph, a piece of writing, or a text, or vaguely as something larger than a sentence.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

19

Traditional linguistics focuses on four main aspects of language: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Phonology deals with sounds, prosody and their functions. For example, phoneme is an abstract unit which represents different allophones. Thus phoneme is the basic unit for developing graphemes in written language. Morphology deals with word, its internal structure and functions such as prefix, suffix, inflection (they sing and he sings) and derivation (e.g., nation and national, fair and fairness). Syntax is about sentence structure. Clause is the basic unit of a sentence and it takes different roles such as main clause, subordinate clause and independent clause. For example: • •

A main clause and a subordinate clause in a sentence: The dog barks when it hears a noise. Two independent clauses in a sentence: John likes cakes and Tim likes soup.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Semantics deals with meaning at different levels: phonology, morphology and syntax. At the phonological level, if we change a phoneme with another in a word, the meaning is changed. This is clearly seen in a minimal pair such as sit/fit, bit/bat, man/mat. At the morphological level, meaning is manifested in different dimensions such as homonym (e.g., bare and bear), synonym (e.g., huge and large), antonym (small and big), hyponym (rose and flower), and lexical metaphor etc. At the syntactic level, semantics becomes complex, abstract and multidimensional as it can involve different levels, from sound to sentence. The boundary between syntax and semantics at this level is not simply marked as these two linguistic components are deeply interconnected, structurally and functionally. The semantic features and aspects commonly examined are literal and abstract meaning, presupposition, metaphor, implicature etc. At the onset of embarking on CDA, it is important for CDA analysts to have some knowledge of basic concepts such as prosody, nominal phrase, pronoun, and clause. Otherwise, their discourse analysis of texts is similar to the traditional literary analysis with running comments expressing personal viewpoints. In Vietnamese, there are two pronouns for ‘we’. One is inclusive (chung ta) and the other one is exclusive (chung toi). Thus the choice of ‘chung ta’ or ‘chung toi’ signals how speakers view and value their addressees. In English, one can identify group exclusion or solidarity in a text on the basis of ‘they-and-us dichotomy’. Thus undoubtedly linguistics has an important role to play in CDA. Fairclough is one of the strong advocates for incorporating linguistics in CDA. He states: Discourses are ways of representing the world which ca be identified and differentiated at different levels of abstraction….Texts differ in the discourses they draw upon to represent particular aspects of the world, and they articulate different discourses together (hybridize or mix discourses) in various ways. Discourses can be differentiated in terms of semantic relations (synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy) between words – how they classify parts of the world – as well collocations, assumptions, and various grammatical features (Fairlough, 2003, p.133).

As Halliday (1994) points out, a discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but it is simply a running commentary on the text. Fairlough has a great interest in the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics in CDA. Systemic Functional

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Megan Short

20

Linguistics examines texts in terms of three functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. According to Fairclough (2003), Halliday’s Functional Grammar provides a basis on which ‘texts simultaneously represent aspects of the world (the physical world, the social world, the mental world); enact social relations between participants in social events and the attitudes, desires and values of participants; and coherently and cohesively connect parts of the texts together, and connect texts with their situational contexts’ (p.26). Fairclough also employs Halliday’s concept “grammatical metaphor” in analyzing texts in CDA. Grammatical metaphor occurs as a non-congruent representation in a structure as seen in the second sentence below. -

The ghost frightened Jane. The sudden appearance of John at the door frightened Jane.

Fairclough states the usefulness of grammatical metaphor in CDA:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Tracing the precise nature and distribution of grammatical metaphors can be seen as one productive way into researching effectivity of texts within a particular social order, and in processes of social change. For example, Graham suggests that process metaphor, the metaphorical construal of processes in the material world, is a particularly significant aspect of a highly influential genre in new capitalism, policy formation (Fairclough, 2004, p. 144).

Apart from grammatical metaphor, the concept “lexical metaphor” which is commonly used in text analysis, particularly the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is also very useful in CDA. Lexical metaphors represent the users’ perceptions and attitudes about things in their worldview. For example, the metaphors of teachers as parents, school as family, the world as global village etc. tell a great deal about our attitudes and views about our perceived world. Expressions such as “war on terror”, “economic globalisation”, “partnership in peace” are powerful metaphors in political discourse. Traditional studies in linguistics tend to focus on sentence structure, particularly on written texts. Modern linguistics has expanded its scope with an emphasis on authentic texts and social situations. The two areas of modern linguistics which have attracted attention of researchers in linguistics and other disciplines are genre studies and conversational analysis. Conversation analysis and genre analysis provide great insights into communicative interaction, particularly on the link between language structure and social meaning. They can contribute theoretical concepts and analytical techniques to CDA.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS Sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics. As the focus on language in social contexts, sociolinguistics is useful to CDA and undoubtedly plays an important role in CDA. The relationship between language, society and culture has been raised and examined for centuries in literature, philosophy, anthropology and sociology. It is impossible to divorce language from its social and cultural contexts as language is deeply embedded in society and culture. Language acquisition is an important aspect of enculturation. Thus learning a language is to learn its culture. While the relationship between language, society and culture has been

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

21

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

studied in various disciplines, it is sociolinguistics which has enhanced the focus on this relationship and turned it into an established discipline. Unlike experts from other disciplines, sociolinguists deal with concepts and issues about language, society and culture with the use of linguistic knowledge in its analysis. Sociolinguistics in its early stage of development tends to focus on language variation such as regional dialect, social dialect (sociolect), accent, and social attitudes towards language variation, Labov studied the language use of African American youths in their own social context and found that their use of language deeply reflected the dynamics of language in use, not a form of ‘impoverished English’. This dynamics of language in use can be easily hidden from the eyes and ears of observers who are not familiar with the social context of the language users. The introduction of Hymes’ concept of communicative competence has sparked numerous researches on how speakers of different social backgrounds and social awareness use language in real life. The concept ‘register’ is the landmark of this new emphasis on the link between language and society. With the acceptance of ‘register’ in language studies, the traditional view on linguistic correctness has been challenged as it tends to be rigid, prescriptive and possibly prejudiced. The topics and issues which have been widely studied in sociolinguistics include language and gender, addressing, language and prejudice, linguistic politeness, language maintenance, bilingualism, code switching, language planning etc. One of the most widely researched themes in sociolinguistics is code-switching (including code-mixing) in bilingualism. Bilingual speakers may use two languages simultaneously in conversation with others. For examples, Vietnamese migrants in English speaking countries such as USA, Canada, and Australia mix English and Vietnamese in their speech. The term “code-switching” instead of “language-switching” is used as “switching” can occur within a language. Code-switching does not always occur unintentionally as it can be deliberately used as an effective strategy to include some people or exclude others in a discourse. This is an interesting aspect for CDA as it could provide insights into the way in which communication and power are controlled through code-mixing and code-switching. There is some similarity between the concept “code-mixing” in sociolinguistics and the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscusivity in (Critical) Discourse Analysis. Fairclough (1992) devoted a whole chapter for intertextuality. According to Fairclough (1992), the term “intertextuality” was coined by Kristeva in her introduction of the work of Bakhtin on intertextuality. For Bakhtin, all utterances, both spoken and written, from the briefest of turns in a conversation to a scientific paper or a novel, are demarcated by a change of speaker (or writer), and are orientated retrospectively to the utterances of previous speakers and prospectively to the anticipated utterances of the next speakers (p.102).

As Johnstone (2008) points out, texts can bear intertextual traces of other texts in many ways, ranging from the most direct repetition to the most indirect allusion. “A text can quote another text, or present it through paraphrase. A text can be worded in such a way as to presuppose a prior text” (p.164). Fairlcough (1992) also notes “another feature of intertextuality is that in addition to incorporating or otherwise responding to other texts, the intertexuality of a text can be seen as incorporating the potentially complex relationships it has with the conventions which are structured together to constitue an order of discourse”

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Megan Short

22

(p.103). In an example of using the concept of interdiscursivity (constitutive intertextuality) in analyzing a bank text, Fairclough notes that the text manifests a pattern of alteration at the level of the sentence between the discourse types of financial regulation and advertising. “The particular mix in this sample is of financial regulations and advertising: the text sets out the conditions of use of the bank service, and at the same time tries to ‘sell’ it” (p.115). It is obvious that the issues dealt with in sociolinguistics are of interest to CDA as the study of language is no longer confined to the sentence domain but extends to a wider range of texts such as greetings, interview, conversation, discussion, formal address, gossip, lecture, sermon, bay talk etc. What sociolinguists tend to focus on is the social aspects of language in use from a descriptive perspective and stop short at taking a advocatory role. The differences between CDA and other sociolinguistic approaches may be most clearly established with regard to the general principles of CDA….In general CDA asks different research questions. CDA scholars play an advocatory role for groups who suffer from social discrimination…CDA follows a different and critical approach to problems, since it endeavours to make explicit power relationships which are frequently hidden, and thereby to derive results which are of practical relevance (Myer 2001, p.15).

PRAGMATICS To illustrate what pragmatics is, it is useful to examine the following text: a conversation between a worker and a manager in a factory office.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Worker: Manager: Worker: Manager: Worker: Manger: Worker: Manager:

I’m sorry. I did not turn up for three days. Tell me why? I was not well. What’s wrong with you? I had a nasty headache! Did you go to the doctor Sorry, I didn’t. I wouldn’t do it next time. You’d better watch out.

Language is fundamentally for communication. The workers and managers are language users. They use language to do what they want in this situation. From the worker’s action, he used the following speech acts: • • •

Apology: I ‘m sorry. Explanation: I had a nasty headache. Promise: I wouldn’t do it next time

From the manager’s action, he used the following speech acts: • • •

Demand: Tell me why? Investigation: Did you go to the doctor? Threat: You’d better watch out

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

23

Pragmatics is about what we do with language; about what we want language does for us, and about real life in which each person is an actor in a verbal activity. Speech acts and conversation analysis are central to pragmatics. When we say something to people, we do not merely communicate message content. We may want to produce some effect on them. It should be noted that speech acts initially deal with utterances. However, it is the “act”, which is the focus, not the linguistic forms of a text. Thus 'speech act' is a generic term for any form of language use. Speech act theories started in philosophy with an interest on what we do with language. Searle (1979) developed a taxonomy of illocutionary acts: •

•

•

•

•

Representative or assertive. The speaker adheres to the truth of the propositional content. e.g., - The plane has arrived. - Winter is cold Directive. The speaker wants to listener to act: - Stop here! - Don’t speak loudly. Commissive. The speaker makes a commitment - I’ll give you the paper tomorrow. - I promise to help you as much as I can. Expressive. The speaker expresses an idea, feeling or condition: - I am happy to see you. - It is good to catch up with you. Declarative. The speaker performs an action by exactly stating it: - I declare the conference starts now. - I name this school ‘The school of the century’.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

There are other speech acts which are used in communication strategies, which are central to pragmatics. As we use language to get things done, we hope to employ some effective strategies. We may use threatening acts or blackmail acts as a part of our strategies of persuasion. Others may use praising, rewarding, flattering for the same effect. Blum-Kulka (1997) lists the following contributions of speech act theory to the study of discourse. • •

• •

Utterances serve not to express propositions but also to perform linguistic actions in context. Languages provide their speakers with a variety of linguistic means, ranging in levels of illocutionary and propositional transparency (that is ‘directness’), for the performance of every single act. The same utterance, depending on context, may serve to perform different pragmatic functions. Speech acts can be differentiated by specifying the types of contextual preconditions needed for their successful performance (p.47).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Megan Short

24

Chilton and Schaffner (1997) accept that the notion of speech acts is central to political discourse analysis. It helps to understand the relationship between power, attitudes, and actors in political discourse. For example, when we listen to debates in the Australian parliament, we can identify the political role of each speaker, their intention (e.g., to embarrass the opponents), types of strategies used (e.g., to avoid the topic, to praise a colleague). It is also interesting to observe the paralinguistic features (e.g., tone, intonation, loudness) and body language in relation to the performance of speech acts. People may use different speech acts and pragmatics devices such as presupposition, allusion, implicature, and stereotype to manipulate discourses. For example, allusion and presupposition are carefully used to indirectly make negative assertions and accusations against others without being held responsible for their act. For example: Boss: Worker:

Why did you stop working while I was away yesterday? I worked non-stop yesterday.

The question “Why did you stop working while I was away yesterday?” presupposes that the worker stopped working while the boss was away. Presupposition indicates a proposition, idea, view not directly stated but encoded in the utterance. For instance, the question “how young is your friend” carries the presupposition that your friend is young; whereas the question “how big is your house” does not carry the presupposition that the house is big. Similarly, the sentence “She is a woman but she can drive very well” implies the presupposition that women are not good drivers and this is an exception (expressed in the word “but”).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It should be noted that presuppositions, whether they are based upon prior texts of the text producer or upon others’ texts, may be manipulative as well as sincere. That is, the text producer may present a proposition as given for another or established by himself dishonestly, insincerely, and with manipulative intent. Presuppositions are effective ways to manipulate people, because they are often difficult to challenge (Fairclough, 1992, p.121).

In Australia, people who are anti-Asian migrants tend to use expressions such as “the threat to our culture and the destruction of our harmonious life”, which presuppose that Asian migrants are the threat and life in Australia is harmonious till the arrival of Asians. Presupposition in language can reveal interesting insights about our perception of others and attitudes towards them. Allusion is an indirect reference. It is another device to make an assertion or accusation by negative associates and connotations. This brief discussion indicates that pragmatics has a role to play in CDA.

CONCLUSION This chapter introduces some basic concepts and issues in general linguistics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It should be noted that linguistics includes other branches or sub-fields. However, sociolinguistics and pragmatics are included in this chapter as there are common grounds between sociolinguistics, pragmatics and CDA. The chapter examines some connections between linguistics and CDA. Obviously there are more. The emergence of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

25

Critical Linguistics (CL) signals a call for taking linguistics to a new direction in which language is not just a system or resource, but fundamentally social practice. This is not just a change of direction. It is a new challenge for social scientists, including linguists, to take this new role as a mission to address and confront social issues against prejudice, dominance and social injustice.

REFERENCES

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Discourse pragmatics. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.): Discourse as social interaction. London: SAGE Publication. Chilton, P., & Schaffner, C. (1997). Discourse and politics. In Teun Van Dijk (ed.): Discourse as Social Interaction. London: SAGE Publication. Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social changes. Cambridge: Polity Press. Halliday, M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Myers, M. (2001). Between theory, method, and politics: Positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds): Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp.14 – 31). London: SAGE Publisher. Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning. Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

SYSTEMATIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang ABSTRACT Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) have a common interest in the link between language and society. CDA uses Systemic Functional Linguistics as a tool to analyse texts and discourses. While other linguistic models are useful to CDA, Systemic Functional Linguistics is of special interest to CDA, mainly due to its focus on language use, its informative and social functions. Other linguistic models are also useful to CDA but they may lack strong attraction to CDA analysts due to their emphasis on syntactic structure and less on functional aspects of language. This chapter gives a brief outline of Systemic Functional Linguistics and focuses on four grammatical features which have practical implications for CDA: theme, lexical density, nominalisation, and grammatical metaphor.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Keywords: language in use, discourse, systemic functional linguistics, functional grammar, theme, lexical density, norminalisation, grammatical metaphor

INTRODUCTION Various linguistic concepts from different theoretical perspectives and linguistic fields have been used in CDA. However, Systemic Functional Linguistics has received special attention by CDA analysts, particularly Fairclough, a prominent CDA researcher who strongly adores the use of SFL in CDA. To provide some understanding of the role of SFL as a linguistic analysis tool in CDA, this chapter presents a brief discussion of Hallidayan functional grammar and the four related grammatical features which offer insights and practical use to CDA: theme, lexical density, nominalisation, and grammatical metaphor.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

28

Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

THE USE OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS IN CDA Two terms which are closely connected and often used interchangeably in discussion of Halidayan linguistic theory are: Systemic Functional Linguistics SFL (or just systemic linguistics) and Functional Grammar (FG). The former is used broadly to refer to a theory of language in use advocated by systemic linguists, mainly Halliday, and the latter is often used to refer specifically to Hallidayan grammatical model as there are other models of functional grammar which are not mentioned in CDA. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) focuses on language function and semantics which are the basis of human language and communicative activities. It is interested in what language does for language users. It pays attention to social context and examines how language both acts upon, and is constrained and influenced by this social context. As the term ‘functional grammar’ suggests, function is the key aspect which makes what language is. Functionality is intrinsic to language. With language, we can make sense of our experience and acting out social relationships In Hallidayan functional grammar, it is suggested that instead of using the general term ‘function’ in analysing language, the term ‘metafunction’ is used to indicate that function is an integral component within the overall theory’(Halliday, 2004, p.31). Why is Systemic Functional Linguistics (or Functional Grammar) of special interest to CDA? To answer this question, we need to see the levels of context of language use dealt with in SFL. Basically there are three levels of context of language use: register, genre and ideology. Register is about context of situation of language use, for instance a register of a university seminar or a car advertisement. Register can be identified in terms of three dimensions: field of discourse (realised in experiential meanings), tenor of discourse (realised in interpersonal meanings) and mode of discourse (realised in textual meanings). Genre is about linguistic interaction of participants which are culturally structured in terms of stages. There are different genres or text types such as narrative, recount, discussion, and exposition. Genre is staged because it has to follow a culturally determined pattern of progression. For example, a buy-and-sell communicative interaction in a shop takes places in sequential stages. It is culturally or socially determined as the generic structure of buy-and-sell in a Vietnamese shop may differ from those in France or Brazil. Ideology is at a high level of context. ‘Whatever genre we are involved in, and whatever the register of the situation, our use of language will also be influenced by our ideological positions: the values we hold (consciously or unconsciously), the biases and perspectives we adopt’ (Eggins, 1994, p.10). While CDA uses a variety of theoretical concepts and frameworks of conversational analysis, pragmatics, Hallidayan functional grammar has received special attention in CDA as it provides an important basis for understanding CDA. Whether analysts with a critical approach prefer to focus on microlinguistic features, macrolinguistic features, textual, discursive or contextual features, whether their angle is primarily philosophical, sociological or historical – in most studies there is reference to Hallidayan systemic functional grammar. This indicates that an understanding of the basic claims of Halliday’s grammar and his approach to linguistic analysis is essential for a proper understanding of CDA (Wodak 2001, p. 8).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Systematic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

29

While structural linguistics focuses narrowly on sentence meaning, Hallidayan Functional Grammar deals with three broad categories of meaning which are useful to CDA: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Ideational meaning is the presentation of experience (in a clause: process, action, event, processes of consciousness, and relations). Interpersonal meaning is meaning in terms of action: speakers or writer does something to the listener or reader by means of language, e.g., statement, question, command. Textual meaning is relevance to the context: both of the preceding and following text and the context of situation. The textual function of the clause is that of constructing a message (e.g., theme-rheme structure ) Fairclough is one of the well-known advocates for the use of Functional Grammar in CDA. He demonstrates how social actors are perceived in terms of the following choices, referred to as ‘variables’ (Fairclough 2003, pp.145-146). • • • • • • •

Inclusion/exclusion: It includes suppression (i.e., not in the text) and background (mentioned in the text, but having to be inferred in one or more places. Pronoun/noun: Is the social actor realised as a pronoun (e.g., we, they, her) or noun (e.g., workers, refugee, boat people) Grammatical role: Is the social actor realised as a Participant in a clause, within a Circumstance or as a possessive construction. Activated/passivated: Is the social actor the Actor in the processes, or the Affected or beneficiary? Personal/impersonal: Are social actors represented impersonally (e.g., referring to the police as ‘the filth’) or personally. Named/classified: Are social actors represented by name (e.g., Mrs. Smith) or category (e.g., doctors). Specific/generic: Are social actors represented specifically (e.g., the doctors in Launceston Hospital), or generically (e.g., the doctor).

The following discussion presents four grammatical concepts which have practical implications for use in CDA: theme, lexical density, nominalisation and grammatical metaphor.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

FOUR GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS FOR CDA The following grammatical concepts of Functional Grammar which are selected for inclusion in this chapter are: theme, lexical density, nominalisation, and grammatical metaphor. These concepts are widely used in a number of applied linguistic areas as they offer some insights into the nature of texts. The discussion of these concepts here is derived from the work of Halliday in a number of versions of his widely-used book entitled Functional Grammar.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang

30

Theme When looking at language from the viewpoint of textual function, we can see how thematic organisation makes the development of the text cohesive and how speakers or writers construct their conversation or writing into smooth structures. In textual function, a clause is analysed into Theme and Rheme. Theme functions as the starting point for the message (Halliday, 1993) the element which the clause is going to be ‘about’ has a crucial effect in orienting listeners and readers. Theme is the starting point of the clause, realised by whatever element comes first, while rheme is the rest of the message, which provides additional information to the starting point and which is available for subsequent development in the text. It contains the point of the clause, the information which the listener or reader should remember. Halliday (1993, p. 38) characterises Theme as “what the message is concerned with: the point of departure for what the speaker is going to say”. The different choice of Theme contributes to a different meaning. English uses first clausal position as a signal. Theme is the starting point of the message so the whole of the first item must be included in the experiential meanings. It can be identified in different mood of a clause because the element that is typically chosen as Theme in an English clause depends on the choice of mood. In some clauses, the topical Theme may contain interpersonal and textual elements. If three possible Themes are found: Textual Theme (discourse markers and conjunctions) + Interpersonal Theme (vocatives) + Experiential/Topical Theme (Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial elements), the clause is said to have multiple Themes. •

•

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

Textual Theme connects its experiential meanings to the meanings of neighbouring clauses, functioning to relate the meanings of the particular clause to the other parts of the text. It is any combination of (i) continuative, (ii) structural and (iii) conjunctive Themes (Halliday, 1993). Interpersonal Theme indicates the kind of interaction between the speakers and the positions that they are taking, often functioning to code the speaker’s or writer’s personal judgement on a meaning. It is any combination of (i) vocative, (ii) modal, (iii) mood-making Themes (Halliday, 1993). Topical Theme, functioning as the point of orientation for the experiential meanings of a clause.

Why is the concept of theme useful to CDA? It is useful in a number of ways. Firstly, a text is not just a piece of information. It reveals how writers want to present the information to readers. The writers’ choice of themes indicates their decision on what should be their focus (i.e., topical theme) in order to catch the attention of the reader. For instance, if the focus of a text is on the condemnation of unwanted refugees, we can expect the theme centres around related lexical items such as refugee, boat people, illegal migrants, foreigners, invasion, and crime. The organisation of information in the clause is motivated by some ideational or interpersonal purpose. Thus, theme and rheme may be associated with topic and comment, in which cas the first person adopts a position in relation to the third-person world, interprets reality in reference to self (Widdowson, 2004, p.28).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Systematic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

31

The divisive use of ‘they and us’, for instance, can create a division between refugees against community, men against women, employees against employers. The choice of theme also reveals the attitudes and thoughts of the writer, particularly through the use of interpersonal theme.

Lexical Density

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Written English tends to be lexically dense. Halliday and Martin (1993, p.76) define lexical density as a measure of the density of information in any passage of text, according to how tightly the lexical items (content words) have been packed into the grammatical structure. The lexical density of a text can be measured by counting the number of content words in a text/clause as a proportion of all words in the text/clause. Content words include nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives (Eggins, 1994, pp. 60-61). Note that not all adverbs or adjectives are grammatical words. One needs to take intor consideration of different subcategories such as demonstrative adjectives (e.g., this book, those people), adverbs of time and place (e.g., now and here). There are many content words in our language, such as John, room, answer, happy, new, large, grey, search, grow, hold, have, really, completely, very, also, enough and so on. Grammatical or function words include prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns. In contrast, grammatical/functional words have little lexical meaning, but they express grammatical relations with other words within a clause, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They are often short words which include: in, here, will, I, the, after, when, though, since, because, to, and, them, for, thus, where, how, you, who, his, but, while, whose, etc. The lexical density of a text can be calculated and the formula is as follows: • T = total number of the words in a text • L = lexical/content words in a text • Lexical density = L/T x 100% Lexical density is the condense of lexical words in a text. For example, if a text has 51075 words and 44518 content words (T = 51075; L = 44518), then the lexical density = 44518/51075 x 100% = 87.16%. If the lexical density of a text is high, it becomes difficult to read. It first appears that lexical density has little to do with CDA. However, lexical density can reveal about the nature of text and its function. It can indicate social factors such as power and relationship among language users.

Nominalisation Nominalisation is the use of a nominal form to express a process meaning (Thompson, 1996, p.167). Nominalisation is the process in which a verbal clause or verb phrase is converted into a nominal, or noun like, phrase. It refers also to the conversion of a verb or an adjective into a noun, with or without morphological transformation, so that the word can now act as the head of a noun phrase. In English, some verbs can be used directly as nouns

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang

32

(e.g. reply, love, work) while others require morphological transformation requiring a suffix, for example, justify and justification; rely and reliability; beautify and beautification; clean and cleaness; scholar and scholarship and so on. When a verb is nominalised, it becomes abstract concept rather than an action. For example: a. John decided to leave home. This really upset his parents. b. John’s decision to leave home really upset his parents. As can be seen from the above two clauses, clause (a) contains two clauses. With the nominalisation (decision) in clause (b), the two clauses join together to become a single clause which packs in several complex abstract ideas. The characteristics of nominalisation are summarised below. Nominalisation makes actions or processes (verbs) become concepts (nouns). • •

We work for charity. We raised money for poor people. The charity work raised money for poor people.

With nominalisation, a single clause packs in several complex abstract ideas. • •

The workers lose basic human rights and this provides the union the reason to act. The workers’ loss of basics human rights provides the union the reason to act.

Nominalisation reduces the number of clauses and more information can be compressed into a nominal (noun) group. a. If they invest in school facilities, this requires enthusiasm and dedication. b. Their investment in school facilities requires enthusiasm and dedication.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The original clauses have two clauses while the nominalised clause has only one. As stated, when verbs are nominalised they become concepts rather than actions. Thus, we are able to increase the amount and density of information to make further comment or observation about the concept in the clause. For example: a. The department decided to expand its investment. b. The decision to expand the asset base… (The verb is nominalised). c. The decision to expand the its investment was a significant shift in the department’s policy (more information commenting upon the newly formed concept can now be added). According to the above examples, the verb in the first clause is nominalised in the second clause. As such, we can add more information commenting upon the newly formed concept. Nominalisation is one of the useful features employed in CDA. If a clause is structured through the use of nominalisation, it can create an impression that it is a fact or an entity that the writer wants the reader to see. Fairclough (2003, p. 13) gives an example from a text of Tony Blair’s use of the word ‘change’ in ‘ The modern world is swept by change’ instead of ‘multinational corporations in collaboration with governments are changing the world in a

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Systematic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

33

variety of ways”. Thus it reveals a common consequence of nominalization in which the agents of the processes, people who initiate processes or act upon other people or objects, are absent from texts. “Choices involving the assignment of semantic roles and nominalisation can present people as being out of control of the destinies in the most fundamental ways” (Johnstone, 2008, p. 56).

Grammatical Metaphor Languages have their most natural ways of encoding the meanings which they express and this is referred to as the congruent ways. The non-congruent ways of encoding language are viewed as grammatical metaphor. Thus, grammatical metaphor is a substitution of one grammatical class, or one grammatical structure, by another. Halliday (1993, 1994) uses the term grammatical metaphor to refer to the meaning transference from congruent to metaphorical in grammar. According to him, congruent forms reflect the typical ways that we construe experience. In congruent forms, verbs represent actions or processes, nouns represent participants and adverbs or prepositional phrases represent circumstances and conjunctions express the relations between one process and another. However, with the development of language, the original relation is often changed. We often turn verbs into nouns, adjectives into nouns and clauses into noun phrases and these changes are grammatical metaphors. There are different types of grammatical metaphors. Ideational metaphor is an incongruent representation of the experiential meaning. It is mainly represented by the transitivity system. In the English transitivity system, there are six main types of processes: material, mental, relational, behavioural, verbal and existential processes and these can be found in the grammatical categories. A process consists of three components: (1) the process itself; (2) the participants in the process; and (3) the circumstances associated with the process. The transformations can be between the processes and a shifting of participants and circumstances. Metaphors of transitivity are italicised in the following examples:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

a. Sue saw something terrible. b. Sue came upon a terrible sight. c. A terrible sight met Sue’s eyes. Items b and c are interpreted as metaphorical variants of item a. In b, the mental process saw has been represented as a material process came upon and the perception has been turned into a Participant sight. In c, the process has been split up into an Actor sight, a material Process meet and a Goal eyes; and Sue represents simply the possessor of the eyes. Interpersonal metaphor basically deals with modality and mood. A metaphor of modality can be substituted by a proposition. In other words, when modality is expressed metaphorically, projection is involved. The projecting clause involved normally has a word or proposition which signifies belief, likelihood, certainty, or other features which one connects with modality. Interpersonal metaphor of modality facilitates expression of meaning metaphorically. For example, the expression ‘I think’ implies ‘probably’; or, ‘I

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Thao Lê and Xuefeng Wang

34

believe’implies ‘almost certainly’. For example, in order to express the likelihood of Li Shi having gone to Beijing already, there are a few possible expressions: a. b. c. d. e. f.

Li Shi must have gone to Beijing. Li Shi will certainly have gone to Beijing by now. I think Li Shi has already gone to Beijing. It is very likely that Li Shi has already gone to Beijing. Everyone believes that Li Shi has already gone to Beijing. It is clear that Li Shi has already gone to Beijing.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

In clauses (2)a and (2)b, the same meaning of likelihood are realised by a model verb must (a) or a model adverb certainly (b), which occur within the clause structure itself. Halliday calls these expressions of modality. While in (c), (d), (e) and (f), the different degree of certainty is decided by the word with modal meaning outside of the original clause, such as the verbs think (c) and believe (e), or the particular types of adjectives likely (d) and clear (f). Halliday (1994, p. 354) calls such expressions interpersonal metaphors of modality, where the modal meaning is realised outside the clause (as in contrast with the standard encoding by means of modal verbs or adverbs, which lie within the clause structure). In this case, again, the metaphors are based on a borrowing. For example, the verb think can be borrowed to express a modal meaning, as in example (c). Another type of interpersonal metaphor is the metaphor of mood which expresses the speech function of giving or demanding information or goods and services. According to Halliday (1994, p. 363), mood expresses the speech functions of statement, question, offer and command. Each of these functions has its standard, default type of encoding: statements are encoded by the declarative, questions by the interrogative, and commands by the imperative clauses. Grammatical metaphor is a complex concept of Hallidayan Functional Grammar and has been used in CDA. Fairclough (2003) devotes a great deal attention to the use of this linguistic concept in a chapter on “Representation of social event”. On the usefulness of the concept “grammatical metaphor in CDA”. Fairclough agrees that “tracing the precise nature and distribution of grammatical metaphors can be seen as one productive way into researching effectivity of texts within a particular social order, and in processes of social change” (p.144).

CONCLUSION Critical Discourse Analysis makes use of linguistic concepts to describe and explain discoursal practices. Particularly for CDA researchers with a background in linguistics, linguistic concepts are often used in discourse analysis and CDA. For Halliday, discourse analysis without a linguistic base is just like running comments often seen in literary criticism. While there are many grammatical theories which attempt to describe language, Hallidayan Functional Grammar can be seen as a powerful tool for describing and analysing discourses due to its emphasis on functional aspects of language and the relationship between language and its social context.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Systematic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

35

REFERENCES

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Eggins, S. (1994). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics. London: Pinter. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar. London:Arnold. Halliday, M & Martin, J. (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. London: Falmer Press. Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Widdowson, H. (2004). Text, context and pretext. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: SAGE Publications.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

WHAT IS A TEXT? QUESTIONS OF BOUNDARIES AND LIMITS Alison Lee

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Discourse analysis has had an approximately 60-year history. Since its slow start in linguistics around the middle of last century, the field has grown and proliferated rapidly, with many disciplines producing their own versions. Today, overview accounts of the field typically begin with a list of these founding disciplines. Yet it is still possible to say that discourse analysis remains an emergent or indeed pre-paradigmatic methodological field. This means that descriptions and accounts of the field remain by and large within the theoretical parameters of their constituent traditions and there is a lack of engagement with the question of the constitution of the field itself. Each discipline or theoretical tradition in the field of discourse analysis takes up a particular set of relationships around discourse and analysis, text and context, text and commentary. These in turn construe or constitute the field in specific ways and produce specific units of analysis. What is not often attended to, however, are the terms of these determinations. For example, how is a text defined? On what basis is it selected? What are the possible relationships between a corpus of data, and the production of specific units of analysis. When is a text? This chapter asks questions of the conditions under which specific units of analysis such as ‘text’ or ‘discourse’ are determined within specific traditions of discourse analysis, the epistemological assumptions underpinning these, and the effects. It argues that these units are artefacts of the analytic disciplines themselves and that the terms and conditions of their production need to be reflexively accounted for. The purpose of this work is to begin to develop a meta-language, beyond specific traditions, about discourse analysis as a distinctive methodological field within social research.

Keywords: text, discourse, meta-language, social context, ethnographic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and anthropological theories, semiotics

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

38

Alison Lee

INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This chapter discusses an often-debated question: the nature of text and the boundaries and limits of what can count as a text. In order to offer a contribution on this question that advances our thinking in the field of critical discourse studies, I will first sketch some of the key theoretical questions that accompany the primary question of the nature of this category ‘text’. These range from an extension of the limits and boundaries in relation to what counts as a text to a problematisation of the usefulness of the category, given the expansion of its boundaries. I will then explore what for me are still unresolved and complex questions concerning the relationship between the concept of text and a range of other concepts that together can be termed ‘not-text’ in some form or other. In particular, I am concerned to problematise conceptualisations of text-context and text-commentary relations. To do this, I draw on Bourdieu’s sociological theorisation of ‘limits’ in the epistemological work of constituting a scientific fact. This theorisation of the fact offers a useful way to proceed when applied to the study of text, allowing us to see how texts are in important ways not pre-given; nor do they have an unproblematic existence or character prior to the work of research or analysis, but rather are constituted through this work. I have suggested elsewhere that, in the contemporary moment, it is possible to argue that anything can be a text as there are no definitive exclusion criteria (Lee 2006). This point goes beyond the matter of definition – the fixing of the category in relation to that which is deemed to be not-text or that against which text is to be defined. It reaches to the primary epistemological questions raised by Bourdieu. How does a text come to be deemed to be a text? How are particular texts selected, as texts, for analysis? Against what conceptual categories are they so defined and selected? The aim of this chapter, then, is not to define ‘text’, nor to produce one or even many ‘operational definition(s)’ of the concept of text, but rather to question the nature of the categorisation process itself. In other words, how do location, circumstance and occasion work to constitute a piece of the world as a text, and with what effects? To address these questions, I will first briefly outline a set of contemporary questions regarding the terms in which the defining of text are couched and framed. I will then briefly outline Bourdieu’s theorisation of limits and finally consider some questions of agency – of readers and readings, of researchers and analysts, in the work of defining, selecting and interpreting texts.

INTERROGATING THE IDEA OF ‘TEXT’ Over the course of the last century there have been many theoretical movements that have been preoccupied with the question of the nature and constitution of the text. In general, the result of this history has been an expansion and extension of the idea of the text from narrower literary notions to include a broader frame and scope of reference. This brief discussion cannot do justice to the scope and complexity of these theoretical discussions. Instead, I will select a set of key ideas concerning boundaries and limits in relation to the idea of the text. Interestingly, I have had to reach back a decade or more to find the most useful theoretical accounts that can take account of the complexities of this question. It is almost as if certain traditions, such as critical discourse analysis, coming to prominence over the past

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits

39

decade or so, have magnified certain notions of the critical and left behind some of the theoretical complexities and ambiguities brought into being by such disciplinary fields as literary theory, postmodern ethnography and poststructuralism. So the account in this chapter seeks to redress that imbalance somewhat. Terry Threadgold (1997) makes a useful summary of the major theoretical movements contributing to the extension of the idea of the text, beginning with early twentieth-century literary theory such as Russian Formalism and Prague School poetics. She then passes through ethnographic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and anthropological theories, semiotics, and poststructuralist and deconstructive theories, together with reader-response theory, social semiotic theory and feminist and post-colonial theories. These have all gradually contributed to the broadening of the scope of reference, or the meaning of the term, ‘text’, to include “the visual, the filmic, the spatial, the corporeal” (p2). The Introduction to her book Feminist Poetics (1997) and her chapter on “poststructuralism and discourse analysis” in Culture and Text (2000) offer useful overviews of this theoretical trajectory. Threadgold offers a useful list of the kinds of questions text analysts have been concerned with over the course of the past hundred years or so:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

What is a text? How is it internally structured? How do texts mean? What is a writer? What is a reader? What is the relationship between verbal and non-verbal, ordinary and aesthetic texts, and so on? What do these things have to do with the social world, with culture, with history, and with subjectivity and the body? (Threadgold 1997, p.2).

There has, Threadgold argues, been a general, albeit uneven, progression in the twentieth century, from theories that have concentrated on the first two of these questions to theories that have gradually tried to grapple with all of them (Threadgold 1997, p.2). The progression is from a concern with the insides of text to its relation to its ‘outsides’ and to a troubling of those relations The latter terms in this progression gradually pay more attention to what is termed ‘context’. It is here that the question of the constitution of the limits and boundaries of the text become of critical importance. A geneaological perspective on the emergence of the ‘text’ within cultural theory sees it as a recent phenomenon, largely one of the last thirty years or so. John Mowitt (1992), drawing on literary theorists Ducros and Todorov, points out the theoretical deficiencies of the idea of the text. These deficiencies concern problems with limits and boundaries in relation to the idea of the text and what is outside, or other, to the text. According to Mowitt, there has been a manifold failure within both literary theory linguistic and rhetorical theory to adequately theorise the text, to account for its specificity as a unit within a system – such as language. The text, as a particular kind of abstraction, is ‘wedged’ into the space between the system and the utterance: As such, the text is to be understood as a derivative or secondary system characterised by the properties of autonomy and closure. It is secondary in the sense that the text depends for its formal features on a pre-existing system, namely, the language constituting its repository of signs. And it is closed and autonomous in the sense that the text embodies a particular configuration of the primary system that, while conditioned by that system, nevertheless marks it with a pragmatic instance irreducible to the system. The text is, like an actual utterance, an event in the history of the system (p.5 emphasis added).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

40

Alison Lee

Mowitt’s explanation is helpful in locating the particular properties of texts that render them problematic in terms of their specificity as units. It is not possible to account once and for all for what is and is not a text, in its relation to the systems that precede it. At the same time his explanation accounts for the intelligibility and recognisability of texts as texts – in terms of autonomy and closure. The text has a pragmatic force that marks it as action and as ‘an event in the history of the system’. The notions of autonomy and closure are helpful as much for the problems and questions they raise as for any definitive answers they might provide. These problems and questions concern both the system-text relation as well as the agency attributed to the acts of closure and the judgments of autonomy. Where does the text begin and end? And who determines? Fairclough, one of the most influential figures in the field of critical discourse analysis, defines the concept of the text broadly and generally as “the semiotic dimension of social events” (Fairclough 2005, p.76). He extends traditional (literary and linguistic) ideas about text to include such examples as written documents and government websites, as well as interviews and meetings in government or business organisations (Fairclough, 2004). As well, texts in this sense are increasingly ‘multimodal’ (e.g. Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001). However, in this elaboration, Fairclough finds a problem with the term ‘text’ itself, which he suggests is “not really felicitous used in this way, because one cannot shake off its primary association with written texts” (Fairclough 2005, p. 77). He concedes the difficulty, on the other hand, of finding a preferable general term. What concerns Fairclough in this account is “the productive activity of social agents in making texts”. He suggests that such activity is best thought of in process terms as “texturing”:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Social agents draw upon social structures (including languages) and practices (including orders of discourse) in producing texts, but actively work these ‘resources’, create (potentially novel) texts out of them, rather than simply instantiating them (Fairclough 2005, p.78).

Fairclough generally prefers the term ‘semiosis’ rather than ‘discourse’ to refer in a general way to language and other semiotic modes such as visual image, and deploys the term 'text’, despite his concerns cited above, for semiotic elements of social events, be they written, spoken, or combining different semiotic modes as in the case of television texts. Analysis of texts in Fairclough’s framework includes ‘interdiscursive’ analysis of how genres, discourses and styles are articulated together, as well as linguistic and semiotic analysis. The notion of interdiscursivity brings us to the question of the ‘outside’ or the ‘other’ of the idea of the text. This ‘other’ is often or most commonly referred to as ‘context’. For Fairclough, the idea of ‘interdiscursivity’ allows for the incorporation of elements of ‘context’ into the analysis of texts, to “show the relationship between concrete occasional events and more durable social practices, to show innovation and change in texts”. Further, the notion of interdiscursivity plays a mediating role in allowing the connection between detailed linguistic and semiotic features of texts and processes of social change on a broader scale (Fairclough 2004, p.228). Where, then, does the text begin and end? According to whom? This last question takes us to the question of production as well as reception: of writers/makers as well as readers and readings of texts. Threadgold (1997, p.2) tells us that, after the gradual expansion of the category of the text to include the visual, the filmic, the spatial and the corporeal, the source

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits

41

of textual meaning has been relocated from inside the text to the “negotiations between readers, writers and texts”. This in turn has necessitated a “theorisation of the subjects who read and write”. This theorisation is, I suggest, at the core of the question ‘what is a text?’ To posit a reader/writer/text relation requires us to focus on the constitutive work of readers, or analysts, in constituting texts and their meanings. We have seen that the idea of ‘text’ is a construct that is located within a particular order of discourse or disciplinary frame. This involves determining sets of relations with what is in some way ‘not-text’ – whether that be understood as ‘context’ or the ‘non-discursive’ material flow of everyday life, and so on. The movement between text, discourse and the world, and the relations between texts and their writers and readers – are theoretically problematic and complex; they are matters of epistemology, or what is to be counted as knowledge. To begin to explore a way forward, I here take up Bourdieu’s epistemological challenge for sociology and hence for the human sciences more broadly.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

BOURDIEU: THINKING ABOUT LIMITS For Bourdieu, the key point to the undertaking of any research enterprise involves centrally, “thinking about the way the object is apprehended”. In his paper published in Theory, Culture and Society in 1992, Bourdieu posits an epistemological program that he draws from the French sociological tradition, most clearly influenced by Bachelard. This program offers an alternative and a challenge to the more dominant German tradition of the binary opposition of explanation/understanding (Erklarung/Verstehen) that marks the shift from positivist to post-positivist and interpretive epistemologies. Bourdieu’s purpose is to break down this opposition, with its entrenched presupposition of the ‘universal’ nature of scientific fact vs. the ‘particularity’ of the human sciences. For him, what is required is a three-fold movement, centrally revolving around the constructed-ness of all facts. In this frame, facts are “conquered, constructed and confirmed” (from Bourdieu and Chamboredon 1991). These three moments are complexly inter-related, both conceptually and in time in actual research practice. However, for explanatory purposes, Bourdieu separates them into a three-stage, linear process. The first stage in the process is that of conquering the fact. This idea is central to this work and can usefully be summed up here in terms of an “epistemological break” (p.38). This idea suggests a battle or a struggle rather than a simple reaching for a set of givens, or preconstituted facts. Bourdieu is very critical of pre-constructed concepts and argues for the necessity of the struggle to constitute concepts as scientific constructs rather than assuming them to be pre-given. He illustrates this central epistemological challenge through problematising the practices of definition in the research process: Very often the positivist epistemological tradition attempts to escape from the problem I pose by means of the notorious operational definition. Imagine constructing a research programme into European intellectuals. How are you going to choose your sample? Everyone knows how to construct a sample, It’s no big deal, and can be learnt in any course on methodology: drawing white balls or black balls, anyone can do the job. But how do you construct the box

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

42

Alison Lee that the balls are in? Nobody asks that. Do I just say “I call intellectual all those who say they are ‘intellectuals’”? How do we construct the limits? (Bourdieu 1992, p.42)

The point Bourdieu makes strongly here is that subjects, the concepts, the words themselves that are used to speak about the social, are socially pre-constructed and socially constituted. He argues that social problems are often too quickly converted, through this easy process of definition, into sociological facts, often erasing or effacing the history of disputation and contestation that mark the site of the problem. The examples he gives are juvenile delinquency, drugs and AIDS. Through this process of definition, limits are set on what counts as the concept to be investigated through method. Bourdieu’s point is thus that it is necessary to practise “radical doubt” (p.43) in the constitution of a scientific fact. Why does this scrupulous epistemological attention matter? According to Bourdieu: Sociologists, especially positivists, who are so hard to please in matters of empirical proof, are negligent, uncaring and incredibly lax when it comes to questions of epistemology. When it comes to coding data, for example, they employ the most naïve systems of classification… Afterwards, there are some very clever exercises on the computer. But what is put into the computer is the pre-thought, ready to think with just a few alterations (p.43).

The second moment, the ‘construction’ of the object of research, is, according to Bourdieu, decisive. Rather than speaking of “choosing a subject” to research, the fundamental operation in this account is the actual construction of the topic as an object. Again, the critical point is to be able to think about and question the pre-given nature of reality that presents itself to the researcher. This is the “moment of maximum vigilance”:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

When you are within the pre-constituted, reality offers itself to you. The given gives itself, in the form of the notorious data. This is one of the reasons the given is so dangerous (p.44).

This problematising of ‘data’, in its literal sense of the ‘given’, is necessary to avoid the ‘enormous scientific errors’ perpetrated through an uncritical acceptance of the preconstituted concept. Everything must be subjected to questioning concerning the conditions of its constituted-ness. The third phase, termed confirmation, in this account, is the empirical phase. The constructed objects and the system of hypotheses that allows their formation must be tested against reality and ‘subjected to verification’. Bourdieu stresses that: To construct an object is to construct a model, but not a formal model destined merely to turn in the void, rather a model intended to be matched against reality (p.45).

Bourdieu’s point here is that what is needed are means of constructing facts in such a way that models can be developed. This is a kind of third way between a theoretical formalism and a positivist hyper-empiricism “drowned in data”. This third way places construction – thinking about the way the object is apprehended – at the very start of the process. There is much that is thought-provoking here for considerations of the question ‘what is a text?’ How can we theorise the epistemological break frorm the pre-thought, taken-forgranted idea of the given-ness of texts? How do we account for the construction of the text as

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits

43

the object of analysis, rather than simply assuming the text pre-exists the moment of research or of analysis? How is “confirmation” to be understood? One way to construe this term is in relation to the application of text-analytic methods in determining a text’s meanings and effects. A more far-reaching implication is that it is through the three-stage process described by Bourdieu that a particular model of the world is “intended to be matched against reality”. Further questions arise: how are the problems that are to be subjected to linguistic or other text-analytic methods constituted? How is the piece of the world in question ‘apprehended’ and then constructed as the ‘object’ of the research? How is the implicit model of the world thus constructed to be tested against reality? What criteria of adequacy to that reality are to count? Bourdieu’s insights into the setting of limits offer important and productive epistemological challenges for textual analysis. According to this analysis, the text, like the scientific fact, has to be struggled over, constructed and confirmed. The wordworld relation must be constituted in this process, rather than being deemed to be given, to simply yield itself up as ‘data’. These questions are, in turn, always and ineluctably social, cultural and political. The taking of an epistemological position always involves “social forces” – always involves “the position in the scientific field of those who take them and the type of capital which it commands” (p.48). Methodological strategies proposed by researchers are, Bourdieu says, often “little more than rationalisations of their own limits”. Indeed, much of the debates in the social sciences, according to this account, are “debates which are organised around people caught within their pre-established limits” (p.48). The final points of concern, then, are these limits which he argues must be subjected to “radical doubt”. His challenge is to the “categories of thought which makes a whole collection of things unthinkable” (p.48).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

TEXT, CONTEXT AND COMMENTARY To begin to address some of these questions, it is necessary to turn to considerations of how a text is defined in relation to its ‘other’ – that which is deemed to be not-text. This is variously referred to as the world within which the text circulates and takes its meaning (Mulkay, 1985), “a set of adjacent categories (the system, the utterance), time (the text is a moment in the history of the system)” (Mowitt 1992) and so on. Often, what is around the text is referred to in general, albeit problematic ways, as ‘context’. Within linguistic and critical discourse-analytic work, ‘context’ is construed in a probabilistic relation to ‘text’, drawing on sociological and anthropological notions of ‘situation’ and ‘culture’ (see e.g ., Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Often, however, context is drawn as a kind of more or less stable ‘container’ within which a text sits as an instance of a system of meaning (e.g., Fairclough, 1992). While Fairclough himself has gone on to develop more refined and sophisticated accounts of text-context relations, his initial formulations are still widely cited in the work of others. One of the more useful accounts of the relations between text and context has been Jay Lemke’s work on “contextualising relations” in Textual Politics (1995). Echoing Bourdieu’s concerns with the constitution of sociological facts, Lemke is concerned to focus on questions of limits:

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

44

Alison Lee We say that when an act occurs it occurs in some context and that ‘its’ meaning depends in part on what that context is. Better to say that we make the act meaningful by construing it in relation to some other acts, events, things (which we then call its contexts). …The key question is what goes with what? With what alternatives is an act in contrast? What are the relevant contexts in which the act has meaning? It is because there are patterns and limits to what is expected to go with what in a particular community, that meaning becomes possible . …Meaning consists in relations and systems of relations of relations. These relations are basically contextualising relations, they tell us what the contexts are in relation to which an act or event has its meanings in our community. They specify what the combinations are that an event of a given type can belong to, and what the kinds of events are, the sets of alternative events or acts of the same kinds, that can make up the various sets of combinations. …In all cases, contextualizing relations are constructed or construed by meaning-making practices of the community. They cannot be deduced from inherent or intrinsic properties of acts, events or things, for these do not ‘have’ such properties. …Actions make meanings and sustain the Meaning System of a community by not violating its limits, by conforming to its patterns (Lemke 1995, pp.166-167).

Lemke goes on to argue that two sets of relations are salient: first, relations between text and event or formation or genre; and second, and relations between texts, formations or genres and larger issues of social structure and process (Lemke 1995, p. 167): The text or event takes its meaning in part from being seen in the community as an instance of one or more formations. We interpret it against the background of other instances of the same formations to see how it is distinctive and we contrast it with instances of other formations. Different formations (codes, genres, registers, voices of heteroglossia, discursive formations,) are not just different, however. They have systematic relations to one another and those relations define and are defined by the larger social relationships of classes, genders, age groups, political constituencies, and significant social divisions of every kind (Lemke, 1995, p. 168).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A further complexity in theorising text-context relations is rendered visible from the perspective of contemporary literary theory and poststructuralism. Green (1991), for example, works with a notion of reading as an “undecideable play” of text and context. What he explicitly refuses is a view of context that posits matters of occasion, place and situation as independent and outside human events and activities, as existential “containers” for them: This notion of context needs to be understood semiotically, however, as a register of the practices and dynamics of meaning-making – rather than realistically or naturalistically. Contexts aren’t simply ‘containers’ or ‘frames’ for living and learning; rather they are thoroughly implicated in and indeed inextricable from living and learning. Our world only seems ready-made and ready to hand; whereas in actuality it is constantly be[ing] formed and reformed … The very distinction between ‘text’ and ‘context’ is fraught with difficulty – not just philosophically or theoretically but practically (Green, 1998, p. 216).

Green is drawing here from Derrida, for whom context is an indeterminate concept that is virtual rather than empirical and is constantly shifting, dynamic, multiple and heteroglossic. Green articulates the need for an appropriately understood concept of context in terms of “meaning and action”.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits

45

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Furthermore, within this theoretical frame it is important to problematise the notion of text itself, to refuse the reification of the concept of the text but to see it as similarly problematic and ‘undecidable’. Thinking about text as ‘given’ or simplistically in terms of ‘presence’ is problematic, a point underscoring Bourdieu’s point about the pre-constructed nature of data. What presents itself to the researcher must be treated skeptically. As Bourdieu calls for ‘radical doubt’ in the constitution of the sociological fact, so is such radical doubt necessary in relation to the constitution of the text – precisely because the text appears fully present, pre-formed or even pre-determined. What is understood as ‘text’ (whatever the modality) is always predicated on preceding constitutive work, which is mostly naturalised, forgotten or denied: in Bourdieu’s terms, the “box the balls are in”. Thus, the very distinction between ‘text’ and ‘context’ is difficult and ambiguous. Text is a misleading idea, for Green as for Mowitt (1992) and Fairclough (2004), as suggested earlier, though for different theoretical reasons. The very idea of ‘text’ appears to fix an object in time and space by means of some kind of method or procedure. If anything can be text, then what determines the constitution of the text is some kind of act of meaning making in relation to the object. This then brings to the fore the question of reading and hence of textual commentary or analysis. According to Green’s (1991) formulation, reading is a social signifying practice involving a “complex interplay of text/context relations characterised by a motivated and constrained undecidability” (p.216). Readings are complex, dynamic and relational, constitutive of the text-context relations they purport to reflect. Text-context relations, then are determined by readers and readings, rather than being fixed, pre-determined or given. Bob Hodge and Alec McHoul (1992) have theorised relations between text and commentary relations in terms of two extreme types of disciplinary formations, which they refer to as “mastery” and “liberty”. The first formation coheres around the notion of commentarial dominance over, and colonisation of, the object-text. The second is characterised by a more “humble” gesture by which the commentary allows the object- text the position of dominance- to “speak for itself”. In relation to the position of “mastery”, the text is positioned as containing a “mystery”, available only to the skills of the analyst: What is paradoxically interesting about the approach … is that it flatters the text equally with itself. The two, as it were, look as if they are in a conspiracy to defraud ‘ordinary’ readers. The text’s meaning is ‘deep’ – but the commentary’s skill is more than equal to that depth. This is the characteristic mode of explanation and owes some allegiance to traditional (Baconian) natural science models. The text, like nature, is an infinite mystery. But the commentary, like the mathematical gesture, presumes to unlock that mystery, privileging, in one move, both itself and, to a lesser extent, its object (Hodge & McHoul, 1992, p.190).

At the opposite end of this binary formation, ‘libertarian’ approaches to ‘letting the text speak for itself’, dating from the 1960s, involve such traditions as those Hodge and McHoul refer to in terms of “ethnomethodological indifference”- letting the text “speak for itself” ranges from various traditions within “non-intrusive” sociology, to approaches within phenomenology and ethnography. The text “becomes the master: it ‘teaches’ the analyst”, who remains silent, acting as a medium through which the “text emerges to full consciousness” (Hodge & McHoul, 1992, p.194).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

46

Alison Lee

Hodge and McHoul point out, however, that text-libertarianism is a “panopticism under another name”. The silence of the analyst is “far from innocent and is in fact part of a very effective strategy of power”. Here they refer to crucial yet unexamined issues such as which texts are to be selected and which excluded. As they note, “libertarians who self-consciously take the side of the victim still face the dilemma of which particular victim to choose” (Hodge & McHoul, 1992, p.195). The question of ‘when is a text’ is taken up in terms of the politics of text and commentary. For Hodge and McHoul, it is important to ask, questions concerning the institutional and historical conditions under which textual analysts come to be authors and the constraints under which forms of analysis take place. Hodge and McHoul give an account, drawing on Foucault and Lyotard, of some of the politico-theoretical problems of textual commentary that seek to displace the problematic binary of text/commentary, self/other, leaving the intensive scrutiny of the ‘insides’ of texts and taking into account such matters as the conditions of their production and circulation. Ultimately, they insist on the notion of text as ‘spectacle’, as performance and as writing (p.195).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION The purpose in laying out this particular set of provocations, drawing on literary theory, postmodern sociology and anthropology and poststructuralist philosophy and semiotics is to augment what have become dominant accounts of text-context relations within the more widely circulated versions of critical discourse analysis. CDA is espousedly multi- or even inter-disciplinary in its orientation as a movement, which involves many theoretical traditions and multiple methodologies (see Lee & Otsuji this volume). Each rests in some way upon a particular construction of the text or, as in Fairclough’s case, on a questioning of the very term text and its replacement with ideas of semiosis and interdiscursivity. Many, if not most, accounts of textual analysis within CDA, it might be fair to say, focus intently upon the analysis and less on a radical questioning of the idea of the text itself. This is a theoretical lacuna, in the sense that the epistemological work we are asked to do by Bourdieu in radically questioning the constitution of the objects of our inquiry is often forgotten. There can be a too-easy elision between an object already constituted in literal terms as a text, for example a child’s essay or a policy report, and objects such as interview transcripts that are artefacts of a research process that halts, captures and recontextualises a moment of semiosis in the flow of time and place, and thus constitutes it as a text, to be subjected to analysis of one kind or another. These acts are acts of selecting, setting limits and boundaries, reading and re-writing, parts of the world. This chapter has sought to re-introduce some questions that remain unresolved and unresolvable, yet critical to a skilful reflexive scholarship of textual capable of working within social, cultural, economic and environmental complexity and uncertainty.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

What Is a Text? Questions of Boundaries and Limits

47

REFERENCES

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bourdieu, P. (1992). Thinking about limits, Theory, Culture & Society, 9, 37-49. Bourdieu, P., & Chamboredon, J-C (1991). The craft of sociology: Epistemological preliminaries. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (2004). Semiotic aspects of social transformation and learning. In R. Rogers (Ed.) An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education, pp. 225-236. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical discourse analysis. Marges Linguistiques, 9, 76-94. Green, B. (1991). Reading ‘ReadingS’: Towards a postmodernist reading pedagogy. In C. D. Baker, & A. Luke (Eds.), Towards a critical sociology of reading pedagogy, pp. 212-235. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Geelong, Deakin University Press Hodge, B., & McHoul, A. (1992). The politics of text and commentary. Textual Practice, 6(2), 189-209. Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. J. (2001). Multimodal discourse - The modes and media of contemporary communication. London, U.K: Arnold. Lee, A. (2000). When is a text? In T.Le and M.Short (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Critical Discourse Analysis Conference: Theory into research. University of Tasmania, November 15-18, pp.350-360. Lemke, J. L. (1995). Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis. Mulkay, M (1985) The word and the world: Explorations in the form of sociological analysis, London, George Allen & Unwin. Mowitt, J. (1992). Text: The genealogy of an antidisciplinary object. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Threadgold, T. (1997). Feminist poetics: Poeisis, performance, histories. London/New York: Routledge. Threadgold, T. (2000). Poststructuralism and discourse analysis. In A. Lee & C. Poynton, (Eds.), Culture and text, pp 40-58. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

APPLYING MEMBERSHIP CATEGORISATION ANALYSIS TO DISCOURSE: WHEN THE ‘TRIPWIRE CRITIQUE’ IS NOT ENOUGH Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody ABSTRACT

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This chapter provides an outline of Membership Categorisation Analysis, exemplifies some of its applications, and argues for its significance for the agenda of critical discourse analysis. The chapter describes and illustrates the organisation of categories in everyday discourse, categorisation devices and their rules for application, and the relationship of categorisation practices to the interpretation of activities, features, and attributions. As part of these processes, the use of topic selections, list formations, and embedded stories in the assembly and interpretation of categories and features is also illustrated. We conclude by suggesting that the application of MCA is one alternative to the ‘tripwire’ approach to critique, which searches for allegedly tell-tale signs of unacceptable moral and ideological attitudes in the surface features of language.

Keywords: membership, categorisation, critique, interpretation

INTRODUCTION Constructing and interpreting intelligible texts are everyday accomplishments of coordination that rely on the mastery of many intersecting aspects of “natural language” use (Garfinkel & Sacks, 1970). In this chapter, we analyse how such accomplishments are routinely achieved via membership categorisation activities. One of our purposes here is to show that an adequate critical analysis of discourse requires attention to all of the sources of meaning that are brought to bear in any given instance. That is, we argue and aim to

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

50

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

demonstrate that critical analysis is not just a matter of finding an element of communication to be a pivotal source of meaning, developing an analysis of the text as if that element clinches the ‘critical’ interpretation, and then producing a set of interpretive assertions on that basis – a form of practice that can be thought of as ‘tripwire analysis. In this chapter we aim to present a principled alternative to tripwire analyses by providing an exposition of membership categorisation analysis (MCA), exemplifying MCA’s potentially productive application to critical analysis of discursive practices, and putting the case that a concern with categorisation practices is at the heart of both redistribution- and recognition-based critical approaches (e.g., Fraser & Honneth, 2003). Both of these general classes of critique draw on categorisations of persons (along lines of class, race, gender, able-bodied-ness, generation, and so on) and on common understandings of their recognisable characteristics. In this chapter we argue for the occasioned rather than fixed nature of these categorisations and characteristics, and we expand on the technical features of such occasioned categorial work and its significance for analysing social practice. Membership categories are notional concepts used by cultural members to classify persons (Sacks 1992a [1966], pp. 40 – 48). They are essentially meaning-making resources in that the classification of a person as a type or member of a social category enables others to interpret, classify and assign meaning to actions/utterances as relevant to particular activities (Sacks 1992a [1966], p.241). Interpretively, category membership has been found to constitute an adequate basis for particular inferences to be made about persons, objects and actions. Identifying a person as member of a recognizable social category provides a warrant for further inferences, as Sacks (1992a [1964]) observed “to become a member is to make state-able about yourself any of the things that are state-able about members of that commonsense category” (p.47). Membership categorisation is a mechanism as are sequential and topical organisations whereby people construct meaning in and from discourse. For texts to be mutually intelligible, each action within the text must be sensible as an utterance or action with respect to the incumbency of the speaker as a member of a category, and that membership category must be recognizably relevant for the type of activity, specific participants and other aspects of the social ontext. Watson (1997) observed of categorial and sequential organisation, that

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

[c]onversational sequences are categorically instructed, both for lay speakers and analysts: the sense of a sequence – even its sense as a sequence – is, in significant ways, given by its categorical order (Watson, 1997, p.73).

Via the “layering” of the resources provided by the different organizations (i.e.,sequential and topical), the work of making sense for and with others can be accomplished in orderly ways. Sacks (1992b [1972], p. 561) referred to the effects of concurrent organisations as the “thick surface” of social activity. The surface is thick not because the accomplishment of each form of organisation requires the use of different sets of verbal tools and practices, but because each utterance is thick with the various concurrent meanings that it glosses (Garfinkel & Sacks 1970, pp. 342 – 345). Thus, a single interactional move may concurrently accomplish: local and extended sequential order; particular category membershipping activities (Eglin & Hester 1992, 1999; Garfinkel 1967; Hester & Eglin 1997; Sacks 1992); and topical ordering work (Sacks 1992a, 1992b; Schegloff 1979). One result of this multiple sense of any utterance is that there is no

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

51

direct correspondence between what is said and what may be inferred, and that it is the sensemaking work of co-participants using cultural knowledge of these same organising frameworks and resources, that accomplishes situated meaning (Garfinkel 1967). These operations (i.e., making sense for and with others and of others’ actions) involve the management of literal and inferential meaning resources, including sequential, categorial, and topical organisational matters, taking account of the ‘scenic’ attributes of the conversations; and having all of these converge to accomplish the practical business at hand (Goodwin & Heritage 1990; Schegloff 1999). That is, sense-making involves the management of all aspects of the ‘context’ of actions. We illustrate these initial points in a brief analysis of an excerpt from a speech by Australian Catholic Cardinal George Pell, delivered to the Australian National Press Club, in Canberra, on 21 September 2005. The address was entitled The dictatorship of relativism. This speech was widely quoted at a time of public debate about literacy and English education, about the qualities of Australian schools, and about the moral circumstances of western societies more generally. It is not our aim to display our agreement or disagreement with its contents but rather to use it to show the discursive artfulness that comes to light when an MCA is applied to textual construction and interpretation. Excerpt 1:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

One reason for optimism is that no one believes deep down in relativism. People may express their scepticism about truth and morality in lecture rooms or in print, but afterwards, they will go on to sip a cappuccino, pay the mortgage, drive home on the left side of the road, and presumably avoid acts of murder and cannibalism throughout their evening. People, unless insane, do not live as relativists. They care about truth and follow clear cut rules.

The sense of this utterance relies on the speakers’ understanding of significant elements of its context – a context in which it is legal to drive on the left hand side of the road, where murder and cannibalism are illegal and socially unacceptable, where sipping cappuccino and having and paying a mortgage are demonstrations of normality and social and moral rectitude. It is also a context in which it is appropriate for the speaker to make such pronouncements, to speak as an authority on moral matters, to hold particular views about truth, morality, optimism, and believing. In other words, the sense of this talk trades on the speaker’s incumbency in a particular social category (i.e., leader of the Catholic Church in Australia), and the activity in which he is engaged (i.e., making as speech to news reporters at a press club). The talk also reflexively constitutes Pell and his audience as members of those social categories. As part of the work of assembling his membership as an authority on moral ‘law’ and his right, therefore, to authoritative talk on the topic, Pell invokes other social categorisations, university lecturers, scholars and writers (“in lecture rooms or in print”) and attributes values and beliefs to the members of these categories via the description of a series of mundane actions. Through this simple descriptive narrative, he undermines the authority of members of these categories on matters of truth and morality. This descriptive narrative thereby also necessarily shows, in Jayyusi’s (1984, p. 28) terms “the normatively and morally organized character of categorisation work, accounts, descriptions, predictions and discourseinteractional work in general.”

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

52

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

Central to meaning in this talk is the feature that it is a categorially ordered set of actions that cannot be discovered if the analyst refers only to the selection of words, grammatical structures, and rhetorical strategies. We propose, therefore, that MCA provides a practical supplement to other methods for critical analysis of discourse. We now outline in brief, some of the analytical resources applied in MCA. The concepts explicated in this section relate to categorial organisation, namely, categorial resources and membership categorisation procedures used by cultural members to make sense of, and in social interaction and to reflexively constitute orderly social life. It draws on the work of Sacks (1992a, 1972a, 1972b), Jayyusi (1984, 1991), Eglin and Hester (1992; 1999), and Hester and Eglin (1997).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CATEGORIAL ORGANISATION: MEMBERSHIP CATEGORISATION So much of social meaning is embedded in categorially organised information that membership categorisation activities will be evident in the familiar features of many social activities. This is not to say that the membership categorisation activities are an end in themselves (i.e., as they are depicted in critical sociological accounts of power, dominance and control). Rather, it acknowledges that the scenic features of social settings as well as their rational properties are constituted by membership categorisation activities. In other words, the organised procedures used to describe the indexical features of category concepts for the specific practical tasks conventionally associated with institutional settings are the same discursive features that form the familiar scenic features of those activities. The array of membership category concepts available for making meaning in any activity is limited by the meaning-making work at hand. Recognisable incumbency of one participant in a specific social category invokes other related categories that can be common-sensically aligned with the initial categorisation and, therefore, may entitle or oblige co-participants to act in particular ways. This is not to say that particular culturally, socially, or institutionally relevant categories have fixed sets of attributes, rather, “categories like other concepts (and categorisations like other descriptions) are open-textured” (Jayyusi 1984, p.39). One central understanding is that situated categorial order, category descriptions, and relational configurations of categories are indexical expressions, relevant to their “local, contextual specificity and use” (Hester & Eglin 1997, p.25). Membership category description and analysis are routine procedures in everyday events as category concepts are shaped and re-shaped for the context and occasion of their use (Hester & Eglin 1997, p.25 and see for instance, Cuff 1994; Cuff & Francis 1978; Eglin & Hester 1992, 1999; Francis & Hart 1997; Hester 1992; Hester & Eglin 1997; Jayyusi 1984; Sacks 1972b). Meanings are assigned and interpretable on the basis of situated categorisations of persons in relation to co-participants and to the activities in which they are engaged. Coordinated action and mutual understanding is made possible on the basis of categories and the ways they are described and relationally configured for the specific occasion.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

53

MEMBERSHIP CATEGORISATION DEVICES Analysis of the meaning of categorisations begins with an analysis of the activity in or for which the discourse has been produced. Category concepts invoked are analysed to determine the overall commonsense collective to which a particular category is notionally connected on the specific occasion. For instance, the category concept ‘child’ can be used with reference to one or more of the following collectives: stage of life, family, social activities such as education, health care, etcetera. These notional ‘collectives’ are called membership categorisation devices (MCDs). and the location of a category concept within one of these conceptual devices operates to specify how incumbents of the category should be interpreted this time. Thus, MCDs are “collections of categories for referring to some persons, with some rules of application, where these devices can be applied to populations and members apply them to populations to say things about them” (Sacks 1992a [1966], p.238). Sacks specified that MCDs are collections in the sense that the categories observably go together for some purpose. He defined an MCD as “[a]ny collection of membership categories, containing at least a Member, so as to provide, by the use of some rules of applications, for the pairing of at least a population member and a categorisation device member. A device is then a collection plus rules of application” (Sacks 1992a [1966], p.246). Collections may also imply particular relational configurations of the categories, including notional hierarchically “positioned categories” (Sacks 1992a [1967], p. 585), and along with those configurations, particular features of incumbents of the related membership categories. Central to Sacks’s descriptions are two collections, “R” and “K.” He defined “R” as a collection of “programmatically relevant” paired relational categories or “standardized relational pairs” (e.g., “husband-wife, parent-child, neighbour-neighbour, …strangerstranger”) related with respect to “a set of rights and obligations concerning the activity of giving help” such that the occurrence of one of the pair makes the other relevant or noticeably absent (Sacks 1972a, pp.37 – 38). Collection“K” was defined as “composed of two classes (professional and laymen (sic))” and constructed by reference to special distributions of knowledge existing about how to deal with some trouble” (Sacks 1972a, pp. 37 – 39).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

MCDs – Rules of Application Category-concepts, category descriptions and MCDs are the components of organised categorial meaning-making structure. Category concepts should not be analysed on the basis of the analyst’s commonsense understanding of the category concept; warrantable analysis of the contextual meaning of the categorisation is based only on evidence in the text analysed. Based on empirical evidence, Sacks found that members accomplish recognisable social activities and actions using membership categorisation. According to Sacks (1992a [1966], p.242), “the simplest way you make a recognisable description is to take some category and some activity that’s bound to it, and put them together.” Collections of categories (MCDs) and relational configurations of categories in collections have meaning-making potential and there are various commonsense procedural rules for constituting the local rationality and intelligibility of actions with reference to categories, MCDs and category-action relationships.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

54

The rules pertain to: (a) selections of categories and MCDs used to classify the range of persons that are subjects of the discourse analysed, (b) judgements about how categories and MCDs can be used, including how many can be used, to accomplish adequate classifications; and (c) judgements about the relevance of relationships between activities, membership categories, and MCDs and thus, the orderliness of sequential actions (Sacks 1992a [1966], pp.238 – 266). Each of these is summarised below. Selections of categories and MCDs used to classify the range of persons involved in a particular social event may be organised via the application of “relevance’ rule[s]” (Sacks 1992a [1966], p.146), such as: •

•

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

the Consistency Rule: “If some population of persons is being categorized, and if a category from some device’s collection has been used to categorize a first Member of the population, then that category or other categories of the same collection may be used to categorize further Members of the population” (Sacks 1972a, p.33 emphases in original; see also Sacks 1992a [1966], p.239); the Hearer’s Maxim: “If there are two categories used, which can be found to be part of the same collection, hear them as part of the same collection” (Sacks 1992a [1966], p.239); and Category Relevance Rules 1 and 2: These pertain to the ‘programmatic relevance’ of particular categories given the use of an MCD. For example, for the MCD ‘parties to a medical service event,’ GP and P are programmatically relevant, while other categories, such as friend, neighbour, or husband are not programmatically relevant but may be made relevant. Given the use of one of the programmatically relevant categories (e.g. GP) another can be expected to be relevant (e.g., P or medical clinic ancillary staff member). These are made relevant using knowledge of “standardised relational pairs” (SRPs), that is, categories that may be made relevant on the invocation of another (e.g., for a collection “R” device – husband-wife; for a collection “K” device – GP-P) (Sacks 1972a, pp.33 – 37).

The intelligibility of observed actions provided for by linking actions to categories of persons and activities relies on social members’ collaborative application of these rules within social discourse. The identification of the person as an incumbent of a category can be formulated with reference to actions, activity, setting, and/or co-participants where one or all of these can be normatively linked to such a category. Membership categorisations are descriptive and their function in social discourse is to provide the basis for the local descriptions and classifications of persons that give meaning to actions; categorizations point to the direction in which a search for meaning may proceed.

Members’ Methods of Membership Categorisation As we have indicated, the object of situated membership categorisation and analysis is assigning meaning and directing inferencing and interpretation. Interpretations and the interpretability of local action are organised and constrained via the invocation of and situated description of membership category concepts (Jayyusi 1984; Schegloff 1972; Watson 1983). Because sense-making and interpretation management are complex and multi-layered, they

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

55

cannot possibly be managed through explicit formulations. It has been established that category concepts, MCDs and “categories of social configuration or collectivitycategorisations” (Hester & Eglin 1997, p.157) are locally constituted to extend the meaning potential and to design the procedural consequentiality of local actions (as well as to constrain possible interpretations). The classification of persons, objects and actions as members of a class provides for unspoken things to be ‘known’ or assumed about them. Via using MCA it is possible to determine how abstract category-concepts are: made concrete, occasioned by local sense-making needs, and accomplished by local descriptive practices. Beginning with a search for expectable attributes and predicates of common-sense category-concepts, MCA identifies and examines the methods used by participants to assemble other category descriptions and locally relevant MCDs to meet their situated social purposes. Category incumbency can be attributed based on the display of particular attributes, actions, assumptions of rights, and obligations but others can be assembled for particular purposes and contexts. Jayyusi (1984, pp. 20 – 56) distinguished different relationships between types of activities and membership category invocation and description. The table below (Freiberg, 2003, p.136) summarises the different types of and category-related features and their relationship to membership categorisation activities. Table 1. Category-activity/feature relationships

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Constitutive Features “Type-embedded” and criterial to that categorization i.e., that MUST be observable or describable.

Occasioned Features Not criterial to that categorisation but might be made so under certain conditions.

Any feature that WILL generate that specific category-concept i.e., is both necessary and sufficient to ascribe or confer incumbency in the category.

Tied Features Criterial to that categorization under certain conditions (e.g., during some specific event) i.e. that WILL be observable or describable under those conditions. Any feature that CAN generate that specific category-concept i.e., is necessary but not sufficient to ascribe or confer incumbency in the category.

May Include: required/predicated attributes, skills, knowledge, values, behaviours;

May Include: relevant attributes, skills, knowledge, values, behaviours;

May Include: attributes, skills, knowledge, values, behaviours that can be made locally relevant;

associated criterial rights & obligations; and

associated rights & obligations; and

programmatically relevant task-relationships with others.

relevant task-relationships with others.

associated rights & obligations that can be made locally relevant; task-relationships with others that can be made locally relevant.

Any feature that MAY be made relevant to the category-concept already generated i.e., is neither necessary nor sufficient to ascribe or confer incumbency in the category.

Source: Freiberg, 2003, p.136.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

56

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

Methods of “category accretion” (Jayyusi 1984, p. 114), that is, the binding of occasioned features to a category-concept in use, achieved using common-sense descriptive techniques such as ‘mapping’ (Watson 1983), are identified and analysed because of the evidence they provide of the purposeful action of participants in discourse to assemble meaning. Such analysis will discover how attributes and predicates from other category-concepts have been made relevant, for the practical activities at hand, and how the category-concepts initially invoked are modified, transformed or fabricated into “event-specific or event-tied” categories (Jayyusi, 1984, pp. 114 – 121). MCA first identifies patterns of selective formulations of items such as terms of address, descriptions of locations, actions, persons, category-sensitive identifications of action and coselected category and action descriptions, then analyses how these are implicated in the constitution and transformation of the familiar and expectable features of category-concepts “for a focus” (Schegloff 1972, p.102) and for local practical purposes, (Jayyusi 1984; Schegloff 1972; Watson 1983). Evident co-selection of category concepts is analysed as are the ways that these category concepts are described and tied in specific ways (e.g., using notional hierarchies, comparison and contrast, or causal relationships) to the attributes and predicates of the categories programmatically relevant in a setting (Hester & Eglin 1997; Jayyusi 1984; Sacks 1972a; 1992a, 1992b; Schegloff 1972). The work of MCA is to document and examine the ways that abstract category concepts (Lynch & Bogen 1997, p. 121) are employed as the point of departure for the description of the local features of categories and the implication of other MCDs. Co-selection of category-concepts may either assemble a new version of a category or an alternative categorisation. For instance, membership categorisation procedures have been shown to provide for: “expert witness” to be transformed into “unreliable witness” via the coselection of “witness”, “good criminologist”, and “bad criminologist” (Lynch & Bogen 1997); “nigger” to be mapped onto “victim” (Watson 1983); “young men” to be transformed either into “victims” or “offenders” depending on the motivation for a “category-fitted account” (Jayyusi 1984, pp. 103 – 114); “problem pupil” to be transformed into “shy boy” (Hester & Eglin 1997); and “offender” into “murder suspect” (Eglin & Hester 1999). MCA can identify whether and how programmatically relevant categories have been differentiated in ways that are consequential for the meaning and political force of a text. For instance, MCA will reveal whether and how the predicated features (i.e., constitutive or tied) of a category, for which a high level of ethical obligation normally applies, have been waived. This type of category transformative work is seen where insanity is ascribed to a person who has committed a crime. The transformation via membership categorisation work, from category, “criminal”, to category, “criminally insane” is procedurally consequential as it “removes the agency from the person’s acts” (Eglin & Hester 1999, p. 212) and thereby the obligation to display category – constitutive or tied features on that occasion. Extract 2, below, also taken from the speech by Cardinal George Pell, demonstrates this form of membership categorisation work. Excerpt 2: Recently some newspapers have given considerable coverage to demonstrating how relativism's intrusion into the classroom as post-modernism or "critical literacy" affect education at both secondary and university level. In some schools the study of English texts andEnglish language has been abandoned altogether for the lower secondary grades and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

57

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

replaced with a blancmange of English, social studies and comparative religion called "Integrated Studies". While parents wonder why their children have never heard of the Romantic poets, Yeats or the Great War poets and never ploughed through a Bronte, Orwell or Dickens novel, their children in many cases are engaged in analysing a variety of "texts" including films, magazines, advertisements and even road signs as part of critical literacy. Of course there are always rationalisations for why school syllabuses are manipulated in this way.

We see a number of features in this excerpt. The MCD ‘school’ is located via the activity ‘critiquing English curriculum’. This leads to an analysis of the implicit category concept ‘teacher’ as the transformed category ‘bad teacher’ on which the sense of this passage relies (abandoned, manipulated). We also see the use of lists in this excerpt and in many other sections of the address. There are potentially an indefinite number of ways of selecting a categorisation, but also of organising and producing descriptions through lists. The list is a common choice because of the organisational options it offers a speaker or writer. The reader’s or hearer’s task is to infer the organisational principle that informs the list; that is, a list could be a ‘beads-on-a-string’ collection of categorisations, activities, or attributions (e.g., an “etcetera” or “you know” procedure seen later in Pell’s speech: “only 50 years ago to believe we would abort 100,000 babies a year, contemplate men marrying men, killing the sick, experimenting on human embryos, and so on.”), or a device that delivers a categorisation or attribute, when the items are taken together (e.g., “Bronte, Orwell or Dickens novel …” delivers English ‘literary canon’); an elaboration of an initial item that acts as the interpretive device; or an up- or down-grading progression (“films, magazines, advertisements, road signs …”, and later “relativism is powerful in Western life, evidenced in many areas from the decline in the study of history and English literature, through to the triumph of subjective values and conscience over moral truth and the downgrading of heterosexual marriage”). So sometimes hearers have to ‘hear’ that the sequence matters, and sometime not; sometimes the comprehensiveness of the list matters, and sometimes not; and sometimes the items are interchangeable, and sometimes not. Lists, because of the interpretive options they make available, can be a central stratagem in masking their organisational specifications and thus their moral or ideological consequences: the origins of the items, as attributions drawn from devices with particular provenances, and the criteria by which they are selected and sequenced. They thereby can camouflage the essentially moral and ideological nature of descriptions of the social world. So lists, among other things, offer near-perfect opportunities for “methodic, motivated equivocality” (Jayyusi, 1984, p. 80) – designed ambiguity – through their organisation. Understanding the categorial work done through list formations allows the analyst to see discourse and description as part of the organisation or moral relations. What these observations show is that membership categorisations are motivated descriptions, oriented to the achievement of particular practical tasks in the local context, and that membership categorisation is achieved through a variety of everyday, mundane methods. MCA is predicated on the understanding that what the discoverable membership categorisation activities in any piece of interactive or monologic discourse do is document local, social and practical purposes and reasoning practices. Other methods, briefly outlined below, include the use of topic, the co-selection of disjunctive categories, embedded narratives, and sequential patterning of discourse.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

58

Using Topical Talk to Assemble Categories and Category Features The categorial ordering power of topics has been well documented with respect to: group therapy sessions (Sacks 1992a [1966]; [1967]); newspaper texts (Eglin & Hester 1999); referral meetings (Hester & Eglin 1997); and classrooms (see for instance Baker & Freebody 1987; Freebody & Freiberg 2000; Freiberg & Freebody 1995; Freiberg 2003). Topics of spoken, written or visual texts can be “pervasively important” (Sacks, 1992a [1966], p. 390) for membership categorisation activities. Talk on particular topics and formulating topical talk in particular ways operates in the constitution of particular categories (Sacks 1972b; 1979; 1992a): Talking on certain topics can generate a category where such action is a predicated activity of a category and MCD; for instance, engaging in an “automobile discussion” as constitutive of the category “young man” in the company of other young men (Sacks 1992a [1966], pp. 320 – 322); and “‘problem talk’ (about referrals)” as constitutive of relevant category memberships in the MCD “parties to a referral meeting” (Hester & Eglin 1997, pp. 32 – 33). Talking on a topic in a particular way using category-evocative referential terms (e.g., referring to “hotrods” rather than “cars,” “tuning your pipes” rather than say, “starting the motor”) can generate a type-classification such as “hot-rodder” or “teenager” (Sacks 1992a [1966], pp.169 – 174). When this occurs, the sense of utterances is documented as related to topical and categorial organisations.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Constituting Recognisable social Activities Using Disjunctive Categories and MCDs to Describe Participants within, and to Assemble the Features of a Recognisable Activity Eglin and Hester (1992, 1999) illustrated the reflexive workings of membership categorisation procedures in their analysis of newspaper headlines and news stories. They noted that newspaper stories (and headlines) conventionally provide newsworthy versions of events (Eglin & Hester 1992, 1999) and found that the tasks of reporting and finding newsworthiness were typically accomplished using networks of MCDs implicated by specific categories rather than single MCDs and their relevant category collections. Eglin and Hester’s analyses demonstrated that different MCDs were used to provide for the intelligibility of a series of events as a newspaper headline (1992) or story (1999). For instance, their analysis of news stories (1999) associated with the event known as ‘the Montreal Massacre’ showed that particular focuses of newsworthiness (e.g., the constitution of the event as stories of horror, tragedy, crime, or gun control) were organised categorially by establishing the necessary condition of a news story, that is, a disjuncture between “setting related and event based categories and their conventional predicates” (Eglin & Hester, 1999, p.204). The “Story of Tragedy” (Eglin & Hester, 1999, pp.205 – 206), for example, was constituted “in the disjuncture between the predicated and actual futures of these murdered young people, these dead students” (205) using scenic properties such as descriptions of “family and collective biographies” (205) that implicated: •

‘stage-of-life,’ collection “R” via various standardised relational pairs (SRPs) including: daughter-parent; sister-brother; friend-friend; and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse •

59

the murdered young persons’ incumbency in the category “student” that invoked expectations of successful futures, cut short because of their re-location in the MCD, “parties to a killing”.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

In the first instance, the organisation of newsworthiness in the form of a story of tragedy was established using contrastive and disjunctive categorisations of those involved. The tragedy was constituted in the disjunction between youthful expectations of a successful future and their unnatural deaths. The tragic story was organised by an additional disjunction between the young persons’ entitlements to and the potential availability of “help” via their incumbency in the collection R standardised relational pairs (SRPs) (e.g., student-teacher, daughter-father, citizen-police) and their drastically reduced rights to access such help during the ‘massacre’. Eglin and Hester (1999, p. 205) found that the “category-predicate disjunctions are what make the tragedy, as the tragedy makes the news, and does so recognizably.” Thus the membership categorisation activities made relevant by the tasks conventionally associated with the social activity constructing and finding newsworthiness for a newspaper story were found to be the same activities that made the text identifiable as a news story. The essential reflexiveness of contingent action and the ‘normative’ features of social activities have also been demonstrated in other media texts and institutional interactions as illustrated below.

Using Embedded Stories to Assemble Category Descriptions and Recognisable Social Activities Many social activities organised for specific institutional business purposes (e.g., medical consultations, trials, television commercials etc.) include story-tellings (see Freiberg, 2003). In these contexts, the story-teller may feature in (and may be categorisable within) both the ongoing activity and the stories that are told as part of the activity. Where the scenic features of an activity include the telling of a story, category incumbency may, therefore, be organised with reference to both the ongoing activity and to the characterisation of the teller as a character within the story. Thus telling a story may be used as a procedure for category accretion. A third feature of story-tellings – not considered in this section – is that as storytellers, participants may be attributed particular interactional rights that affect local sequential order in an interaction. For instance, Sacks (1992a [1968]; 1974) found that story-tellers were attributed particular rights and obligations by auditors and vice versa. Incumbency in the category story-teller, for instance, carries with it: the right to ‘hold the floor’; obligations to have a ‘tellable’ point that relates to the social purpose of the activity within which it is embedded; and an obligation to ensure that the story-telling sequence will come to a distinct end. Story-tellings provide opportunities for characters in the story to be described and categorised and for generalisations to be drawn about the effects of particular actions and about category-action relationships. Category descriptions within stories are not limited to those that are explicit within the story-telling; rather, the “narrative intelligibility” (Francis & Hart 1997: 123) of a story itself can also be traded on for the classification of persons, objects and actions. The activity of story-telling sets up particular expectancies, including the recognisable text structures, that constitute the rationality and meaning of particular actions of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

60

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

characters in the story. Thus where stories are used within, say, institutional service encounters, moral lessons can be conveyed for instance, about the effects of good or poor service or special service requirements of an individual. One property of stories embedded in other social activities is that they are knowingly designed as part of the other activity not as entities in themselves. The task for co-participants is to find the rationality of the story to the accomplishment of the institutional purpose of the institutional activity. It is an available cultural commonsense understanding that a story, for instance, about one’s self, embedded in another institutional activity, will not be gratuitous self-description. Membership categorisation activities accomplished either explicitly or implicitly via embedded stories relate to situated relevancies and the specific tasks at hand (Jayyusi 1984; Sacks 1992a). For instance, Francis and Hart’s (1997) analysis of a television commercial showed that the intelligibility of various inclusions (e.g., a visual ‘story’ of a sequence of events in a Quayside scene and a song) were oriented to the constitution of the sense of the entire text as a TV commercial. Their rationality and intelligibility depended on the viewer’s understanding of that relationship. The viewer’s understanding of the text required an orientation to the text as “a virtual text designed to be viewed as such” (Francis & Hart 1997, p. 151). The story of a young man embedded in the commercial was a method of conveying meanings and coselecting categories for the accomplishment of the advertisement of the product (a beer product). The relevance of the embedded story was that the co-selection of persons, activities and objects in the story (“crowded quayside,” “customs official,” “passengers,” “dockhands,” “boat,” “cabbage,” “crates and netting,” “young man,” “bald man,” etc.) only provided a “consistent sense of scenic orderliness” if they were seen as components of a narrative (Francis & Hart 1997, p. 134). However, the categorisation of the central character as a young man missing things associated with ‘home’ particularly beer (and football) was oriented to making the exact sense required for the activity central to a television commercial (i.e., advertising a commercial product). What Francis and Hart showed was that the embedding of a story within the television commercial not only set up particular opportunities for membership categorisation activities but that the co-selection of the story-narrative and TV commercial provided for a particular interpretation of the actions of the central character. A third co-selected text, a song played concurrently with the visual narrative (specifying the name of the product being advertised), provided another layer of meaning also organised categorially. The conflation of two direct sources of information about the characters made available by the visual text and the song together with the activity that watching a television commercial consists of (i.e., looking for the advertised product) combined to specify the features of the category ‘young man’ on this occasion. What this example demonstrates is not only the descriptive potential of embedded stories for tasks conventionally associated with other institutional activities but that, because they are so widely used, the ‘embeddings’ make the activities that contain them, recognisable cultural activities. In terms of descriptive potential, they serve to make more than one categoryconcept and MCD concurrently relevant for an individual and, by implication, for their coparticipants. Embedded stories provide opportunities to include “occasioned” MCDs (Francis & Hart 1997: 135), that is, a collection of categories that might not otherwise seem sensible and, therefore, to effect category accretion and transformation.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

61

Using Sequential Patterns to Assemble Recognisable Institutional Categories and Activities The action of talking in particular ways using specific sequential structures in interactional events such as: classroom talk (Freebody & Freiberg 2000; Macbeth 1990); broadcast news interviews (Heritage & Greatbatch 1991); and medical consultations (Freiberg 2003; Maynard 1992) have documented the category-constitutive power of such actions. These same activities reflexively constitute the recognisable features of those settinged activities. For instance, the specialised speech exchange system associated with “instructional, curricular activity” in elementary school classrooms was shown by Freebody and Freiberg (2000) to be constitutive of the “occasioned” MCD (see Francis & Hart 1997) “parties to a literacy lesson” composed of the categories “teacher,” “kind teacher,” “good student,” “bad student,” where the rationality and intelligibility of the actual event also depended on the invocation of a second MCD, dysfunctional family consisting of the categories “neglected child” and “neglectful parent.” Activities and interactional patterns predicated of the category ‘teacher’ were effectively used to naturalise and to “sanction the topicalisation of noncurricular domains” such as the moral values of the students, and features of parental care, and household routines in the students’ homes (Freebody & Freiberg, 2000, p.142). These interactionally accomplished topics in turn provided opportunities for descriptive accounts of the category “student” to be formulated not only in terms of activities typically associated with classroom learning but conflated observable conduct including “students’ behaviour and body movements with both assessable cognitive activity and intellectual ability”. These actions invoked category features and assembled the MCD ‘parties to a literacy lesson’, the categories teacher and student, and typical question-answer-evaluation (Q-A-E) sequential structure of teacher-student talk, in extended and non-normative ways. Trading on normative features of the MCD “parties to a classroom lesson” in conjunction with the understandings provided by the MCD “dysfunctional family,” and recognisable pedagogic routines, the category “teacher” was constituted as a kind of clairvoyant moral police officer. Based on these category features, students’ performance of mundane actions (e.g., moving about the room, answering questions and postural positioning) were available to the teacher as evaluations of their own and their families’ “social and moral attributes, dispositions and values” (146). The assembled accounts of the programmatically relevant MCD “parties to a literacy lesson” and the programmatically relevant categories “student” and “teacher” were networked with the other MCDs and categories to achieve, in seen-butunnoticed ways, the relevance of the teacher’s public moral judgements made of the student and his parents, and the activity of enlisting the support of other students in these judgements so that, in turn, making moral judgements of other students and their families was constituted as a category-bound activity for the category “student”. The teachers’ embedded accounts of their own and the students’ rights and obligations and the students’ reciprocal (and compliant) accounts of the categories constituted the indexical features of the local MCD and the categories normatively associated with it. The situated account was achievable because it was grounded in and members oriented to the normative sequential structures of talk in the classroom setting. Freebody and Freiberg’s (2000) study demonstrated a procedure, that, according to Jayyusi (1984), is recurrently used as a device to extend or reduce the activities that will be considered to be morally adequate in a setting on specific occasions. Jayyusi (1984, p.172) found that,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

62

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody [t]he use of setting inappropriate actions as a device by members enables them to extend their inferential horizon not only along a descending order of settings categorized and ordered thus by reference to that action, but also along an ascending or escalating order of possible actions in those settings, thus maintaining a consistency of evaluation of a person’s in situ actions.

CONCLUSION Membership categorisation work is a normative feature of many everyday social activities. The local rationality and intelligibility of actions and activities are contingent on the accomplishment of categorial order. This, in turn, relies on the local transformation, for situated, practical purposes, of abstract and open-ended category-concepts and categorycollections. The reciprocal activities, adequate membership categorisation, and membership categorisation analysis, are central to the organisation, management, and achievement of practical tasks in everyday life. We take it that members’ actions demonstrate that the thickly textured nature of everyday social activity is contingent on local, ongoing membership categorisation work; this is the understanding upon which we base our recommendation that, to avoid ‘tripwire analysis’, rigorous critical discourse analysis should include MCA. In reflecting on the particularity of MCA’s perspective, Schegloff has commented on its contrast with conventional sociological accounts of social order and categories of people in that it provides:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

an alternative to the possibility that order manifests itself at an aggregate level and is statistical in character is what [Sacks] termed the ‘order at all points’ view… …This view[e.g.,MCA], rather like the ‘holographic’ model of information distribution, understands order not to be present only at aggregate levels and therefore subject to an overall differential distribution, but to be present in detail on a case by case, environment by environment basis… A culture is not then to be found only by aggregating all of its venues; it is substantially present in each of its venues… (1992, p. xlvi, inserts added).

Claims to some version of aggregated ontology in conventional interpretations of description of people (“maybe not all, but most … teachers/students/ cardinals/politicians …” etc) are at the core of hegemonic practice, but they also are part of the epistemology underlying some variations of critical discourse analysis and other forms of critical theory and social-justice-oriented advocacy. In this significant way many forms of critical discourse analysis mirror the reasoning practices of hegemonic uses of discourse. MCA, in contrast, allows us to identify how these descriptions are morally and ideologically constituted in everyday discourse, generally via unremarked lexical, grammatical, rhetorical, and structural choices. Using MCA, the critical discourse analyst is able to discover warrantable meanings via an analysis of the situated structures of these choices. Analysis produced by the application of MCA, is therefore, more likely to avoid the linguistic trip-wires that lie on the surface of discourse. It is in the constitutive sense that MCA offers useful applications for critical discourse analysts.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Applying Membership Categorisation Analysis to Discourse

63

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Baker, C.D., and Freebody, P., (1987). ‘Constituting the child’ in beginning school reading books. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 8: 55 –76. Cuff, E.C., (1994). Problems of versions in everyday situations. Washington, D.C.: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis & University Press of America. Eglin, P., & Hester, S., (1992). Category, predicate and task: The pragmatics of practical action. Semiotica, 88(3/4), 243 – 268. Eglin, P., & Hester, S., (1999). Moral order and the Montreal massacre: A story of membership categorisation analysis. In P.L. Jalbert, (Ed.), Media Studies: Ethnomethodological approaches (pp. 195-230). Lanham: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Francis, D., & Hart, C. (1997). Narrative intelligibility and membership categorisation in a television commercial. In S. Hester and P. Eglin (Eds.), Culture in action: Studies in membership categorisation analysis (pp. 123-152). Lanham: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis & University Press of America. Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition: A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso. Freebody, P., & Freiberg, J., (2000). Public and pedagogic morality: The local orders of instructional and regulatory talk in classrooms. In S. Hester and D. Francis (Eds.), Local educational order: Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action (pp. 141-162). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Freiberg, J., (2003). Topical talk in general practice consultations: The operation of service topics in the constitution of orderly tasks, patients and service providers. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Griffith University, Australia. Freiberg, J., & Freebody, P., (1995). Analysing literacy events in classrooms and homes: Conversation-analytic approaches. In P. Freebody., C Ludwig, & S. Gunn (Eds.), Everyday literacy practices in and out of schools in low socio-economic urban communities, Vol. 1, pp. 185-172). Report to the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training, Curriculum Corporation. Garfinkel, H., (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H., (1970). On formal structures of practical actions. In J.C. McKinney & E.A. Tiryakin (Eds.), Theoretical sociology perspectives and developments (pp. 338-366). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Goodwin, C., & Heritage, J., (1990). Conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 283-307. Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1991). Institutional talk: News interviews. In D. Boden & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure: Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (pp. 93-137). Berkley: University of California Press. Hester, S., & Eglin, P. (Eds.), (1997). Culture in action: Studies in membership categorisation analysis. Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis No. 4. London: International Institute for Ethnomethodology & University Press of America Inc.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

64

Jill Freiberg and Peter Freebody

Hester, S., and Francis, D., (2000). Ethnomethodology and local educational order. In S. Hester & D. Francis, (Eds.), Local educational order: Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action (pp. 1-17). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jayyusi, L. (1984). Categorisation and the moral order. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jayyusi, L. (1991). Values and moral judgement: communicative praxis as moral order. In G. Button (Ed.) Ethnomethodology and the human sciences (pp. 227-251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, M., & Bogen, D. (1997). Lies, recollections and categorial judgements in testimony. In S. Hester & P. Eglin (Eds.), Culture in action: studies in membership categorisation analysis (pp. 99-122). Lanham: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis & University Press of America. Macbeth, D. (1990). Classroom order as practical action. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11 (2), 189 – 214. Maynard, D.W. (1991). On interactional and institutional bases of asymmetries in clinical discourse. American Journal of Sociology 92(2), 448-495. Pell, G. (2005). The dictatorship of relativism. Speech to the National Press Club. Retrieved December 12, 2008 from http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2005/nov2005p3_2097 Sacks, H. (1972 a). An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing sociology. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 31-74). New York: The Free Press. Sacks, H., (1972 b) 'On the analyzability of stories by children'. In: J.J. Gumperz, & D. Hymes (Ed.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 325-345). New York: Rinehart & Winston. Sacks, H. (1992a). Lectures in Conversation, Vol. 1. In G Jefferson (Ed.), With introduction by E.A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, H. (1992b). Lectures in Conversation, Vol. 2. In G Jefferson (Ed.), With introduction by E.A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Schegloff, E.A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D.Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 75-119). New York: The Free Press. Schegloff, E.A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.) Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 23-78). New York: Irvington. Schegloff, E.A. (1992). Introduction. In Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation, 2 Vols. (pp. ix-lxii). Edited by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Schegloff, E.A. (1999). Discourse, pragmatics, conversation analysis. Discourse Studies, 1(4), 405 – 435. Watson, D.R. (1983). The presentation of ‘victim’ and ‘motive’ in discourse: The case of police interrogations and interviews. Victimology: An International Journal, 8(1/2), 31 – 52. Watson, D.R. (1997). Some general reflections on ‘categorisation’ and ‘sequence’ in the analysis of conversation. In S. Hester & P. Eglin (Eds.), Culture in action:Sstudies in membership categorisation analysis. Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis no. 4 (pp. 49-76). London: International Institute for Ethnomethodology & University Press of America Inc.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND THE PROBLEM OF METHODOLOGY Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT The question of methodology in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is complex and emergent as the field grows and develops after coming to prominence as a major arm of the broader field of discourse analysis over the past decade or so. The boundaries of CDA within this broader field have formed in relation to a certain conception of the ‘critical’ – itself a particular subset of possible ways of being critical. As a consequence, CDA evinces a particular set of research questions that can be asked by means of the particular kinds of critical theory that are drawn on. This chapter discusses key questions that arise in a consideration of CDA in terms of research methodology: is CDA a methodology, a set of methods, a theory, or theoretical orientation? Is it a movement, a school? What methodological questions are and are not being addressed within the literature in CDA? We consider the methodological underpinnings of CDA in terms of their epistemological implications – what kind of knowledge is produced by CDA methods. W first present a brief overview of some of the key discussions of method and methodology within a representative array of recent texts, then take up a set of issues for further debate, in order to situate CDA within contemporary debates about social research methodology. These issues include dialectical relations, researcher positioning, reception and reflexivity. The chapter challenges CDA to become more reflexive about its epistemological and methodological underpinnings.

Keywords: methodology, social research, discourse, reception, reflexivity, epistemology

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

66

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION The question of methodology in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is complex and emergent as the field grows and develops after coming to prominence as a major arm of the broader field of discourse analysis over the past decade or so. The boundaries of CDA within this broader field have formed in relation to a certain conception of the ‘critical’ – itself a particular subset of possible ways of being critical. As a consequence, CDA evinces a particular set of research questions that can be asked by means of the particular kinds of critical theory that are drawn on. CDA identifies itself as ‘inter-disciplinary’ in orientation, by which is generally meant that its practitioners draw on a diverse array of methods, though more recently there has been a concern to theorise inter-disciplinarity more carefully in relation to CDA (e.g., van Leeuwen, 2005). What brings the different disciplinary and methodological approaches together, through all this diversity, is a problem-focused approach, a particular theoretical preoccupation with, and orientation to, power, and a transformative agenda flowing from that orientation. What is the relationship between the theoretical underpinnings of CDA and its methodologies? For our purposes in this chapter we suggest that the term methodology is not concerned just with methods, procedures and techniques but with epistemology – what counts as knowledge and how it is produced. In the remaining sections of this chapter we consider these questions of epistemology in a discussion of the methodological underpinnings of CDA as represented in a set of key recent accounts of this growing and diverse field. Several important questions arise in a consideration of CDA in terms of research methodology: is CDA a methodology, a set of methods, a theory, or theoretical orientation? Is it a movement, a school? What methodological questions are and are not being addressed within the literature in CDA? How does that affect the growth and consolidation of discourseanalytic research more generally? In considering these problems, we first present a brief overview of some of the key discussions of method and methodology within a representative array of recent texts, to see what issues are and are not considered in these discussions. We then take up the particular question of reflexivity, situating CDA within contemporary debates about social research methodology more generally through its common deployment of ethnography as the social research method most conducive to critical discourse-analytic purposes and sensibilities. In this way we hope to contribute to building better links between discourse-analytic research and contemporary methodological questions and issues within social research.

CDA AND METHODOLOGY CDA is described in a range of exegetical accounts as a ‘critical and hermeneutic’ approach to discourse analysis. It is developed through a focus on ideological, institutional and social perspectives in discourse and as a synthesis of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, neomarxism and poststructuralism (Blommaert, 2005; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Phillips & Jorgensen, 2002; Luke, 2002; Pennycook, 2001; Weiss & Wodak, 2003b; Wodak & Meyer, 2001). What is ‘critical’ in this work is the political and social commitment

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

67

brought to the discourse analysis. It is ‘critical’, not merely because it critiques existing social and linguistic practices and structures, but also because it mediates linguistic practices with the broader historical, social and cultural frame of activities, practices and ideologies. This inevitably makes distribution of power, solidarity and status relevant to the analysis (Gee, 2004). The main areas of inquiry for CDA are the workings of political, economic, media, institutional, educational, racial and gendered discourses (Blommaert, 2005). A survey of a range of accounts of CDA identifies the following characteristics: first, CDA is problemoriented, in that its objective is to address practical political and social concerns. Second, it provides an explanatory paradigm for the analysis of discourse by associating the micro level of text/discourse with the macro level of society and institutions. Third, it is concerned with power and ideologies underlying text, discursive and social practices. Fourth, it considers the effects of discourse and aims to remedy and transform problematic discursive and social practices. Fifth, and finally, as we have already noted, CDA takes an interdisciplinary approach towards discourse (Blommaert, 2005; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2001a, 2001b; Pennycook, 2001; T.A. van Dijk, 1993, 1995; Weiss & Wodak, 2003b; Wodak & Meyer, 2001; Wood & Kroger, 2000). There is, however, no consensus amongst CDA researchers as to whether CDA is a theory, methodology or neither/both of these. Luke (2002) suggests CDA may be conceived as a ‘standpoint’ rather than a methodology, since there is no uniform view concerning method. Some conceive CDA as a ‘school’ (Blommaert, 2005; Weiss & Wodak, 2003b), while others as ‘theory and method with dialectic relations’ (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999) and as a ‘shared perspective on doing discourse analysis’ (van Dijk, 1993). Most recently, Van Dijk claims that CDA is neither method nor theory but is a movement of critical scholarship and should therefore allow any methodologies and theories to be employed (van Dijk, 2001, 2008). Correspondingly, Weiss & Wodak (2003b) identify CDA through a multivalent and inclusive orientation towards theory and methodology. This, they assert, should be seen as a positive asset (Weiss & Wodak, 2003a). Accordingly, there are various theoretical and methodological approaches within CDA. What brings the different orientations together is a shared underlying methodological grounding in the interconnectedness between the text/discourse and context (i.e., historical, social and political actions and structures). Luke (2002, p. 100) emphasises the indexicality of this relationship: ‘[I]f there is a generalisable approach to CDA, then, it is this orchestrated and recursive analytic movement between text and context’. Despite the enormous variation, what is common to all is the mutual constitution of discourse/text and social, historical and political actions, backgrounds and structures. The diversity of CDA lies in the different ways in which movement between text and context is realised, as well as by the different focus in explicating the interface between the two. This different focus is precisely what makes the work of key figures such as van Dijk, Wodak and Fairclough distinct, and this in turn has caused them develop their own methodologies by focusing on cognitive, historical and hegemonic aspects respectively. We will draw out these distinctions briefly here as, although there is an increase in number of scholars who are considered to be advocates of CDA, these three - van Dijk, Wodak and Fairclough – arguably, the most influential figures in the field represent something of the range of approaches (Blackledge, 2008; Blommaert, 2005). Van Dijk is concerned with the cognitive dimension in discursive and social practice (van Dijk, 2001). Social cognition and personal cognition mediate between text/interactions and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

68

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

context as well as between the individual and the group. By context, van Dijk is referring to global context: social, political, cultural and historical context, and local context: situated interactional context and goals and intentions (van Dijk, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2001). In relation to text analysis, van Dijk points out that a range of linguistic and structural features such as stress and intonation, word order, lexical style, pragmatics, stylistics, rhetorical figures, and semiotic organisation can potentially be analysed. These aspects are put under such analytical categories as analysis of macrostructures (topics), analysis of local meanings (meanings of words, structure of propositions, and coherence), analysis of ‘subtle’ formal structures (intonation, syntax structures, rhetorical figures, etc), analysis of context. These features are seen as carrying socio-cognitive values such as the socially shared beliefs of participants and as revealing power relations (van Dijk, 2001). Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, in contrast, is characterised by its interdisciplinary and multi-methodological orientation, drawing on a variety of empirical data and background information (Weiss & Wodak, 2003a; Wodak, 2001a: Fairclough & Wodak, 1997). This version of CDA is centrally devoted to the historical and political analysis of context. According to Wodak, the discourse-historical approach requires movement between data and theory. She outlines a series of systematic steps to achieve this movement, which include undertaking ethnographic inquiry to establish context, genre, discourse, interdiscursivity and intertextuality, selecting appropriate explanatory theory, generating questions and linguistic categories for interpretation, and so on (Wodak, 2001a). The third of these three figures,Fairclough, has produced what is generally considered to be the most elaborate and comprehensive in CDA (Blommaert, 2005). His work has been widely cited and deployed in various studies not restricted to the study of language, in part perhaps because he has explicated his methods in such detailed, practical and replicable ways. His methodology entails three stages of analysis: description, interpretation and explanation, as well as a three-dimensional conception for analysis: analysis of discursive practices (processes of text production, distribution and consumption), text (grammar, vocabulary, cohesion and text structure) and social practices (ideological effect and hegemonic process of discourse) (Fairclough, 1992). Although discursive and social practices are treated separately, discursive practice is seen as a specific form of social practice. The three-stage analysis was extensively argued in Language and Power (Fairclough, 2001b), providing a step-by-step demonstration of the process of the analysis. The relationship between the three-dimensional conceptions and the three stages has remained unclear in Fairclough’s later work, though Blommaert (2005) proposes juxtaposing the two in an ‘additive’ way. It does appear that they are closely intertwined, that is, text analysis in the three-dimensional analysis is concerned with the description of text; the analysis of discursive and social practices appears to correspond to the interpretation stage. According to Fairclough, interpretation entails an attempt “to make sense of the features of text by seeing them as elements in discourse practice, in particular as ‘traces’ of the processes of text production”, as well as “to make sense of the features of texts and of one’s interpretation of how they are produced and interpreted, by seeing both as embedded within a wider social practice” (Fairclough, 1992, p.198). In the third stage, ‘explanation’ is drawn from the result of the analysis of discursive and social practices. It is at this stage that discourse analysis becomes ‘critical’ when explicating the previous descriptive and interpretive analysis in the light of power and social structures. Here, the analysis is concerned with the effect of discourse and the dialectic relations between

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

69

discourse/texts and the social to denaturalise the underlying ideological assumption realised in the text. This brief summary demonstrates the impracticality of attempting to provide a definitive account of what constitutes methodology in CDA. The diversity is demonstratively enormous. In one account of the field, Meyer (2001, p.23) concludes that “CDA does not constitute a well-defined empirical method but rather a cluster of approaches with a similar theoretical base and similar research questions”. Moreover, as Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) point out, CDA’s method is constantly rewritten alongside social change. Weiss & Wodak (2003a) suggest that the aims of the research as well as the type of data can become the variables for determining the methodology to be employed. However, notwithstanding the varied approaches and the methodological apparatus developed by each CDA scholar (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1992, 2001a, 2001b; van Dijk, 1993, 1995, 2001; Wodak, 2001a, 2001b), these accounts are primarily concerned with the descriptive work of methodology, with, we suggest, insufficient attention given to an exploration of the epistemological underpinnings of the methodologies of CDA, nor the effects of these underpinnings in terms of the status of the knowledge that is produced through these methodologies. We will return to this point in the next section of the chapter and suggest the needs for more reflexive epistemological work in developing the sophistication of the field.

THREE CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR METHODOLOGICAL DEBATE IN CDA

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Many questions arise from the study of the discussions of methodology in CDA, both from these three key figures, van Dijk, Wodak and Fairclough, and from the variety of commentaries produced over the past decade (e.g., Billig & Schegloff, 1999; Blommaert, 2005; Hammersley, 1996; Luke, 2002; Pennycook, 2001; Weiss & Wodak, 2003b; Wodak & Meyer, 2001). Important questions remain unresolved. In this section we select three of these questions for a closer look: questions of discourse itself in relation to the ‘dialectic’; of positioning, and of reception. In the final section we consider the implications of these problems in terms of a core problem of reflexivity by focusing briefly on the methodological field most commonly invoked in CDA texts for the generating of social data: ethnography.

Discourse, Dialectic and Transformation CDA is concerned with the relations between discourse and social practices. Its ultimate aim is to transform the existing social inequalities and structures. Its analyses are not therefore, complete until the description/interpretation/explanation stages are taken to the stage of transformation. The complexities and challenges of this formulation are exacerbated through an increasingly uncertain and unstable conceptual field of ‘discourse’ itself. In CDA, the relationship between discourse and social and cultural formations is conceived as dialectical. That is, both are shaped and reshaped by each other, thus producing and reproducing social and discursive practice and structures. It is in the process of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

70

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

production and reproduction that CDA aims to ameliorate social structures and relations (Fairclough, 1993, 1995, 2001b; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1993). It is believed that change in the existing discursive practices can bring about transformation of the social practices in question. However, for it to be possible to transform and remedy existing social and discursive inequities, it is necessary to allow for agentive and creative capacity and room within the social-discursive dialectic relationship. Fairclough (1992) claims that this transformation occurs through ideological struggle realised in intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Fairclough has been explicit about the shifts in his own thinking about discourse, and its relation to other key theoretical constructs, from the publication of Language and Power in 1989 to the present. In 2005 he summarised his position thus:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The term ‘discourse’ is used in various ways within the broad field of discourse analysis. Two are of particular relevance here. First, ‘discourse’ in an abstract sense as a category which designates the broadly semiotic elements (as opposed to and in relation to other, non-semiotic, elements) of social life (language, but also visual semiosis, ‘body language’ etc). I prefer to use the term ‘semiosis’ (Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer, 2004) to avoid the common confusion of this sense of ‘discourse’ with the second, which I retain: ‘discourse’ as a count noun, as a category for designating particular ways of representing particular aspects of social life (e.g., it is common to distinguish different political discourses, which represent for example problems of inequality, disadvantage, poverty, ‘social exclusion’, in different ways). The category of ‘discourse’ in this second sense is defined through its relation to and difference from two other categories, ‘genre’ and ‘style’ (Fairclough 2005, p.77).

The question of the epistemological grounds for different conceptions of discourse is an important and unresolved one in CDA. Notwithstanding the work on defining discourse in a relational way, as evidenced in the above quote, there remain difficult issues of conceptual boundaries, which are of different orders. Some of these are the boundaries between text and context, between ideological and the so-called ‘non-ideological’ discourses and between discursive and so-called ‘non-discursive’ elements of social structures. Indeed, the constitution of the core term, ‘discourse’ is often conceptually ambiguous. Phillips & Jorgensen (2002, p.89), for example, argue that the boundary between ‘topic’ and ‘discourse’ is not comprehensible. As a result, the demonstration of the intertextual and interdiscursive properties of the text may not be sufficient to fully explicate the transformative capacity of CDA. Phillips & Jorgensen further argue that the actual processes in which the dialectic leads to social transformation are not unequivocally demonstrated. They ask: ‘how can one show exactly where and how the non-discursive moments influence and change the discursive moment – and vice versa?’ (Phillips & Jorgensen 2002, p.89). These questions are, we suggest, fundamental when we scrutinise the way CDA operationalises the dialectic relationship as the nexus of the framework. In this way, we suggest that the dialectic relationship itself, generally construed in the literature as given, may need to be problematised. Phillips & Jorgensen (2002, p.89) ask: ‘how can one demonstrate empirically that something is in a dialectical relationship with something else?’ Further: ‘where does one locate the line of demarcation between two or more things that are in dialectical interplay?’ In the next sections we address the questions of positioning and reflexivity, in order to find ways to address these methodological dilemmas.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

71

Positioning: Researcher and Researched

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

We have established that CDA construes discourse and social practice as mutually constitutive and dialectical. Further, this relationship is mediated by ideology (Fairclough, 1992, 2001b; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Wodak, 2001b) or social cognition (van Dijk, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2003). We suggest here that the status of this ideological mediation is problematic in relation to the positioning of the objects and subjects of the analysis. That is, in broad terms within CDA, while the object of the analysis is understood to be ideologically laden, the subject of the analysis, the analyst, remains largely invisible or insufficiently accounted for (Lee 2000). We would emphasise in relation to this problem that the subject is neither a-historical nor constituted only by one dominant ideology. Theorisations of the subject as multiply constituted suggest that not only the ‘dominant ideology’ but also other positions the subject has taken up in the course of their biographical history may influence the production and interpretation of the text. CDA’s tendency to focus on the dominant ideology in relation to power and discourse can often appear monolithic. Pennycook (2001) critiques the theorisation of power in CDA in relation to an over-emphasis on dominant groups. Similarly, Luke (2002) points out that CDA has been principally concerned with the connection between normative reading of texts and a normative reading of the social world. In relation to these criticisms, Wodak (1996) includes biographical and personal factors in her analysis and claims that social and individual aspects are embedded in any given linguistic utterance (Wodak, 1996). Van Dijk similarly acknowledges the individual’s contribution to the analysis. That is, van Dijk’s cognitive approach incorporates specific individual events and cognition in the light of the social ones by proposing the notion ‘models’: ‘Models’ are mental representations of specific personal experiences regarding past events or situations. They are therefore subjective and ‘unique’ (van Dijk 1993; 1995). Models link actual personal events, discourses and opinions with social ones by having bidirectional relations: generalisation and decontextualisation of models into social cognitions, as well as instantiation of social cognition into models (van Dijk, 2001). This accentuates the uniqueness and subjective nature of models, but still acknowledges social influences. Van Dijk sees models as holding a strong interpretive power to explain why people do not say the same thing in the same social context. He notes that: It is methodologically crucial to realise that ideologies cannot always simply be ‘read off’ discourse structures without taking into account the possibly transforming role of intervening factors of personal events and context models and of conflicting attitudes controlled by the ideologies of the various groups language users identify with (van Dijk, 1995, p.255).

Van Dijk notes that personal experience, biography, motivation, emotion and other factors also affect and intervene in the process of social and discursive practice (van Dijk, 1995), whereas these factors are not specifically taken into consideration by Fairclough. Nevertheless, the extent to which particular textual and linguistic features are the realisation of the models of social cognition, as well as the relations between the two in the analysis, remains, we suggest, unclear. Thus van Dijk’s analysis, too, tends to neglect the position of the subject – the analyst – in the analysis.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

72

This problem of positioning is ultimately an epistemological one, in that it presupposes a status to the act of analysis that implicitly appears to transcend social positioning. This, in spite of rigorous attempts to position the texts of analysis in their social and historical contexts, appears bears the trace of what Haraway (1991) calls the ‘God trick’ – the ‘view from everywhere and nowhere’ – the illusion that creates a belief in an infinite vision and hence a detached observer perspective from which ‘objective’ scientific theory can be produced. According to Haraway’s critique, all theory is a ‘place of seeing’ and is hence always positioned and partial. It is this positioning, and its implications for the kinds of knowledge that are produced through this ‘place of seeing’ that we suggest remains in need of further theoretical work in CDA.

Reception The third critical question we raise for methodological debate CDA is that of ‘reception’. By this we refer to the ‘interpretation’ or ‘reading’ of texts by actors in the social situations in which the texts circulate. Analysis in CDA, following from the discussion of researcher positioning in the previous section, is almost always productivist in orientation and ‘etic’ – produced from ‘outside’ (Blommaert, 2005; Phillips & Jorgensen, 2002; Luke, 2002; Pennycook, 2001, Lee 2000). Interestingly, these criticisms are contrary to the stated intention of key proponents of CDA at different points. For example, Fairclough (2001b) acknowledges that interpretation deals with how participants come to understand the text and thus the analyst needs to align herself to the participant’s perspective. This is deemed possible by drawing on the analyst’s own MR (membership resources: cognitive resources, with internalised social structures, norms and conventions) to explicate the participant’s own interpretive process. However, as Fairclough himself points out, discrepancies in the knowledge and assumptions between analysts and participants may occur. As a way to resolve this problem, Fairclough (2001b, p.141) notes:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

At this stage of the procedure, it is only really self-consciousness that distinguishes the analysts from the participants she is analysing. The analyst is doing the same as the participant interpreter, but unlike the participant interpreter the analyst is concerned to explicate what she is doing.

We will consider this critical issue of reflexivity in the final section. Here we are concerned to problematise the backgrounding of reception, or reading, by participants in a situation, as a primary resource for the interpretation of texts and hence for the analysis of discourse. Within literary theory, poststructuralism, postmodern ethnography and other bodies of theory informing contemporary social research, the role of the reader or the member becomes critical to the meaning and effect of a text or semiotic event. As Hodge and Kress (1988, p.4), in Social Semiotics note: “each producer of a message relies on its recipients for it to function as intended”. They propose the idea of ‘reading regimes’ to construe regularities and the operations of power in the ways messages circulate and take their meaning. Further, as McHoul (1991) and Green (1991) explain with nuanced theoretical precision, ‘reading’ refers to the fundamental acts of sense-making in relation to any event in the world. Reading,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

73

according to Green, is a “social signifying practice involving a complex interplay of text/context relations characterized by a motivated and constrained undecideability” (Green 1991, p.216). In this sense, there is no ‘outside’ to reading. In relation to contemporary textual theory, Threadgold (1997, p.2) reminds us that the source of textual meaning has been relocated from inside the text to the “negotiations between readers, writers and texts”. This in turn has necessitated a “theorisation of the subjects who read and write” (See also Lee this volume). The question for CDA in the face of these formulations is which readings, whose readings and by what warrant, come to constitute authoritative accounts.

REFLEXIVITY AND METHODOLOGY: THE CASE OF ETHNOGRAPHY Van Dijk (2003, p.96) has claimed that ‘CDA is biased – and proud of it’. Wodak (2001a, p.65), on the other hand, suggests that:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CDA is not concerned with evaluating what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. CDA – in my view – should try to make choices at each point in the research itself, and should make these choices transparent. It should also justify theoretically why certain interpretations of discursive events seem more valid than others.

In the previous discussion we have pursued a set of questions pertaining to the analyst’s relationship with the participants and the objects of research. In this section we will bring these together in a consideration of reflexivity in research, with particular reference to the prevalence of ethnography as the nominated method of acquiring knowledge about social situations in which discourses, as well as interdiscursive and intertextual relations are to be ascertained in CDA. A feature of much of the literature in CDA is, we suggest, that the focus on texts often serves to generalise and homogenise the social situations and cultures within which discourses and texts circulate. Social structures and power relations are read ‘off’ texts. Moreover, while great care is exercised by key proponents of CDA to explicate the relations between discursive and social practices, in the hands of the unwary or inexperienced the voice of the analyst often appears ‘stentorian’ and authoritarian (Blommaert, 2005). As we have noted in the previous section, the relationship with participants and ‘members’ is often elided, deferred or subordinated to that of the analyst. These points become more visible when CDA is positioned within contemporary discussions about social research methodology, particularly ethnography. Many if not most accounts of research methodology in CDA draw on ethnography to supply the research tools that produce the texts that are subjected to interpretation and analysis (e.g., Titscher, Meyer, Wodak & Vetter, 2000; Phillips & Jorgensen, 2002). Whether these are formally constituted texts prior to the research (e.g., reports, memos, letters) or whether they are artefacts of the research process itself (e.g., transcriptions of interviews or natural conversation etc), this is an overwhelmingly textualist form of ethnography, though it is rarely theorised as such from within CDA. That is, there are dimensions of social and cultural life that are elided and suppressed in a textualist orientation, particularly the material and embodied nature of social practice, and of the nature of social practice itself.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

74

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

The question of authority in interpretation is perhaps the most important methodological question that remains relatively unexplored in terms of its profound epistemological implications. As noted in earlier work (Lee 2000, p.188):

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Discourse analysis is most often conceived of in terms of what someone does to a particular site or text. There is assumed a relationship of exteriority with regard to that site, an ‘etic’ relationship, where the analyst’s tools, whatever kind they might be, are applied in the production of an authoritative account about the site. There is, in general, a paucity of commentary concerning the political relations, that is, the relations of power-knowledge, that obtain between the analyst and the object domain of analysis. In particular, there has typically been a tendency to assume the capability of analysis, given the truth-revealing capabilities of particular methods, to strip away what might, admittedly provocatively, be inferred as ‘false consciousness’ of the text or object of analysis, its failure to know itself, and to reveal a better truth about that object.

Within the ‘writing culture’ debates in anthropology over the past fifty years or so, the critique of monological authority in social science writing produced an imperative towards a ‘democratisation’ of representation. For the purposes of briefly restaging some of the crucial moves in that debate, Clifford’s historical account of the emergence of the dialogic as a principle in ethnographic writing is instructive here. According to Clifford (1983, p.41), the 1950s ushered in mounting criticism of ‘colonial’ forms of representation: “discourses that portray the cultural realities of other peoples without placing their own reality in jeopardy”. In response, Clifford, citing Dwyer, examines models of dialogue between researcher ‘self’ and researched ‘other’ that stress a “hermeneutics of vulnerability” Clifford (1983, p.43). Such a stance stresses the ‘ruptures’ of fieldwork, the ‘divided position’ and ‘imperfect control’ of the ethnographer, and represents the experience of research in ways that “tear open the textualised fabric to the other, and thus also of the interpreting self” (Clifford 1983, p.43). As Pierides (2007) describes elegantly, the emergent ways with which objects of study are defined necessitate different orientations towards research in CDA. In recent work, he suggests the notion of ‘situated discourse’ as a way of undermining the themes of an assumed world system that continue to be performed through the kinds of critical orientations that appear in CDA. In this critique Pierides brings into questions the extent to which these tools can be useful in defining objects of study through the changing relations between ethnographic subjects. It would seem necessary for CDA, at this stage in its growth and consolidation as a research field, to take up these questions of the situatedness of its own analytic positionalities, and the limitations of the notions of reflexivity in research that continue to constrain discourse-analytic research in its capacity to account for the epistemological (and ideological) work it is implicitly doing. For example, by analysing transcultural workplace communication between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Australians’, Otsuji (2008) points out that CDA tends to rely on eurocentric accounts and notes the lack of reflexivity in this regard. Clearly within cultural globalisation this need for reflexivity is greater than ever, and as is the need for social and cultural theory that can better ‘situate’ the analysis being conducted within CDA.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

75

CONCLUSION This chapter has asked questions about how critical discourse analysts locate and situate themselves in their research. Our particular interest in the question of reflexivity as it applies to the processes of the research itself subsumes other more technical and particular questions concerning theoretical categories and boundaries within CDA. Of principal concern to us is the epistemological question of what knowledge is produced through CDA methods. Whose problems are identified and who identifies them? What are the relations between the subjects and objects of the research? How are texts constituted for analysis (see Lee this volume) and how are they received and read – within the social situations in which analysts enter as ethnographers? These questions are asked from the perspective of contemporary orientations towards, and debates within, social research, in terms of reflexive (re)defining of objects and relations among subjects in the practice of research. There remains a curious absence of such considerations within the discussions of methodology within CDA. Yet these questions are central to building methodological sophistication within the field and for dealing with some ongoing important criticisms of CDA as it is currently articulated and practised. In concluding, we would comment that CDA – as movement, school, theory etc – is yet to take up the challenge of reflexivity in the broader sense referred to by Giddens and other social theorists as the condition of ‘reflexive modernity’ (see e.g., Beck, Giddens & Lash, 1994). In CDA, what counts as research methodology, more often than not, is discourse-analytic method. In terms of uptake, if not in the broad array of theoretical literature, there is a will to technicality and replicability that can disguise or ‘forget’ the constitutive and relational epistemological work of research. What remains to be further explored, through an expanded engagement with reflexivity in research, is the question of responsibility in accounting for the knowledge-claims made in the name of CDA.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive modernization: politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. California: Stanford University Press. Billig, M., & Schegloff, E. (1999). Critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis: An exchange between Michael Billig and Emmanuel A. Schegloff. Discourse & Society, 10(4), 543-582. Blackledge, A. (2008). Critical Discourse Analysis. In L. Wei & M. G. Moyer (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism (pp. 296310). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Clifford, J. (1983). On ethnographic authority. Representations, 1(2), 118-146. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, Mass: Polity Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

76

Alison Lee and Emi Otsuji

Fairclough, N. (1993). Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the universities. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 133-168. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London; New York: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2001a). Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 121-138). London: Sage. Fairclough, N. (2001b). Language and power (2nd edition). London, New York: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical Discourse Analysis. Marges Linguistiques, No 9, 76-94. Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van. Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction, Vol. 2, (pp. 258-284). London: Sage. Gee, J. (2004). Discourse analysis: What makes it critical? In R. Rogers (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 19-50). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Green, B (1991) Reading ‘ReadingS’: Towards a postmodernist reading pedagogy. In C. D. Baker & A. Luke (Eds.) Towards a critical sociology of reading pedagogy (pp. 212-235). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hammersley, M. (1996). On the foundations of critical discourse analysis. Language and Communication, 17(3), 237-248. Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association Books and New York: Routledge. Hodge, B & Kress, G. (1988). Social semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lee, A. (2000). Discourse analysis and cultural (re) writing. In A. Lee & C. Poynton (Eds.), Culture and text (pp. 188-202). Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Luke, A. (2002). Beyond science and ideology critique: Developments in critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 96-110. Mchoul, A. W. (1991). ReadingS. In In C. D. Baker & A. Luke (Eds.) Towards a critical sociology of reading pedagogy (pp. 191-210). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Meyer, M. (2001). Between theory, method, and politics: positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1431). London: Sage. Otsuji, E (2008) Performing transculturation: between/within 'Japanese' and 'Australian' language, identities and culture, PhD thesis, University of Technology, Sydney, http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/598 Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Phillips, L. & Jorgensen, M. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage. Pierides, D. C. (2007). The place of critical discourse analysis at a time when fieldwork relations in ethnography are changing. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference, Fremantle. WA. Titscher, S., Myer, M., Wodak, R., and Vetter, E. (2000). Methods of text and discourse analysis. London: Sage. Threadgold, T. (1997). Feminist poetics: Poeisis, performance, histories. London/New York: Routhledge. van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-283.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Problem of Methodology

77

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Aims of critical discourse analysis. Japanese Discourse, 1, 17-27. van Dijk, T. A. (1997). Discourse as interaction in society. In T. A. v. Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction Vol. 2, (pp. 1-37). London: Sage. van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: a plea for diversity. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 95-120). London: Sage. van Dijk, T. A. (2003). The discourse-knowledge interface. In G. Weiss & R. Wodak (Eds.), Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity (pp. 85-109). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse, communication and knowledge. Paper presented at the Critical Approach to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, University of Hertfordshire, U.K. van Leeuwen, T. (2005) in Wodak, R. & Chilton, P. (eds, 2005) A New Agenda in (Critical Discourse Analysis, (pp. 3-19). Amsterdam, Benjamins. Weiss, G., & Wodak, R. (2003a). Introduction: Theory, interdisciplinarity and critical discourse analysis. In G. Weiss & R. Wodak (Eds.), Critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity (pp. 1-32). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weiss, G., & Wodak, R. (Eds.). (2003b). Critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. (1996). Disorders of discourse. London: Longman. Wodak, R. (2001a). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 63-94). London: Sage. Wodak, R. (2001b). What CDA is about - a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1-13). London: Sage. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.), (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage. Wood, L. A., & Kroger, R. O. (2000). Doing discourse analysis: Methods for studying action in talk and text. London: Sage.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

THE ANTINOMIES OF POWER IN CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This paper provides an overview of the conception of power in critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is a conception influenced by the thought of Michel Foucault and realized in CDA as the study of the discursive construction of domination. The concern for power as domination links CDA to struggles against inequality and power abuse, and to the demystification in language of mechanisms of inculcation and control. The development of critical language awareness and critical consciousness as key CDA objectives, and the deliberate incorporation of socio-theoretical insights, associates CDA with a Marxist and neo-Marxist emancipatory problematic which has had a particular appeal for critical practitioners in education, who adopt its models for the teaching of CDA courses and for the classroom analysis of texts. Recent scholarly critiques have led to questions being raised about the limitations of CDA’s negative understanding of power, and theoretical reformulations by prominent CDA scholars have seen CDA engage with the relativist challenges presented by poststructuralist thinking. In education in particular, but also in the CDA mainstream, the negative conception of power seems to narrow the range of objects which are open to a critical analysis of discourse due to the implicit need to focus on texts which carry traces of positions to which CDA is opposed. The paper discusses the theoretical and methodological implications for CDA of adopting a more positive interpretation of power and presents a critique of CDA’s engagement with poststructuralism.

Keywords: power, emancipation, poststructuralism, education, ethics

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

80

John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION This paper concerns power and its relation to discourse within critical discourse analysis (CDA). Today, this is a wide and multiply-varied area of study offering several perspectives and approaches (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Wodak and Meyer, 2001; Wodak and Chilton, 2005), in addition to critiques (Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000; Slembrouck, 2001; Pennycook, 2001; McKenna, 2004; Rajagopalan, 2004; Luke, 2004; Blommaert, 2005; Chilton, 2005; Maingueneau, 2006). In this paper we reflect upon how power has been understood in CDA and how this affects the practice of CDA, especially in the choice of the social phenomena/objects/texts that it studies. We wish to make some observations regarding how power has been perceived in CDA which may have implications for these choices. In the main our interest here is applied, because the issues we raise are derived from our experience of teaching university courses in CDA and the justifications which we have presented to ourselves and students for teaching a method of discourse analysis which is ‘critical’. These justifications have principally been motivated by a desire to intervene at the level of the text in reified systems of social injustice, inequality and exclusion, in an attempt to understand how these systems operate discursively, and to consider how, or whether, they might be destabilized. Implicit in this practice is that we have hoped that as critical discourse analysts and as teachers we might make some contribution to the creation of more equitable and just alternatives. This is a perspective which many critical discourse analysts as well as critical pedagogists seem to share (e.g., Janks, 2000; Guilherme, 2002; Wallace, 2003; Luke 2004; Giroux, 2006; Rymes, Souto-Manning and Brown, 2005; Goatly, 2007). This aim may be characterized as moving society away from orders of power which are based on systems of domination, inculcation and control, to ones which are based on principles of social justice, equity and understanding. It is views such as these which have made CDA critical and which are responsible for constructing the critical practitioner as someone who is politically-minded and committed to just alternatives. As Blommaert and Bulcaen (2000) amongst others have noted, scholars identifying with the label CDA seem to be united by “an explicit commitment to social action and the political left wing” (p. 454). From the social theory perspective, this orientation has from the beginning been realized according to a largely Marxist and neoMarxist problematic and vocabulary which places particular emphasis on the operations of ideology and power in the discursive construction of asymmetrical social relations. In addition, the focus on language and on the development of critical language awareness as a possible means of emancipation has been a central feature of the approach, whether openly stated or implied (O’Regan, 2000). In recent years there have been various critiques presented of the neo-Marxist problematic in CDA (Pennycook, 2001; Rajagoplan, 2004; Luke, 2005; Blommaert, 2005) and a certain amount of rethinking (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Wodak and Meyer, 2001; Wodak and Chilton, 2005), but this does not seem to have deflected the wider perception that the main purpose of CDA is as Fairclough has maintained, “to help increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation” (Fairclough, 1989, p.1; 2001, p. 1). For this reason the main areas in which CDA practitioners work continue to involve issues of manipulation, exploitation and control, and the raising of ‘critical consciousness’ about them (passim). The domains covered include politics, race and gender inequalities, media

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

81

discourse, industrial relations, advertising, globalization and literacy (see Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000; McKenna, 2004; and Blommaert, 2005, for overviews). It is not unexpected then that in educational approaches which follow these precedents (e.g., Goatly, 2000; Guilherme, 2002; Wallace 2003; Janks, 2005) a similar range of interests and principles can be identified. This is reasonable enough, as such interests and principles are clearly relevant in a world rent by economic inequality and armed barbarism. That said, the focus on inequality and power asymmetry commits the CDA practitioner – particularly the teacherpractitioner – to an explicit political stance and to selecting texts which ideologically lend themselves to a CDA type of critique by presenting subject positions to which CDA is opposed. As a consequence of the problematic, educational practitioners are thus implicitly encouraged to filter out texts which do not bear traces of dispreferred positions and to concentrate their efforts on those that do, or which seem to.

POWER AS DOMINATION: NEGATIVE POWER

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The central signifier in CDA has been the concept of power (passim). According to van Dijk, ‘the real ethical problem we need to focus on in critical discourse research is… the illegitimate exercise of power, that is power abuse or domination (van Dijk, 1997, p.24; original emphasis). This perspective is echoed by Fairclough, for whom the “critical analysis of discourse is nothing if it is not a resource for struggle against domination” (Fairclough, 2001, p.216). Power as domination is understood as an oppressive force in society; one which is calculated to subjugate opposition to the mechanisms by which the status quo is maintained in the interests of power holders. These are loosely presented as consisting of an alliance of governments, capitalists and general stakeholders in capital, who together constitute the dominant bloc within capitalist societies, and within global capitalism more generally (Fairclough, 1999, 2001; Wodak, 2001; Meyer, 2001). Theorizations of the concept of power in this tradition present power as closely aligned with ideology and the construction of consent, particularly as this is expressed in the work of Althusser (1971) in relation to the operation of ideological state apparatuses, and Gramsci (1971, 1986) on ideological hegemony and the manufacture of consent. The idea that power is not simply oppressive but circulates between and through all social relations and practices is derived from Foucault (1980, 1981). Foucault conceives of power as a net-like organization in which we are entwined. And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation (Foucault, 1980, p.98).

This view of power is also recognized by Chouliaraki and Fairclough. We believe that the view of modern power as invisible, self-regulating and inevitably subjecting … needs to be complemented with a view of power as domination … Otherwise it can collapse into structural determinism and anti-humanism which leaves no space for agency in social practices (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999, p.24).

From this re-evaluation it seems that power as an invisible network is placed in a primary relation to power as domination. In practice, CDA has more often opted for the reverse

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

82

John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

arrangement whereby power as domination is put first and it has been in this sense – particularly in education – that CDA and critical language study have been popularly perceived. Critical discourse analysis is used to understand how language works to position readers in the interests of power. It assumes a critical theory of ideology … which sees power as negative and productive of inequitable social relations (Janks, 2000, p.177).

The view of power as both an invisible network and as domination which Choulariaki and Fairclough introduce has been a relatively recent departure in CDA. The understanding of power as an invisible network is not often recognized in mainstream – especially pedagogic – CDA, although critically-oriented scholars such as Pennycook and Blommaert have proposed this type of view. There is a danger in some approaches to CDA or other critical discussions of education that power is simply linked to a notion of dominant groups … [P]ower is not something that is owned and possessed but rather something that operates through society (Pennycook, 2001, p.90). [A] critical discourse analysis should not be a discourse analysis that reacts against power alone. It is a commonplace to equate ‘critical approaches’ with ‘approaches that criticise power’. My point of view is that we need to be more specific. The suggestion I want to offer is that it should be an analysis of power effects, of the outcome of power, of what power does to people, groups, and societies, and of how this impact comes about (Blommaert, 2005, p.2; original emphasis).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

POWER AS KNOWLEDGE: POSITIVE POWER Foucault’s poststructuralist realization of power, from which the perspectives of Pennycook and Blommaert are derived, retains a conception of power as domination while simultaneously placing it in a secondary position to power and its constructing effects. On power as domination he says, “Let us not deceive ourselves; if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others” (Foucault, 1982, p.217); he also says “where there is power, there is also resistance” (Foucault, 1981, p.95). Qualifying this, Foucault questions the idea that the resistance to such power can be predicated on foundational notions of truth, or an appeal to moral principles, and that by opposing domination it is possible to reveal true knowledge and so promote a better world. [T]he problem does not consist in drawing the line between that in a discourse which falls under the category of scientificity or truth, and that which comes under some other category, but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false (Foucault, 1980, p.118).

For Foucault then, the point is to examine how different discourses operate in making claims about truth, and the purpose of discursive analysis is to study how such discourses construct the world in the way that they do. It is not part of this analysis to determine which

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

83

discourses are true and which are false. We are unable to decide this because we are beings “who are historically determined” (Foucault, 1984, p.43), and so we are unable to stand outside these relations in order to make judgements of truth. In his words, “one can’t, however regrettable it may be, put these notions forward to justify a fight which should … overthrow the very fundaments of our society” (Foucault cited in Rabinow, 1984, p.7). The collapse of the boundary between truth and falsity, and the lurch towards relativism which results, threatens a CDA which requires moral foundations and truth, even when a poststructuralist – and quasi-relativist – working perspective is adopted.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

An important emancipatory political objective [in CDA] is to maximise the conditions for judgements of truth to be compared and evaluated on their merits … Retreating into a helpless relativism when faced with issues such as war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia, which require judgements of truth and falsity, is in my view serious ethical failure, whatever theoretical voices may be used to rationalize it (Fairclough, 1995, p.19). [W]e see ourselves as working within a post-structuralist perspective, but without adopting either post-structuralist reductions of the whole of social life to discourse, or poststructuralist judgemental relativism (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999, p.32).

Both extracts present arguments against relativism. The first presents the familiar modernist position of an emancipatory CDA and rejects relativism in terms of the need to be able to judge truth in the face of the atrocities of war. The second, reiterates this rejection in terms of an opposition to discursive reductionism (i.e., that everything is discourse) but does so now from an apparently poststructuralist perspective. Putting the argument about discursive extent to one side (see Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, 1990, on this), the claim to be working within a poststructuralist perspective while simultaneously reserving the modernist right to make judgements about truth somehow seems at odds with itself. The problem here is that working within a poststructural perspective precludes the possibility of making this type of judgement, for to do so is to claim a transcendental view. If there is such a thing as a standard position in poststructuralism, it is that there is no privileged insight or “God’s eye view” (Smith and Deemer, 2000, p.887). Chouliaraki and Fairclough qualify their poststructuralism by arguing that, “Although epistemic relativism must be accepted – that all discourses are socially constructed relative to the social positions that people are in – this does not entail judgemental relativism – that all discourses are equally good” (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999, p.8). Their perspective here is that knowledge as presented in and through discourse is socially constructed, and that different ‘knowledges’ and therefore discourses obey their own internal systems of logic. It is these logics which reproduce and sustain social institutions and the contexts of which they are constructed as particular types of knowledge and practice, or ‘orders of discourse’. The order of discourse is a term CDA has adopted from Foucault and represents the totality of the discursive practices of a social domain – “a distinctive articulation of discourses, genres and styles” (Fairclough, 2005, p.53). Orders of discourse can be envisaged as existing at three levels of realization: situational (relating to immediate social contexts), institutional (relating to the knowledge domains of a society: medical, judicial, educational, scientific, religious, familial, political, etc.), and societal (relating to the overall configuration of situational and institutional domains together). At the third level the institutional orders of discourse together constitute a ‘social

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

84

John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

formation’ or society. They also, in the totality of discourse practices which they represent, construct a society’s, or a collection of societies’, episteme or regime of truth. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish between true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true (Foucault, 1980, p.131).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Discourse as a social practice is what produces structural differentiation within and between societies and distinguishes one ‘order of discourse’ from another, and through which different types of formation are endowed with properties of regularity and coherence. Inasmuch as orders of discourse as specific formations of knowledge and practice exhibit differential coherence, they are in Chouliaraki and Fairclough’s perspective internally selflegitimating and therefore epistemically relative. But this does not entail that they cannot be judged against truth – a modernist sensibility is retained. It is by this reasoning that Chouliaraki and Fairclough are able to reject poststructuralist judgemental relativism while accepting epistemic relativism, and to claim that they are working within a poststructural perspective, if one which is narrowly defined. The delimitation of poststructuralist thinking to the epistemic in orders of discourse occurs simultaneously with, and is a consequence of, the privileging in CDA of power as domination over power as a constructing and constituting force. It is by focusing on the former that CDA is able to critique power abuse as a central element in the discursive construction of social practices, and to do so from a firmly non-relative base. To do otherwise, as Foucault does, is to take this foundation away and this, according to the modernist logic, leads to moral relativism and all the dangers which that entails. This is why in CDA Foucault’s perception of power has to be constrained. In an oft-quoted passage, Fairclough explains that it is not possible simply to apply Foucault’s ideas to CDA, it is rather a matter of “putting Foucault’s perspective to work” within it (Fairclough, 1992, p.38). The constraining of the concept of power in CDA involves privileging analysis of the discursive construction of domination, ‘negative power’, over the discursive construction of social life in general – ‘positive power’. For Foucault, “Rather than analyzing power in terms of its internal rationality” (Foucault, 1984, p.211), i.e., in terms of what it oppresses and excludes, the purpose is to analyze power in terms of what it produces. What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is the fact that it does not only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole of society, much more than a negative instance whose function is repression (Foucault, 1980, p.119).

The preoccupation with relations of domination in CDA places some limits upon ‘the study of language as a form of social practice’ (Fairclough, 2001, p.18) because social practice as a way of being in the world is more than a relation of oppression. It is also a relation of expression in multiple modalities of meaning and practice. Borrowing a phrase from Ricoeur, we come to know who we are only by “the long detour of signs of humanity deposited in cultural works” (Ricouer, 1981, p.144). In a CDA whose focus is oppression the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

85

risk is that many of these signs will be overlooked. In other words, by preferring to struggle against power and mystification in texts, CDA misses the ‘everyday’. What we are pointing to is a neglect of mundanity, functionality and utility in the objects which CDA feels obliged to study, and an explicit prioritizing of texts which seem more readily implicated in obfuscation, manipulation and control. Thus CDA studies political and corporate discourse, sexism, racism, and discursive realizations of class division and social inequality, and always with the bedrock of a modernist teleology to support it. It is not that these areas should not be studied, on the contrary they should, but there needs to be more reflexivity applied to the reasons for studying them if CDA is to break out of its modernist shell. If CDA is to be something more than a form of politically left-wing auto-critique, it requires a more consistent re-evaluation of its relationship to poststructuralist thought by means of a rigorous self-interrogation of its assumptions and methods, a self-interrogation which Chouliaraki and Fairclough appear to have left incomplete. In particular, CDA needs to revisit its methodological approach in order to make critical enquiry and analysis less a matter of suspicion, attack and demystification and more one of interpretation, mapping and problematization. Slembrouck (2001) and Blommaert (2005) have both drawn attention to the claims to explanatory power which are suggested by Fairclough’s three dimensions of description, interpretation and explanation, and O’Regan (2006) from the perspective of education has proposed removing explanation altogether in favour of a wholly interpretative approach to texts. The Text as a Critical Object.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1. Descriptive interpretation: the frame of the text, the visual organization of the text, the topic, the reading position, the preferred reading and the ideal reader. 2. Representative interpretation: description and interpretation of the image, grammar, vocabulary and genre choices of the text. 3. Social interpretation: the social context(s) which the text seems to be a part of: e.g. contexts of gender, race, economy, politics, family, class, income, age, sex, property, geography, etc. 4. Deconstructive interpretation: aspects of the descriptive, representative and social dimensions of the text which appear to contradict or undermine the preferred reading (O’Regan, 2006, p.191). Our view is that the social practice dimensions of meaning should be given greater methodological priority in CDA, particularly in educational contexts, so that CDA can be applied to an unlimited range of texts and phenomena. Rather than an analysis of the negative operations of power and the narrowing of methodological focus which this implies, CDA needs to give greater moment to the discursive construction of social life in all its forms and delineations, and to make this strategy more explicit in its approach. The focus on power as a negative effect is a particular shortcoming of educational as well as mainstream approaches. Here, the influence of the emancipatory agenda has skewed the analysis of texts and phenomena towards the demystification of manipulation and prejudice, and away from a more ideologically unencumbered – but still problematizing – discursive mapping of the social and the orders of discourse which make it up. In a discursive mapping model in which all texts and social phenomena are necessarily valid objects of study, the discursive construction of domination does not simply disappear.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

86

John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

Such relations are still part of the way we construct and understand our world and so continue to be part of the way we practice a discourse analysis which is critical. In addition, since there is no limit to the number and types of phenomena and texts which a society produces, in this methodology all phenomena and texts are potential ‘critical’ objects, and not just the objects of negative power. Rearticulating critical practice in order to privilege the constructing and meaning-making character of discourse over its role in the construction of domination (i.e. positive power over negative power) presents certain advantages for educational applications. Firstly, it makes it possible to analyze and discuss texts in a wide range of genres without the constraint of having to demonstrate how the text in question may be contributing to the production and maintenance of asymmetrical power relations, and secondly, for the same reason, it also gives the educational practitioner a much freer choice in the selection of texts.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFORMULATING A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ETHICS While these are advantages, to move the focus from negative power to positive power leaves CDA with the problem of how it grounds itself as a critical practice, since foundational truths no longer have a place in the theorization of power. As Pennycook puts it, “If there is no way of establishing reality or truth outside a particular sign system, how then can we still make judgements about preferable outcomes?” (Pennycook, 2001, p.136). He cites James Paul Gee, who suggests that we must consider the effect on people of what we do and say. In Gee’s view, “That something should harm someone else … is always a good reason … not to do it” (p.136). Gee offers a second reason; this is that “One always has the ethical obligation to explicate … any social practice that there is a reason to believe advantages oneself or one’s group over other people or groups” (p.136). The problem for these perspectives is how we are supposed to appreciate in the absence of foundations why not harming someone is ‘a good thing’, or why a social practice which advantages oneself over others is, if it is not explicated, possibly ‘a bad thing’. Because, by appealing to ‘goodness’ its inverse ‘badness’ is also implied, and therefore so is our ability to claim to be able to differentiate between them. If we are to try to find a way out of the circularity of a discourse ethics reliant on foundational truths, we first need to accept that discourses which are grounded in such truths are unreliable, and therefore that to talk in terms of good and bad, true and false, only returns us to where we started. We therefore require an alternative discourse which can be seen to perform a similar role but which, in the absence of the ability to tell whether one truth is preferable to another, may nevertheless lead to not dissimilar outcomes. In such a discourse, ethics would be effaced and yet in some ways also remain present. This is the position which is captured the Derridean notion of différance (Derrida, 1982). According to which all signs carry within them the implication of their other. For Derrida, there can be no originary or pure notion of good (as opposed to bad), of the outside (as opposed to the inside), or of truth (as opposed to untruth) which does not already include the implication of its ‘other’; in short, ‘there is no experience of pure presence’ (Derrida, 1988: 10; original emphasis). Différance is the formulation which for Derrida captures absence and presence simultaneously. It is therefore through Derrida that a discourse ethics which is not grounded in foundational truths might be proposed. Such an ethics, if it is to have any value at all, must give grounds for making judgements which are

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

87

not dependent upon transcendentals. This is why in the discourse ethics of Derrida the grounds on which judgements may be made are determined according to the synonymic principle of an opposition to closure and an openness to the other. Once you grant some privilege to gathering and not to dissociating, then you leave no room for the other, for the radical otherness of the other, for the radical singularity of the other. I think, from that point of view, separation, dissociation is not an obstacle to society, to community, but the condition (Derrida, 1997, p.14).

Rather than trying to determine whether different truths are good or bad, this discourse ethics asks instead whether putting a particular discourse or set of discourses into practice would lead to a Heideggerian ‘gathering’ or ‘closing’ of ‘the universe of discourse’ (Marcuse, 1964), and therefore also a turning away from, or denial, of the other. A critical discourse analysis which is concerned with adjudicating between truth claims, would on this basis seek to adjudicate between different truths according to whether the field of alternative possibilities – ‘the radical otherness of the other’ – would continue to remain open, and not be shut off or closed down. This is why Derrida insists on the need to be able to sustain both an interminable questioning of the social, and an open-ended hospitality towards the other, because in his words, “pure unity or pure multiplicity … is a synonym of death” (Derrida, 1997, p.13). For Derrida, there are no absolute truths to guide our actions. Instead what we have is a reflexive attitude towards our responsibility, that is, towards our infinite responsibility to openness and to the other, and towards the discourses, conventions and practices which our responsibility entails. We have this responsibility because it is this which carries our acknowledgment of other. It also enables decision-making and is a counter-force to inertia.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION A discourse ethics which is founded upon an opposition to closure and an infinite responsibility to the other implies a critical discourse analysis that is aware of its limits while still retaining a critical edge. Such a CDA would be reflexive about the concept of truth and wary of the claims, moral or otherwise, which are made in truth’s name. In place of emancipation it would put unceasing problematization and the eschewal of sedimented understandings and beliefs. This CDA may not sound so different to the one which this paper started with, except that it would apply this reasoning also to itself. It might then accord with the sentiment of Chouliaraki and Fairclough of working ‘within’ a poststructuralist perspective and not, as we have suggested, of one which still appears to be working ‘without’. In a world which is increasingly realized in terms of closure, the undoing, decentring and problematization of fixed systems of meaning, and the critically reflexive articulation of alternative views, continue to be necessary openings in discourse and in critical discourse analysis. This is CDA’s responsibility to the future, albeit in the absence of the certainties of the past.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

88

John P. O’Regan and Malcolm N. MacDonald

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy. New York and London: Monthly Review Press. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J., and Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447-466. Chilton, P. (2005). Missing links in mainstream CDA. In R. Wodak and P. Chilton (Eds.), A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis (pp. 19-51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chouliaraki, L., and Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of philosophy. Brighton: The Harvester Press. Derrida, J. (1988). Limited Inc. Evanston: North Western University Press. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1999). Global capitalism and critical awareness of language. Language Awareness, 8(2), 71-83. Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical discourse analysis in transdisciplinary research. In R. Wodak and P. Chilton (Eds.), A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis (pp. 53-70). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fairclough, N., and Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258-284). London: Sage. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. Brighton: Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (1981). History of sexuality (Vol. 1). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (Eds.), Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208-227). Brighton: Harvester. Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Giroux, H. (2006). Is there a role for critical pedagogy in language/culture studies? An interview with Henry Giroux by Manuela Guilherme. Language and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 163-175. Goatly, A. (2000). Critical reading and writing. London: Routledge. Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the Brain - Metaphor and Hidden ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Gramsci, A. (1988). The Antonio Gramsci reader. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Guilherme, M. (2002). Critical citizens for an intercultural world: Foreign language education as cultural politics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diversity and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational Review, 52(2), 175-186. Janks, H. (2005). Language and the design of texts. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 4(3), 97-110. Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy. London: Verso.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Antinomies of Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

89

Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C. (1990). Post-Marxism without apologies. In E. Laclau (Ed.), New reflections on the revolution of our time (pp. 140 – 153). London: Verso. Luke, A. (2004). Notes on the future of critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies, 1(1), 149-152. Luke, A. (2005). Normativity and the material effects of discourse. Critical Discourse Studies, 2(2), 198-202. Maingueneau, D. (2006). Is discourse analysis critical? Critical Discourse Studies, 3(2), 229235. Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional man. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Meyer, M. (2001). Between theory, method, and politics: positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 14-31). London: Sage. McKenna. (2004). Critical discourse studies: Where to from here? Critical Discourse Studies, 1(1), 9-40. O’Regan, J. P. (2000). Consciousness, transformation and the text: The emancipation problematic in critical discourse analysis. Paper presented at the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication. ‘Revolutions in Consciousness: Local Identities, Global Concerns in Languages and Intercultural Communication.’ Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. O’Regan, J. P. (2006). The text as a critical object: On theorising exegetic procedure in classroom-based critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies, 3(1), 179-209. Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rabinow, P. (Ed.). (1984). The Foucault reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rajagopalan, K. (2004). On being critical. Critical Discourse Studies, 1(2), 261-263. Ricoeur. (1981). The hermeneutical function of distanciation. In J. B. Thompson (Ed.), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (pp. 70 – 89). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rymes, B., Souto-Manning, M., and Brown, C. (2005). Being ‘critical’ as taking a stand: One of the central dilemmas of CDA: How do we get beyond it? Critical Discourse Studies, 2(2), 195-198. Slembrouck, S. (2001). Explanation, interpretation and critique in the analysis of discourse. Critique of Anthropology, 21, 33-57. Smith, J. K., and Deemer, D. K. (2000). The problem of criteria in an age of relativism. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 877896). London: Sage. van Dijk, T. A. (1997). Discourse as interaction in society. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 1-37). London: Sage. Wallace, C. (2003). Critical reading in language education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about - a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1-13). London: Sage. Wodak, R., and Chilton, P. (Eds.). (2005). A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wodak, R., and Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

BEING SELF-CRITICAL IN RESEARCH AS A MEANING MAKING PROCESS Quynh Lê and Thao Lê ABSTRACT The chapter starts with a brief discussion of the concepts meaning and meaning making. It discusses how quantitative and qualitative research methods handle ‘meaning’ in research. It examines the relationship between meaning and meaning making in data collection and data analysis. Different research methods treat meaning and meaning making differently. This variation reflects researchers’ view on what research is and their role in research. Meaning making takes place at different linguistic and discourse levels. The discussion focuses on competing discourses of meaning making in research.

Keywords: meaning, meaning making, semantics, research methodology

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION Traditionally research is viewed as an important aspect of science. One of the key conditions of research is that it has to be scientific. It is expected that researchers provide hard evidence to prove or reject a claim or hypothesis. Hard evidence is normally judged in terms of reliability and validity in data collection and data analysis. Thus, it is unscientific to think of researchers as meaning makers. Researchers must be as objective as possible. They should not contaminate data collection and data analysis with personal biases and prejudice. On this basis, researchers cannot be meaning makers. This chapter offers a challenging view. It is argued that meaning making is what researchers do explicitly and implicitly. The chapter starts with examining the concepts ‘meaning’ and ‘meaning making’ and gradually discusses the process of meaning making in research.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Quynh Lê and Thao Lê

92

THE MEANING OF MEANING The word ‘meaning’ is one of the most widely used words in English. Children are aware of meaning in their early language acquisition. They need to know what words mean in order to communicate with those around them. For example, the word ‘dog’ means an animal with four legs and a bird is an animal with two legs which can fly. In their later development children acquire words with different shades of meaning. Meaning can be concrete or abstract, conceptually and socially. Conceptually abstract words refer to things which are not perceived through human senses. They often denote an idea, thought, or concept such as ‘sacrifice’, ‘betray’, ‘discovery’, and ‘mind’. Socially word meaning designates different social aspects. The words ‘lady’ and ‘woman’ both refer to female. However they are used differently due to sociolinguistic variables. Metaphor is a powerful expansion of word meaning. With metaphors, we can powerfully express our attitudes, value, and poetic imagination. This can be seen in expressions such as ‘roads to peace’, ‘life school’, ‘global village’, ‘battle of life’ etc. Words have meanings and their meaning is contextualised. The ‘word’ ‘hate’ can mean ‘love’ in the context of an intimate conversation. Language has words but words alone are not enough for communication. We need sentence meaning to help us to express our ideas and propositions. The following sentences have the same words but different meanings: -

Researchers make weak universities vulnerable. Vulnerable researchers make weak universities. Weak universities make researchers vulnerable.

With the same words, we can generate different sentences to convey different propositions or statements. Like word meaning, sentence meaning can be expressed in different ways to designate subtle differences. For example:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

-

Wisely the researcher presented hard data to prove his claims. The researchers presented hard data wisely to prove his claims.

In the first sentence, the word ‘wisely’ is placed at the beginning of a sentence to convey the judgement of the writer. It can be paraphrased as “It is wise that the researcher presented hard data to prove his claims”. Whereas in the second sentence, the adverb ‘wisely’ appears in the middle of the sentence to modify the verb ‘presented’. Halliday (1985) deals with the concept meaning functionally. According to Halliday, grammar is a source for meaning organised as a system of choices: • • •

Ideational function: saying something about the state of events in the world. Interpersonal function: saying something about the state of the social relations between those who are interacting by means of the communicational system. Textual function: saying something about the organisation of the structure as a message.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Self-Critical in Research as a Meaning Making Process

93

Speakers and writers of English, or any human language, use this system of choices as a source in meaning making. Therefore this applies also to researchers as meaning makers. In undertaking research, researchers deal with meaning and meaning making in many ways as meaning decoders and meaning encoders. Meaning decoding involves text reading and text analysis. Text reading includes literature review in books, journals, official documents etc., to identify current research dealing with the research topic. Text analysis requires careful perusal of written data to critically examine ideas, issues and themes which are explicitly or implicitly present in a text. Meaning encoding poses a big challenge to researchers. Basically they require an ability to express their ideas and views on paper (or in other visual modes) to communicate with others in a research discourse. Their choice of words, expressions, and genres reveals their presuppositions, prejudice and ideology. Language is not semantically neutral and the use of language is ideologically loaded, on surface manifestation as well as at deep meaning structure. As language users, researchers’ development of texts is not value free as their texts carry their presuppositions and world views. For instance, discriminatory language can occur in research. It includes two main aspects. Firstly, discrimination and prejudice are already embedded in the language and are often accepted by some as ‘normal’, e.g., fatherland, Christian name (for first name), disabled people, mad. The rationale underlying the advocacy of non-discriminatory language is that prejudice and discrimination have permeated our language so deeply that the language itself is the instrument used to reinforce the institutionalisation of prejudice and discrimination. It paints a picture of 'false reality' about the nature of human beings and their worth. It distorts social reality and coherence (Le, 2001, p12).

Secondly discriminatory language is inherent in the writers’ ways with words. In this case, words themselves are not discriminatory. Perhaps it is more appropriate to use the term ‘discriminatory languaging’ in stead of discriminatory language. It is the writers’ personal expressions or ways with words, which express their value judgement and prejudice as seen in the following sentences:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

• •

Narrative research is not research. Migrants do not want to work. They just want money.

Researchers, particularly in social research, are not immune from discriminatory languaging. The meaning making process in research requires them to engage in decoding as well as encoding of text. The question is not how to totally avoid discriminatory languaging in meaning making in research when research topics deal with human beings, involving personal experiences, values, feelings, opinions and thoughts. Researchers cannot neutrally distance themselves from the influence of their research discourse. One way of dealing with it is to wave the red flag declaring their ideological orientation rather pretending to be neutral and objective. Analysts, as well as research participants, bring to the investigation biases, beliefs, and assumptions. This is not necessarily a negative trait; after all, persons are the products of their cultures, the times in which they live, their genders, their experiences, and their training. The

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

94

Quynh Lê and Thao Lê

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

important thing is to recognise when either our own or the respondents’ biases, assumptions or beliefs are intruding into the analysis. Recognising this intrusion often is difficult because when persons share a common culture, meanings often are taken for granted (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p.97).

As stated, metaphor is a common and also powerful part of language and communication. Metaphors permeate deeply in the language of research and researchers may not be aware of the potential danger of metaphor in meaning making in research communication. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p.3), “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”. Metaphors are widely used in academic discourse, both in teaching as well as research. There are many metaphors in research genre such as ‘research pathway’, ‘tree diagram’, ‘unpack the text’, ‘hidden theme’, and ‘research journey’. They have become commonly used words in research. They are metaphors by which searchers live. In addition, each research paradigm has its own research metaphors as researchers often use research metaphors within the paradigm that they adopt. Another aspect of meaning making in research is the use of speech acts. The theory of speech acts treats language as actions as it has a focus on language in use, or pragmatics. For instance, we ask questions and expect answers from others (Austin, 1962). Language is a resource for communication. We can make requests, ask questions, give orders, make promises, give thanks, offer apologies, and so on. According to Johnson, words are not in themselves “things” which cause knowledge, but relational entities which carry the value of meaning. It is meaning which must be present for communication to occur. Although words are not actual things, their value lies precisely in the meaning which they carry. Does speech act theory have anything to do with meaning making in research? When researchers examine texts as data, they often encounter the presence of speech acts in their collected texts. They can be used to persuade (political text), to sell a product (advertisement), to voice a complaint, to demand actions etc. It is important that researchers are aware of speech acts which underlie the pragmatic meaning embedded in the collected data. It is not just what a text is but what a text wants to be dealt with. It is worth mentioning that different cultures may use similar speech acts but they are expressed differently. For example, in some cultures, direct commands are not acceptable when someone talks to older people. Researchers should be culturally aware in cross-cultural research to avoid misinterpretation of cultural meaning in speech acts.

Meaning Making in Quantitative Research The question ‘how does quantitative and qualitative research deal with meaning?’ presupposes that both research approaches deal with meaning. It is obvious that qualitative research deals with meaning as it works with non-numerical data, whereas quantitative research deals with quantitative data which is fundamentally numerical. How do they differ in treating meaning in their own research discourse? To conduct a quantitative research, researchers start with determining research aims and objectives. What is the research about and what specifically they want to find out? Research

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Self-Critical in Research as a Meaning Making Process

95

objectives must be clearly stated so that its success can be judged in terms of those objectives. For example, if a research project is about the reading view and behaviour of adult beginning readers, the objectives can be:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1. to identify some common types of reading errors made by adult beginning readers; 2. to determine different types of strategies employed by adult beginning readers in tackling unknown words; 3. to identify the views of adult beginning readers on reading motivation. What is the relationship between meaning making and those research objectives? Broadly speaking, developing research objectives is an initial part of the meaning making process. In the objectives given above, researchers need to conceptualise terms such as ‘reading errors’, ‘adult learners’, ‘beginning readers’, ‘reading strategies’, and ‘reading motivation’. It is hard for an outsider to judge whether researchers have achieved their research objectives if those terms are not clearly defined. Words such as ‘adult’, ‘mature age’, ‘teenagers’ are widely used in different research contexts and their meanings vary a great deal as they are ‘situated’ or ‘shaped’ by different researchers. Thus, their meanings need to be presented in the context of a research. In this meaning making process, linguistic ambiguity and lexical inconsistency can occur. The next stage of meaning making in quantitative research is literature review. What does literature review do? Its main function is to provide a background which leads to a study. It is important to describe how a new study is situated in a broad research discourse and specific discourses. This is the basis on which research significance is judged. One would argue that literature review should be objective. We expect those who do the review of the literature dealing with the same topic will more or less reach some consistent conclusions. This may be the case in a number of scientific studies dealing with physical phenomenon. However, literature review dealing with the social world may present a different picture. Researchers’ subjectivity starts to show as literature review itself is becoming a meaning making process. Each researcher brings to the study some theoretical preconceptions, presuppositions, and research paradigm (Morse 1994, Sandelowski, 1986). Their world views influence them in deciding what should be included in the literature review, what is seen as less relevant or irrelevant and therefore should be excluded in the discussion. We often encounter words such as ‘critical review’, ‘vigorously examine’, ‘profoundly deconstruct’ in academic research. They are used to indicate that researchers are serious in conducting a study. They do not allow their personal prejudice to interfere with research. This does not mean that researchers do not offer their own views. What they are expected to do is to back up their own views with research evidence. This view sounds very respectable and scientific. However, one cannot expect researchers to empty all their prejudice while doing research. There are many problems here. First of all, no one will admit that he or she is prejudiced. Prejudice is in the eyes of the beholders. Secondly, the choice of research evidence to support a view can be selective. Quantitative research deals with numerical data. A research hypothesis is accepted or rejected on the basis of statistical results. The Null hypothesis is a statistical hypothesis, which is commonly used in quantitative research to establish relationship between variables. In other words, the Null hypothesis is about prediction that an observed difference is due to chance alone and not due to a systematic cause. The positive result supports the hypothesis

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

96

Quynh Lê and Thao Lê

and the negative result of a statistical analysis rejects it. The results about the relationship between variables are therefore not invented by researchers. Every researcher deals with the same data and their data analysis will reach the same conclusion. It is an objective approach. An interesting question here is: Is there any place for meaning making in quantitative research? One of the advantages of using statistical analysis is that it strengthens the notion ‘research objectivity’ and supports evidence-based research. However, researchers are to some extent involved in meaning making. They are the ones who are actively engaged in creating ‘the text’ of their studies. Numbers and figures are elements of a text but they are not the only ones. The term ‘text’ involves the process, context and act of researching. In other words, researchers are actively in constructing their own research discourses: making decision about the choice of words in a questionnaire, directly or indirectly interacting with participants, selecting variables, communicating the results in the way which suit their research agenda. It is itself a meaning making process in conducting research.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Meaning Making in Qualitative Research The term ‘qualitative’ is an interesting one. Is it about quality? The dichotomy of quantitative and qualitative gives an impression that the former is about ‘facts based on numbers’ and the latter on a ‘kind of facts’ based on human experience. Actually qualitative research is not just about quality. Quality research attempts to present a different kind of understanding, or more appropriately a different dimension of reality about human experience which can not be adequately captured by numerical facts. Here the voices of participants are of immense importance. Qualitative research data are derived from observation, documents, diaries, notes, visual information, interview texts etc. The role of qualitative researchers is to describe, interpret, and unearth the feelings, thoughts, and different kinds of discourses deeply rooted in human experiences. Can researchers be detached from participants and their existence? The question of subjectivity has been raised and widely debated in research. As Drapeau points our, many researchers suggest making use of subjectivity and drawing on one's inner experience in order to better understand the subject of a study. Thus, distancing themselves from the subject through the use of standardized or semi-standardised methods only keeps the subject at a distance. In narrative research, for instance, meaning making is crucial. Quality of human experience is not adequately described by observable facts and figures. It can be about making sense of one’s own experience through narrative construction and narrative analysis. Narrative research has opened up a new window in research in terms of meaning making. It allows personal views, opinions, and sense making to be presented as far as they are textualised. Janesick (1994, p.217) points out that “for too long we have allowed psychometrics to rule our research and thus to decontextualise individuals”. The research genre of meaning making is often personal and expressive to capture the dynamic nature of meaning making. According to Eisner (1991, p.36) qualitative research writing is descriptive, incorporating expressive language and the “presence of voice in the text”. In hermeneutic research, meaning making takes place in an attempt to illuminate the background atmosphere. Phenomenon is not clearly presented to observers. Researchers need

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Self-Critical in Research as a Meaning Making Process

97

to bring themselves into the discourse to unearth what is hidden. Meaning is not obvious and readily available to researchers. Concepts, themes, personal experiences can appear unrelated or contradictory. In Addison’s view, hermeneutic researchers seek to unearth what is buried, to uncover what is hidden, to illuminate the background atmosphere, to struggle with contradictions, and to find what is missing. Each unearthed or illuminated aspect adds to the overall understanding of the larger whole. Whitehead argues that hermeneutic view recognises the influence of the researcher on the conduct and presentation of a study. Although approaches such as ethnography and symbolic interactionism also recognise this, in hermeneutics researchers’ ability to describe and interpret their experience is an integral part of the research process. This is undoubtedly an engagement in meaning making.

CONCLUSION Meaning making is inherent in any research. However, it is important to recognise that as researchers are meaning makers, their tasks can be devalued due to lack of self-control and self-critical practice. As the theme of this book is Critical Discourse Analysis, it is appropriate to conclude this chapter with the following statement of Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999) on the importance of being self-critical in meaning making in research. CDA, like other critical social sciences, therefore needs to be reflexive and self-critical about its own institutional position and all that goes with it: how it conducts research, how it envisages the objectives and outcome of research, what relationships researchers have to the people whose social lives they are analyzing, even what sort of language books and papers are written in (p.9).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Addison, R. Balint leadership and hermeneutic research. Retrieved August 7, 2008 from http://familymed.musc.edu/balint/congress/addison.pdf Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chouliaraki, L. & Fairclough, N. (1999) Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Drapeau, M. Subjectivity in research: Why not ..but… Retrieved July 23, 2005 from http:// www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR7-3/drapeau.html#renn00a Eisner, E.W. (1991). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). An introduction of functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Janesick, V. J. (1994). The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 209-235). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Johnson, L., Meaning and speech act theory. Retrieved May 14, 2005 from http://wings. buffalo.edu/philosophy/FARBER/johnson.html

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

98

Quynh Lê and Thao Lê

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Laykoff, G.. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Le, M. (2001). Vietnamese discriminatory language. Language, Society and Culture. Issue 3. Retrieved October 14, 2008 from http://www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL/ ARTICLES/Le/Le3.html Morse, J. (1994). Critical issues in qualitative research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Sandelowski, M. (1986). The problem of rigour in qualitative research. Advances in Nursing Science, 8, 27-37. Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research. London: Sage Publications. Whitehead, L. Enhancing the quality of hermeneutic research: Decision trail. Retrieved May 18, 2005 from http://www.ruralhealth.utas.edu.au/gr/resources/docs/whitehead-decisiontrail.pdf

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

PART II CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ACROSS DISCIPLINES

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (CDA) AND LANGUAGE PLANNING (LP): CONSTRAINTS AND APPLICATIONS OF THE CRITICAL IN LANGUAGE PLANNING Joseph Lo Bianco

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This chapter explores aspects of the relation between critical discourse analysis and language planning. These two broad sub-fields of applied linguistics have close connections with socio-linguistics but are only rarely applied together. However critical textual analysis can play a vital role in democratically oriented projects of language policy. Drawing on recent Australian experience in language the chapter discusses some of the aims and methods of critical discourse analysis, but argues that too many critical language projects have adopted a relentlessly critical disposition and have devoted too little attention to productive or positive projects of discourse analysis proposing alternative futures ameliorating or resolving injustices, inequalities and problems. A longheld assumption of many critical language projects has been that exposure of the operations of power in texts is emancipatory, but experience of a now-long tradition of CDA suggests this is, predictably, an overly optimistic belief. Deconstructive activity however can play a role in exposing and helping to reverse negative language ideologies adopted by some groups of minority language speakers towards their forms of speech or writing, but to have productive effects this kind of CDA will need to be incorporated into positive language planning and language policy projects.

Keywords: Australian language policy, language policy and planning, critical discourse analysis, public texts, public discourse, performative action

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

102

Joseph Lo Bianco

INTRODUCTION In this paper I discuss the relation between two sub-fields that belong both to applied linguistics and socio-linguistics. These are language policy and planning on the one hand, and critical analysis of language, specifically critical discourse analysis, on the other. The relations between these two distinct areas of activity are elaborated via their connection to language policy and planning in general and to recent Australian experience in particular. The energetic language policy and planning activity in Australia in the past three decades represents a particularly strong investment by the Australian state in the management of its available language resources, the cultivation of new language resources, and interaction of the state with interest groups and constituencies. This sustained and complex language planning effort offers a rich instance of ideological, symbolic and material interests of the state and various constituent components of state agency (Ozolins, 1993; Moore, 1996; Wickert, 2001). It should represent a field of considerable interest for critical language scholars to explore the manifold ways in which language planning, both the activity and its scholarly description, operate. More problematically, as I shall argue, it offers a challenge for critical discourse analysis since language planning involves practical engagement, both citizenship based and scholarly, for participation in public intervention on language questions. This latter challenge raises the issue of the limits of the critical. My conclusion will be that a ripe opportunity for critical linguistic reflection has been squandered and that this exposes a considerable weakness at the centre of the project of critical language studies, namely the unreliability and exaggeration of its claim that exposing ideological interests in the workings of language results in the unmasking of interests and that this unmasking of concealed ideologies makes available potential for more equitable practices of communication and human social relations to emerge.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

LANGUAGE PLANNING (LP) To a large extent the activity of language policy making resides in the legal-political practice of issuing laws, regulations and reports on questions of language, and to this extent LP constitutes the body of statements declared by authoritative bodies. However, observation of diverse national policy making styles suggests that existing social practices, public and private attitudes, public ‘discussion’ of language issues and the communicative activity, or performance, of authoritative individuals also influence language choices and behaviour and as such ought to be considered as particular kinds of language planning. Adopting this more expansive view, we can see LP as an “ensemble of activities, some of which are textual (laws, reports, authorizations), others of which are discursive (speeches, radio debates), while still others involve the public performance of behaviours that powerful individuals or institutions hold up as models to be followed” (Lo Bianco, 2008a, p.157) and that these are applied to domains which Davis (1994) has distinguished as the intended, the enacted and the experienced. When we look to find instances of language planning typically we look to two main sources: public texts and public discourses. In this way language planning is analogous to a motivated conversation about how the community of communication, which constitutes any

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

103

language speaker population, talks to itself about its principal communicative resource, i.e., language. Language changes are unlike other fields of public policy to the extent that they require a large quotient of participation to be effective; if large numbers of language users refuse to use new language forms mandated by an authority the innovation or policy will fail. In this way language planning is ultimately dependent on a kind of mass validation in practices of language use. This does not deny that language capabilities and power are not stratified, particularly the social spread of key meaning resources, especially literacy, which are distributed unequally and combine with other language resources to make access to material and symbolic power unequal kinds of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1982, 1991). In policy conversations, however, as in all conversations, participants engage in moments of speaking and listening, and, because this term is also used metaphorically, we can say that participants write and read their intentions and the intentions of others, on their means of communication. Language planning conversations are crucial sites for the participation of teachers, interpreters, and other language professionals whose implementation of intended changes influences the effectiveness and traction of policy declarations. Public texts distil accommodations (language policies and plans) particular to given settings and times, and reflect prevailing political and ideological forces. Public discourses about language are the dynamic here-and-now discussions about language, which might seek to entrench or enact those accommodations or to change, extend, or subvert them. The third field of activity which constitutes a rich source of language planning activity, I call performative action. Performative action refers to the practice of language use, both those uses of language only focused on conveying messages, therefore mundane, and the usage of language for socialisation of the young, therefore teaching, or other professional enactments of language policy intentions, such as interpreting and translating, language research, dictionary writing etc.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Public Texts The term “public texts” refers to the official documentation of a sovereign state, or an agency entrusted with state jurisdictional authority to influence language. Public texts for the most part have a declarative function, announcing, and in so doing constituting, the authority of a given language position. A national constitution is the most obvious example of a public or official state text. In the constitutions of many states there are formal declarations about the status, role and standing of languages. The constitution is a source of information, the most authoritative and ultimately decisive source of information, for identifying the linguistic intentions of states. Constitutions tell several stories about the roles of languages, the intentions for their social presence, their relations; the authors of these statements are lawyers, politicians, the military, key figures from culture and economic life. Even a constitution can be imagined as a conversational practice. Although participation turns in constitutional formation are slow and encumbered by legalistic process, they nevertheless form a “multi-logue” (Tully, 1997) in which participatory expression is possible and on which constitutionalism itself depends.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

104

Joseph Lo Bianco

Public texts are the most officialised and authorised level of communicative practice, carrying sanction for their violation, and are therefore both practical and symbolic. They seek to express not simply political accommodations but to symbolise nationality, that is, to order the ways in which it is assumed a given polity wishes to express itself and its collective life. The state however is differentially organised and powers are distributed according to a diverse set of ways. Constitutions are typically very general statements and subject to interpretation, and a key provision of constitutions is to make available the authorised juridical means whereby intended meanings can be clarified. The constitution is therefore the most public and declared mode of language planning, the ultimate public text, and involves laws, regulations, and formal operations of planning and implementation. However, not all states have declared official, or national, languages, indeed, not all states have full or comparable constitutions, and the standing and public use of languages is often determined according to other procedures.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Public Discourse If the term public texts refers to language planning in official documentation of constitutions, laws, regulations etc., then public discourse refers to ongoing debates, discussions and arguments on issues of languages. The subjects of such public conversation often are the public texts that declare the role, standing, and relationships of languages within a polity. Public discourse is therefore a collection of statements, discussion and public attitudes that accompany or respond to or precede public texts. Such discourse is an essential component of all language planning because formal declarations are not always implemented, and sometimes involve political rhetoric, interests and ideologies. Discourse is also important because constitutional language provisions are often only very general declarations and what is actually done in specific settings can differ. An example of this is that in 1918 amendments to education laws in several Australian states declared instruction in languages other than English to be illegal (Ozolins, 1993). Over time these provisions became redundant as innovations and change in language education brought about local experimentation in language education (Clyne, 2005). During the mid 1970s there was considerable agitation, experimentation and innovation in community languages in Australia. Many schools commenced using the languages of minority populations, both immigrant minority languages and indigenous languages, in programs intended both to teach these languages and assist their retention across generations, but also to improve the general educational attainments of minority children and specifically their acquisition of English (Nicholls, 2001; Scarino and Pademetre, 2001; Singh, 2001). While such initiatives were sometimes based on the intuition of teachers and schools that early bilingualism would be cognitively and linguistically enriching, there was also emerging at this time a substantial new body of evidence indicating the educational soundness of early bilingual instruction. The same government which was making available funding for such initiatives and declaring itself in public discourse, reports, press statements, ministerial announcements, radio and television news interviews, and campaigning politically to enshrine the multilingual and multicultural character of the community in education was operating

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

105

with formal legal instruments that potentially could have made impossible those same measures. It was not for some decades that the law was adjusted to remove the prohibiting clauses (Clyne, 2005). Here we see language planning in practice differ substantially from formally declared statements. Public discourse can and does shape language planning in a more immediate and applied mode than formal texts which are usually unable to anticipate change and innovation in methodology. Attitudes and ideologies alter over time and new circumstances arise which displace previous understandings of issues, or alter the ways in which political interests align and compromise. However, the previous public text was, inevitably, an outcome of public discourse prevailing in during 1918 and in the circumstances, problems, and ideologies then current. In this way therefore the public texts represent a distillation of political arrangements that apply at a given point in time and enshrine political solutions current to the configurations of power that prevail. This dynamic time based relationship between discourse and text is taken one step further in the third mode in which language planning occurs, which I will call performative action.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Performative Action In its most general way performative action refers to daily enactment of language that is the myriad personal and professional communication which constitutes language practice. Language practice for language planning purposes is of two kinds: the ordinary use of language, reflecting the standards, norms and communicative patterns taken for granted by a community at any one time; and the purposive use of language, which models, indicates, or promotes language usage patterns. In conventional sociolinguistics the ordinary use of language is correlative, i.e., it varies according to existing social categories and how they use language. The purposive use of language is constitutive; i.e., its use helps form and shape and influence patterns of language, social relationships and meanings. The purposive use of language also models communicative behaviour for learners to follow. For the most part it is powerful and significant individuals, institutions and entities who in their communicative practice provide models for linguistic and cultural behaviour (Weinstein, 1983). Performative action interacts closely with public discourse in which direct and informing statements are made about language planning, and with public texts which distil agreements, compromises or powerful accommodations about language issues and problems at a given point in time and in a given place and social setting. Performative action can enact and in this way reinforce, the language accommodations and language planning enshrined in public texts and public discourse. This is done when language used performatively instantiates the declared policy and discourse understandings that prevail. However in private or professional use, in institutional settings, such as classrooms, courtrooms and other public settings, performative action can extend, play with and elaborate existing language planning, or modify, contest, destabilise, contradict and subvert such understandings.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

106

Joseph Lo Bianco

In this dynamic relationship between language usage and language planning a continuum of action is produced such that language planning is not a practice removed from instances of communication. Instead, language planning is aligned on a continuum from public texts, to public discourses to performative action. Language teaching and learning, interpreting and translation, and participation in acts of debate, argumentation and persuasion on issues of language are reflexive, as purposive uses of language whose aim is to influence language.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTERESTS OF STATE Schooling, schools, teaching and teachers are central to language planning since language planning often involves change to existing language accommodations, or resistance and reaction to changes proposed. This central role of education has ancient precedents, and in times of radical reconstruction of social arrangements, or in periods of turmoil and transformation it becomes acute. Recruiting teachers to the job of fashioning the language futures of society was a central objective of the radicals of the French Revolution, committed to abolishing all “vestiges of feudalism”, such as those residing in regional and social dialects. In 1791 the nobleman and diplomat, Talleyrand, pronounced at the French Convention that aimed to invent this new political entity conceived totally differently from all preceding forms of state, that the essential role of displacing tradition with modernity was in part vested in primary schools. Referring to the spread of standard French abroad through colonial expansion while in regional areas and among the urban poor non standard varieties continued to be used he asserted that: “Elementary education will put an end to this strange inequality. In school all will be taught in the language of the Constitution and the Law and this mass of corrupt dialects, these last vestiges of feudalism will be forced to disappear” (cited in Wright 2004, p.62). Brunot’s (1927) documentation of French linguistic consolidation considers the critical moment was the state’s clear decision that families should be deprived of exclusive rights over the lingual ways of their children. Because formal education is systematic its cultural effects become repeatable. This was explicitly achieved early in France; with the original target of schooling being dispersion of the language of state and law, standard literate French, an investment in national cultural capital. In the late 18th century expansion and domestic consolidation coincided as French spread internationally but remained unknown in many French villages and some whole regions. This historical legacy of state investment in national language planning extends to multilingualism in the complex demographics of contemporary nations. Challenged by the declining sovereignty of global economic interdependence language planning has become a ubiquitous practice in contemporary society. Hence formal education was charged with the secondary socialisation of the young as they moved vertically into citizenship. Later, with population mobility, education served this same function again, not with the young but with adult foreigners, admitted horizontally into citizenship; and through global expansion formal education again served the nationing goals of the state on the colonised, by effecting assimilation. In this way, for the young, the new and the colonised, the national state set up the most successful self-reproduction process ever devised. No other institution in history has been so

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

107

successful. So much so that statehood based on nationality, while a construct of relatively recent history, is taken to be normal, natural, inevitable, and even primordial. Everywhere education systems are intimately connected to the goals and aspirations of the state though sometimes these are muted through devolution of education administration to professional civil organisations, to religious communities and organisations, or to regional and sub-regional administrative structures. These jurisdictions broadly or tightly continue to reflect influence of linguistic choices and practices from national education systems under whose tutelage they operate.

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (CDA) The language polymath George Steiner makes perhaps the strongest assertion about what I will call the possibilising power of language. This is well expressed in the following remarks from his famous work, After Babel:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is the miraculous…capacity of grammars to generate counter-factuals, “if”-propositions and, above all, future tenses, which have empowered our species to hope, to reach far beyond the extinction of the individual. We endure, we endure creatively due to our imperative ability to say “No” to reality, to build fictions of alterity, of dreamt or willed or awaited ‘otherness’ for our consciousness to inhabit…the utopian and the messianic are figures of syntax (1998, p.xiv).

CDA shares a quota of the possibilising potential which Steiner proclaims, although most adherents to critical language studies trace their intellectual inheritance to active political theory rather than to the reflections of a literary translator. Steiner configures the new in talk in the molecular structure of language, such as tense forms and conditionals. CDA is directly cognate with this in its aspiration and claim that systematic study of discourse to expose agendas, interests, ideologies, purposes and politics that lie concealed or lurking can be transformative, improving or socially beneficial. CDA is a project of exposure, unmasking and renovating social relations and conditions. The strength and power of critical discourse analysis lie in the precise documentation of connections between texts to contexts and the subsequent connection of these to interests. However, CDA is limited and deficient to the extent that it gives rise to undue optimism that such processes of exposure produce change, or that the change that is produced is emancipatory. Both the assets and the liabilities of CDA are on full show when we look to language policy and planning, the field with which I have been most closely engaged, the professional community with which I have the closest connection, and to which I argue CDA has contributed least and least productively. LP is an ancient activity, but a neophyte field of scholarship; critical reflection on language is also ancient and normal, people always and everywhere have noticed patterns in talk and writing that connect to social categories and interests, but critical discourse analysis in its various guises is even more recent than language policy and planning as a field of study. Since the time of the full emergence of modern political structures the production of public texts of language and the accompanying public discourses have become one of the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

108

Joseph Lo Bianco

most characteristic activities of nations. Preceding the existence of national states (Lo Bianco, 2005) national communities of communication were conceived and ‘narrated into existence’ by language strategists, such as poets (Weinstein, 1979) in performative activity of language expression. Today, the world’s newest nation, Timor Leste, continues precisely the same ancient political practice of fashioning for itself a distinctive set of language norms both to reflect its existing, or self-conscious statehood, but also to help bring its nationhood into being (Hajek, 2000). National formation involves inculcation of ethos, abilities, knowledge and attachments in processes broadly conceived as nationing and particularly where statehood is recent or contested language planning “administrative efficiency” (Fishman, 1973), activities of national consolidation which when achieved are often relegated into routine and “banal” (Billig, 1995) activity. In extremis, but not rarely, language planning enacts overtly hostile practices against linguistic pluralism and non-privileged communicative forms in its drive to forge a mythic sense of oneness capable of obliterating difference. This search for the linguistic creation of community, a community of communication (Wright, 2004) is always more dense and frequent within national boundaries than outside of them. This is the activity of nationing. Nationing is the principal activity not of nations directly so much as an activity devolved to authority structure nations devise to carry out their work, i.e., the state, most strongly in the school, mostly through the teacher and specifically through teacher talk. Teacher talk is the instrument for making diverse populations resemble the imagined unity of culture and identity that states and especially states based on nationality, desire. Bourdieu’s description of the linguistic consolidation of France demonstrates both the micro process of dialect consolidation to produce a state-unifying way to talk, but also the symbolic capital that becomes attached to this. Through rewards, and punishments, a linguistic marketplace arises where language exchange results in producing the nation the state plans for. Inevitably these processes mean incorporation of marginalised populations (regional, indigenous, immigrant or colonised), naturalising its ambition via the discourse of dealing with self-evident “language problems”, or bringing about “national unity” or "cultural authenticity". A key aim is the desire for language and culture to be smoothed out, differences to be done away with, for culture and language to be internally consistent, stable over time and aligned in imagined space with the vertical structures of state authority. Industrialisation adds to this search for culturally homogenous populations a search for skills which are codified, standardised and certified, most often mono-lingual standard and universal literacy. The cost is the silencing of possibilities for multilingual or pluralist alternatives, but also the violence through which such practices of language planning are enacted and experienced. There are few texts of language planning that have been subjected to critical discourse analysis by CDA scholars, not even in Australia which has both enjoyed and endured productive and socially emancipatory language policy making (Clyne, 2005) and also bitterly contested language planning to effect linguistic assimilation of indigenous Australians under the liberal guise of participation and inclusion (Nicholls, 2001). In one of the earliest systematic texts of critical discourse analysis, by one of its most prolific and impressive scholars, Ruth Wodak (1989, 1996) helps define the emergent broad field by stressing the methodological importance of a diverse range of theoretical and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

109

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

scholarly concepts for analysing issues which are perceived to be of “social relevance”. The ambition of this critical perspective in the linguistic sciences is to expose “inequality and injustice” grounding their exploration to concrete settings and historically specific junctures. By this reasoning, unmasking the operation of power in texts will be ineffective by relying on abstractions, which, though they might be conceptually appealing or scientifically compelling, ultimately depend on direct resonance in social context and historical time, the past and the setting, for their effectiveness. In a similar vein Gunther Kress (1990) stressed the “overtly political agenda” of CDA, as distinct from other kinds of discourse analysis, elaborated into a classification by Norman Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995) between textually oriented discourse analysis and critically oriented discourse analysis. The former is concerned with text and its regularities, rather than social or political purposes, while critically oriented discourse analysis deals overtly with the presence of power in texts. Power is seen to have corrosive ideological effects and to frequently naturalise its presence and so the exposure of concealed ideology is accompanied by a political commitment to expose both its presence and its effects in the interests of emancipation. More recently Alastair Pennycook has sub-divided critically oriented discourse analysis by identifying two “domains of CDA” (2001, p.81). One of these links power and linguistic interactions and the other links power and meaning. In this schema power and linguistic operations is essentially concerned with analysing control over communicative or linguistic phenomena such as topics, interactions and turn-taking in speech; while power and meaning involves analysis of how ideology is realised linguistically. This schema conserves the now recurring assumption that exposure of how “ideology is realised” contains emancipatory potential. From the work of such scholars a tradition of CDA has arisen notable for three characteristics: 1. Precision or even surgical analysis of language, its molecules and micro-structures; 2. A sophisticated method, using either systemic functional grammar and its elaborations (especially notable in the work of Jim Martin and Gunther Kress) into educational linguistics or multi-literacies, or other language theories, tracking these language descriptions onto what Kress has called the “materiality of language” (1990); 3. A declared positionality, what Blommaert (1999) calls political linguistics, or ‘taking sides’, which he argues, is “unavoidable: it comes with doing a particular type of questioning of linguistic reality. An attempt at providing a history of language which takes into account social and political factors forces us to voice interpretations of these factors. And in social and political reality, interpretations are partisan,and they almost automatically align the one who formulated the interpretation with one or another political bloc. So be it” (Blommaert 1999, p.437). Not all of CDA or “linguistic questioning” is always associated with explicitly socially transformative agendas but emancipatory assumptions are immanent in a great deal of the discourse of critical discourse research and theorising. Texts are targeted to exposure for the ways in which their choices of lexicon, syntax, and other grammatical elements, as well as communicative practices, guide readers or listeners or interactants, to interpretations that are privileged, and silence or distance alternatives.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

110

Joseph Lo Bianco

This “structuring of interpretation” has achieved elaborate specification by the addition of cognitive psychology as in Teun van Dijk’s work in the 1980s and 1990s in Europe on racism and the media (1991), and in the US applied to political engagement in the work of George Lakoff (2002) and the Rockridge Institute1 famously in the case of the best seller “Don’t Think of an Elephant” (2004). Van Dijk’s critical move in CDA linked ideology to processes of cognition, whereby ideology inheres as ‘interpretation frameworks’ or organised psychological schemata, which make available privileged sets of attitudes about social phenomena. Lakoff’s use of “cognitive foundation” specifically refers to how short-term memory triggers activate longterm presuppositions about the world and operate via politicised decoding, privileging in this way implicitness in communication and its non-arbitrary connection with political action and belief. The Rockridge Institute is dedicated to dissecting the success of the conservative political discourse of neo-liberalism, especially in the so-called Anglosphere, the US and the UK, but also Australia, with the use of a Whorfian belief that conservatives had successfully “set a trap” with “words draw you into their worldview” (Lakoff, 2004, p.4). It would be falsely unifying to attach singular coherence or even sequence to what is a large and multifarious body of writing on CDA. However differences of method, concepts and topics do not preclude a broadly shared project of deconstructive ambition, a search to identify and unmask associations of discourse and power, a project of exposing both processes and effects of meaning-making in texts in the direct service of the interests of power. Deconstructive CDA originates in a kind of linguistics identified with rhetoric, vastly more ancient than its incarnation in applied linguistics, and operates to unpack nominations, euphemism and dysphemism, or grammatical realisations of unequal relations of power, displayed, performed or imposed through texts of writing and speech, locating truth in its realisation in texts. However deconstructive CDA creates a philosophical dilemma, a dilemma about human subjectivity, for just as it may be the case that others’ power and ideologies are realised linguistically so too must ours. Our alternatives are not quarantined from interest, ideology, desire for power to prevail and have our preferred versions of what to think either posited or made natural. The textual and the critical orientations in applied linguistics and discourse analysis must remain connected for the practice of CDA to have credibility. It remains important to democratic citizenship as much as to linguistic scholarship to critique texts produced by political parties to expose mechanisms whereby they mislead, or texts produced by corporations to show how they might smuggle morally disturbing ideologies into apparently innocuous material, or how routine operations of institutions can sustain specific interests and ideologies and enshrine these in their mundane operations. The concrete or transactional talk many CDA practitioners want to propose however is not unproblematically acceptable either. Alternative texts are neither beyond interest, ideology, or selectivity because CDA practitioners produce them. CDA has been a project of considerable scholarly importance, shaking the complacency of applied linguistics, opening lines of questioning of how consent is manufactured, especially when such consent appears to work against the interests of consent-givers. A principal source of the stimulus for doing CDA in the first place lies in Gramsci’s notion of 1

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

111

hegemony (Ives, 2004) who transformed earlier understandings of hegemony as being concerned with the predominance of one nation over another to “describe the intricacies of power relations in many different fields….redefined …to mean the formation and organisation of consent” (Ives, 2004, p.2). However, Gramsci offers a counter-hegemonical analysis, a language and a practice not just for deconstruction but for building alternatives, and one that is always seen as an alternative but also an interested political construction.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

RELENTLESSLY CRITICAL Unfortunately many critical language projects have failed to inspire a search for alternative modes even of conversational and linguistic practices, let alone of the social, economic, political and ideological structures and relations which linguistic forms index and help constitute. Reliance on an assumption of exposure has had the dispiriting effect of continuous exposure of inequitable or dehumanising interests pursuing an emancipatory politics that never comes. Language policy and planning, not its description or analysis, but citizenship based activation of policy processes for intervening in education especially but across a broad field of language policy and planning fields, is a practice of intervention in which applied linguistics comes closest to a union of theory and practice. Most critical language projects have remained mired in critique of texts and social practices and the relations or interests those texts realise or imply. The topics that have been addressed have been wide-ranging and the methods applied have been innovative and powerful, but few have been convinced by the optimistic claims of many CDA practitioners that change would result merely from revealing the operations of power lurking inside the sinews of texts. By the middle of the 1990s a proliferation of relentless, unproductive critique characterised the field. This was taken up by Kress who called for critical language projects to “… develop apt, plausible theories … to move from critical reading, from analysis, from deconstructive activity, to productive activity...” (Kress 1996, p.15-16). The failure of exposure of camouflaged interests smuggled into apparently unproblematic texts suggests that substantive change, or alternatives, require specification and dissemination, negotiation and processes of citizenship and public engagement rather than scholarly writing. Social organisation, human subjectivities, and human social practices fail to emerge from the work of revealing the operation of inequity, or ideology in texts through which social relations are transacted. CDA then becomes itself located in time and place, an artefact of a particular configuration of textual, ideological and institutional positions, a “historical phenomenon … not … naturally there” as Kress (2000) puts it as he moves to focus on the specification of alternatives. while critique looked at the present through the means of past production, design shapes the future through deliberate deployment of representational resources in the designer’s interest… the task of the critic is to perform analysis on an agenda of someone else’s design. As a result a considerable degree of inertia is built into this process… design sets aside past agendas, and treats them and their products as resources setting an agenda of future aims, and in assembling means and resources for implementing that (Kress, 2000, p.160-161).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

112

Joseph Lo Bianco

This sense of the iterative production of new designs is already available in Raymond Williams (1958) whose formulation on culture and ideology in language weaves a dynamic temporal pattern of the archaic mode (the inherited designs of meaning and language from the past, the bulk of our language use), residual mode (the deployment in speech acts in the here-and-now of the archaic mode to accomplish transactional purposes), and the emergent mode (referring to how future meaning possibilities are negotiated and produced using the archaic inherited language in residual communication for forging new and original possibilities). Kress’s push for a productive modality for discourse analysis is tied to a feature of language policy and planning, the production of designs for multiliterate and multi-semiotic capabilities, eschewing reductive notions of reading and writing. Literacy policy within broad based language planning to take up the consequences of technology mediated multi-modal literacies can be usefully informed by language planning concepts and methods as public education systems struggle to incorporate and address multiplying forms of linguistic difference. This break from endlessly deconstructive text analysis helpfully focuses attention on how even archaic structures of inherited language are utilised for productive change, even while they predispose users to their particular meanings. The inherited language is not a prison house of communication precluding either the conclusion of transactional purposes in the here-and-now, nor the realisation of new and qualitatively different and improved social and inter-personal arrangements. Alongside Kress’s focus on the social-semiotics of design, Jim Martin (2000, 2002) and others increasingly deploy a CDA inspired by Systemic Functional Linguistics connecting textual practice to extra-textual contexts of culture and situation. These are elaborated in meaning-centred grammatical accounts and are consistent with the point I develop here about the deleterious effect of relentless critique in much CDA. In Australian language policy and planning during the 1980s and early 1990s systematic participation by applied linguistics in public, democratic and broad-based language planning generated rights-based language policy dispensations at state and Federal level. These were designs for new communicative futures that achieved remarkable political success, and were bitterly contested by the nation’s most senior and conservative political forces. Although forced into retreat during the period of extreme neo-liberal governance for the bulk of the 1990s what is relevant here is the absence of the discourse of CDA, and most of its key proponents, in the nation’s most productive exploration of alternative language futures. Martin proposes a shift away even from the name CDA, offering “positive discourse analysis” (2004), as an exploration of how minority voices, repressed narratives and productive new community construction processes can occur in talk and writing, how the resources of archaic language can be utilised to foreground alternatives that critique oriented discourse studies do not show. Neither Kress nor Martin claims for new directions and more productive orientations in discourse studies engage with the field of language policy and planning except in the most incidental way. Instead, reflecting exhaustion with relentless critique, while acknowledging that critique is neither redundant nor misguided, they move to propose design of communicative alternatives. CDA has shown convincingly that public texts often carry agendas they conceal and “surgical linguistics” can productively expose both message and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

113

mechanism of concealment. Cognitively based critical scholarship has also revealed structures of interpretation through which ideology operates. Exhaustion with relentless critique and with the immodesty and implausibility of the claim that social transformation or even modest change would derive from CDA does not deny the essential premise that texts carry more than propositional meanings. Instead it poses a different problem. A more active participation by critical scholars in alliance with language planners around concrete problems, such as citizenship, multilingualism, literacy education and reversing language shift and extinction, to take some pressing challenges that language planning addresses, is needed. Broad based teams of language planning are likely to offer greater prospects for democratic language policies. The struggle of indigenous people for a practice of language planning that helps to keep language diversity alive is a good case in point. Reversing language shift (Fishman, 2001) is an intensely complex social reconstruction activity requiring three kinds of tightly interrelated activity: ideological work to contest past negative constructions of minority languages and the internalisation of these negative attitudes by minority language speakers, social and economic work to establish material conditions for the communicative roles of these languages and socio-linguistic work in which language speakers reconstruct their expressive resources (Lo Bianco, 2008b). Textual analysis is a central component of language revitalisation positively oriented towards contexts of policy application and speaker sentiment in close collaboration with speakers and language planners. There is another reason for turning the page from relentless pursuit of further demonstrations of the critical agenda in linguistics, in applied linguistics and in discourse studies. This has to do with the questionable claim of many critical discourse studies that the alternative to a politicised practice of applied linguistics involves a servile position of technicism, or a “pretence to science”, or a-historical and a-social scholarship. Even a cursory look at general research on discourse shows that textually oriented applied linguists have a prior claim over their ‘critical cousins’ regarding interest in power, politics and status differentials. Before CDA was even conceptualised and even before the critical turn in language studies generally pragmatics and sociolinguistics foregrounded a scholarly approach to power, interest and status. We find such concerns in the work of applied linguists like Alan Davies and Henry Widdowson. In pragmatics, speech act theory in the hands of language philosophers like Austin and Searle from the early 1960s recognisably noted the systematic relation between social categorisations and linguistic and communicative phenomena. It was always understood in their work that what Searle had called the ‘felicity conditions’ of speech act interpretation required attention to and theorised the role of power, politics and status differentials. For many speech acts to be ‘interpreted’, or to become perlocutions, i.e., to succeed, they critically depend on interactants mutually recognising power differentials in their relations (Searle, 1969). While the scholarly aim was to produce standards of rationality in understanding ordinary language, implicitly recognised were some of the social hierarchies which occupy CDA scholars. It is not the case that prior to the formalisation of CDA based on political theorising from ideological, neo-Marxist and post-structural traditions that all language study was in thrall to the abstract systems of Chomsky and Saussure or the psychologisation of communication. Another example of early and systematic awareness of power, politics and status differentials in linguistics outside of the critical tradition is the work on politeness theory by

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

114

Joseph Lo Bianco

Brown and Levinson (1987) building on early insights on facework by Erving Goffmann (1967). They and others acknowledged and theorised the roles of power, politics and status differentials between speakers. Their discussions of face, the use and effect of face threatening acts, face saving, giving face, and other practices of identity relations, and interaction, were marked crucially by how social power was brought into linguistic activity. A third basis for a more constrained future practice of CDA is the unfortunate tendency of inflated and immodest claims sometimes made for critical studies, especially for their socially transformative effects. Exposing the politicisation of discourse is important, but does not straightforwardly, necessarily or even at all, lead to social change. Instead the real outcome of some, perhaps most, critical linguistics is critical linguistics. Scholarly publications and awareness are important but much of this scholarly work claims to change the world. Particularly disturbing is some writing on CDA which confounds awareness of the textual operations of power with social change and transformation. But exposure doesn’t necessarily lead to change. The archaic dimension of language is deeply patterned by past politicisation but we are still able to deploy it to produce new and subverting meanings. The practice of CDA itself is fashioned from communicative tools the vast majority of which precede all its practitioners. The transactional purposes of residual use of language co-exist with emergent construction of future possibilities, frequently overturning the conditions of their own production. Critical discourse analysis directed at change of discursive practices is a form of language planning which has of course produced major change, since all institutions of power and human relations are linguistically mediated and can be re-made. In New Caledonia and East Timor and other colonised societies political rebellion and struggle against colonial masters is often conduct in the language of the colonial master. Language planning that has aimed to replace languages of domination has rarely succeeded, but projects of national autonomy which have made use of dominant languages often have. Feminist language planning that has wanted to expose the structuring effects of masculinist bias in language has succeeded both in promulgating practices of more inclusive language and wider social change, and in raising consciousness that language can and does constitute identities and social formations, but few projects of radical language reconstruction have proceeded and yet progressive discourses and agendas have often moved ahead. This is an odd problem to beset CDA given that CDA demands attention to the operations of hegemony, conscious and subconscious domination and thinks through relations between identity, thinking and consciousness. The overtly political designs in talk and texts that CDA practitioners are sensitive to, social, personal and political, however, require a theory of interests as well as a theory of ideology. Ironically, the struggle within CDA to be productive, to open up new arenas of imaginative, struggled over or insisted upon meanings, results from its own efficiency. This is because CDA constantly applies its often brilliantly incisive cutting-up of language to expose omissions and commissions in all parts of language, such as the use of language (turns, routines, talk time), or the grammar, semiosis or organisation of language, to lay bare how apparently innocuous texts go about silencing, euphemising and dysphemising.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

115

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CDA AND LP Language policy is mostly conducted through texts, texts that are essentially political in nature, persuasive in intent, and which have profound and long lasting effects. The public texts are mostly state authored, public discourse around language is more amenable to the effects of research based evidence and participation, and performance of language policy in education settings, among others, opens spaces for interpretation, and even subversion of other processes of language planning. This sequence of the intended, the enacted and the experienced domains of language planning suffers from being located within bureaucratic systems which require managerial processes of decision making. This makes language planning vulnerable to repudiation by CDA but in this repudiation CDA scholars run the risk of not appreciating the potential for genuine democratic and progressive improvements in the communicative lives of many people and among the most disadvantaged social categies. As a ‘science’ LP has been critiqued by CDA and found wanting. Luke, McHoul and Mey (1990) using Habermas, scathingly critique its ‘pretence to science’, showing how it ends up serving state interests as it goes about the business of reducing space for small languages, small language communities, and the identities and communities they make possible, in the interests of efficiency, homogenous populations and mass basic literacy. This is undoubtedly true of language planning, in Australia (Nicholls, 2001; Power, 2001; Ozolins, 2001; Scarino and Papademetre, 2001; Singh, 2001), as elsewhere. Nevertheless, it must be said that during the 1970s and 1980s Australian language policy debate was characterised by high levels of participation, generating attitudinal improvements and major public resourcing. This unprecedented and productive phase in national language planning yielded major progress towards recognising pluralism, language rights, and concrete action towards ameliorating persistent discrimination and disadvantage, during which, it must also be said, practitioners of CDA were largely absent and silent. They were also absent and silent when, during the mid 1990s, these progressive language policies were dismantled, and again when they were demolished under the competitive free market neo-liberal ideologies. Generating the public texts of language policy requires engagement with the discourses of language planning, and in turn requires engagement with processes of state and administration which, like opera, impose a certain “suspension of disbelief”. Refusal to participate in the activism of public policy because it is inevitably tied to bureaucracies and administration ends up being damaging to CDA’s loftiest aspirations and claims, even if in the short term such refusal to engage can appear like refusal to be appropriated.

CONCLUSION Participating in the productive design of new images, roles and patterns for languages in society runs the risk of severe critique by some of the exacting standards of some practitioners of CDA, but to honour the stated claim of CDA to not only expose interested and ideologically biased language but to contribute to social transformation requires CDA to move beyond its charmed circle of self-approbation and invest in a reinvigorated discourse analysis. While this new CDA will require more modesty in its claims and more self-criticism of its method, both of these can be internally generated. What is more important is collaborative

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

116

Joseph Lo Bianco

engagement with minority communities, marginal populations, and language planners charting new designs for literacy and languages as well as discourse.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Billig, M. (1995), Banal nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Blommaert, J. (ed), (1999). The debate is close. In J. Blommaert (Ed.), Language ideological debates (pp. 425-438). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bourdieu, P. (1982). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16, 645-68. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, K.A. (1994). Language planning in multilingual contexts. Policies, communities and schools in Luxembourg. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (Ed.) (1992). Critical language awareness. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. London: Longman. Goffman, E. (1967). On facework: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 306-321). London: Routledge. Hajek, J. (2000). Language planning and the sociolinguistic environment in East Timor: Colonial practice and changing language ecologies. Current Issues in Language Planning, 1(3), 400-414. Ives, P. (2004), Language and hegemony in Gramsci. London and Ann Arbor, Mi: Pluto Press. Kress, G. (1990), Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 11, 8499. Kress, G. (1996). Representational resources and the production of subjectivity: questions for the theoretical development of critical discourse analysis in a multicultural society. In C. R. Cadas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 15-31). London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2000). Design and transformation, new theories of meaning. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies (pp. 153-162). London: Routledge. Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think (2nd Edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant. Melbourne: Scribe Publications. Lo Bianco, J. (2005). Globalisation and National Communities of Communication. Language Problems and Language Planning, 29(2), 109-135. Lo Bianco, J. (2008a), Tense Times and Language Policy. Current Issues in Language Planning, 9(2), 155-178. Lo Bianco, J. (2008b). Keeping Language Diversity Alive. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Planning

117

Luke, A., McHoul, A.W., & Mey, J.L. (1990). On the limits of language planning: Class, state and power. In R.B. Baldauf Jr., & A. Luke, Language Planning and Education in Australasia and the South Pacific (pp. 25-44). Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters. Martin, J. (2000). Beyond exchange: Appraisal systems in English. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text (pp. 142-175). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, J. (2002). Blessed are the peacemakers: Reconciliation and evaluation. In C. Candlin (Ed.), Research and practice in professional discourse (pp. 187-226). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Martin, J. (2004). Positive discourse analysis: Solidarity and change. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 49 (Special Issue on Discourse Analysis at Work: Recent Perspectives in the Study of Language and Social Practice), 179-200. Moore, H.M. (1996). Language policies as virtual realities: Two Australian examples. TESOL Quarterly, 30(1) (Autumn), 473-497. Nicholls, C. (2001). Reconciled to what? Reconciliation and the Northern Territory’s bilingual education program, 1973-1998. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian policy activism in language and literacy (pp. 107-129). Melbourne: Language Australia. Ozolins, U. (1993). The politics of language in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ozolins, U, (2001). Inventiveness and regression: Interpreting/Translating and the vicissitudes of Australian language policy. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian policy activism in language and literacy (pp. 107-129). Melbourne: Language Australia. Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics, a critical approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Power, D. (2001). Deafness and sign language in government policy documents, 1983-1990. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian policy activism in language and literacy (pp. 107-129). Melbourne: Language Australia. Scarino, A., & Papademetre, L. (2001). Ideologies, languages, policies: Australia’s ambivalent relationship with learning to communicate in “other” languages. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian policy activism in language and literacy (pp. 305-325). Melbourne: Language Australia. Schmidt, A (1990). The loss of Australia's Aboriginal language heritage. Institute report series. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Singh, M. (2001).Advocating the sustainability of linguistic diversity. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian Policy Activism in Language and Literacy (pp. 107-129). Melbourne: Language Australia. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steiner, G., (1998). After Babel: Aspects of language and translation (3rd edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Dijk, T. (1991). Racism and the press. London and New York: Routledge. Wodak, R. (1989). Language, power and ideology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wodak, R. (1996). Disorders of discourse. London: Longman. Weinstein, B. (1979). Language strategists: Redefining political frontiers on the basis of linguistic choices. World Politics, 31(3), 344-364. Weinstein, B. (1983). The civic tongue: Political consequences of language choices. New York: Longman.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

118

Joseph Lo Bianco

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Wickert, R. (2001). Politics, activism and processes of policy production: Adult literacy in Australia. In J. Lo Bianco & R. Wickert (Eds.), Australian policy activism in language and literacy (pp. 67-84). Melbourne: Language Australia. Williams, R. (1958). Culture and society, 1750-1950. London: Chatto and Windus.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Quynh Lê ABSTRACT Social epidemiology has received great attention recently in research, particularly in population health. Health issues have been studied a long time as the link between health and society is very close. However, social epidemiology has brought innovative insights into population research. It explicitly investigates social determinants of population distributions health and health-related issues. The chapter examines social epidemiology as a new approach to population health. The discussion includes its research methodology and its contribution to Critical Discourse Analysis.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, health discourse, population health, social epidemiology, social determinants of health

INTRODUCTION It first appears that social epidemiology (SE) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) are two unrelated fields of research as social epidemiology deals with social determinants of health; whereas CDA is primarily a linguistically orientated area. However, a close examination of the research in these two fields reveals their very close relationship. Social epidemiology actually deals with different discourses in population health. It explicitly investigates social determinants of population distributions of health, disease, and wellbeing, rather than treating such determinants as mere background to biomedical phenomena. CDA is also interested in social determinants which contribute to competing discourses, power

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Quynh Lê

120

relationship and control, and social injustice. This paper discusses the complementary nature of these two research fields and explores some implications for future research.

DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH The social determinants of health can be understood as the social conditions in which people live and work as health is embedded in social discourses. Thus features of the social context affect health and social conditions translate into health impacts. The health of individuals and communities is influenced and determined by many factors: healthiness, disease, and disability. Death is seen as the result of the interaction of human biology, lifestyle and environmental (including social) factors, modified by health interventions (AIHW, 2004). Health determinants can be described as those factors that raise or lower the level of health in a population or individual. Determinants help to predict trends in health and to explain why some people are healthy and others are not. They are the key to the prevention of disease, illness and injury (AIHW, 2004). According to Krieger (2000), social determinants of health include: •

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

a society's past and present economic, political, and legal systems, its material and technological resources, its adherence to norms and practices consistent with international human rights norms and standards; and its external political and economic relationships to other countries, as implemented through interactions among governments, international political and economic organisations, and non-governmental organisations (Krieger, 2001a).

In some contexts, health determinants are conceptualised primarily characteristics of the individual, such as a person's social support network, income or employment status. Population are not only collections of individuals but the causes of ill health are clustered in systematic patterns; and effects on one individual may depend on the exposure and outcomes experienced by other individuals (Evans et al., 2001, Smith, 2005). This flows from the fact that the determinants of individual differences regarding some characteristic within a population may be different from the determinants of differences between populations (Marmot, 2001). According to (AIHW, 2004), determinants are in complex interplay and range from the very broad level, with many health and non-health effects, to the highly specific. General background and environmental factors can determine the nature and degree of socioeconomic characteristics. These both factors can influence people’s health behaviours, their psychological state and factors relating to safety. These in turn can influence biomedical factors (e.g., Blood pressure, body weight, cholesterol) which may have health effects through various further pathways. At all stages along the path these various factors interact with an individual’s makeup. In addition, the factors within a box often interact and are highly related to each other (AIHW, 2004).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Exploring the Relationship between Social Epidemiology …

121

WHAT IS SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY?

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Berkman and Kawachi (2000, p.6) define social epidemiology as the branch of epidemiology that studies the social distribution and social determinants of states of health, implying that the aim is to identify socio-environmental exposures which may be related to a broad range of physical and mental health outcomes (Berman and Kawachi, 2000). Syme (2000, p. ix) argues that social epidemiology deals with two essential aspects: (a) family, neighbourhood, community, and social group and (b) risks and factors and diseases. If one accepts that individuals are embedded in societies and populations, one can postulate that the health of individuals is embedded in population health. Unlike other sub disciplines of epidemiology which are devoted to the investigation of specific diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular), social epidemiology focuses on specific phenomena such as socioeconomic stratification, social networks and support, discrimination, work demand, and control rather than on specific disease outcomes. In other words social epidemiology is the scientific study of how social interactions, such as social norms, laws, institutions, social conditions and strategic behaviour, affect the health of populations (Berman & Kawachi, 2000). Social epidemiology examines the association between individual risk factors and poor self-rated health. Risk factors are normally socially based such as low income, lack of access to health care, low employment and smoking (Kawachi & Berkeman 2000, p.174). Social epidemiology deals with the questions “What is and what determines health and disease”. Social epidemiology focuses on the identification of health potentials like social support or occupational qualifications and of health risks like stress, risk behaviour, social isolation etc. It provides the quantitative measurement of these risks and potentials on well-being, life quality, disease and mortality. Krieger (2001a) defines Social epidemiology as distinguished insistence on explicitly investigating social determinants of population distributions of health, disease, and wellbeing, rather than treating such determinants as mere background to biomedical phenomena. Tackling this task requires attention to theories, concepts, and methods conducive to illuminating intimate links between our bodies and the body politic. Social epidemiology has therefore broadened the objectives of traditional epidemiology and makes a strong contribution to the study of population health, which now includes the following: • • •

To determine the rates of specific disorders so that society can properly analyse the parameters of a problem, establish an effective public policy regarding it. To understand further the many factors that influence proper functioning in our society and culture. To understand more fully how our society and culture function, giving us normative information about the presence and absence of certain problems. The range of issues examined can be health, mental health, opinions, occupation, habits, and personal characteristics (Keane, 1990).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Quynh Lê

122

SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY RESEARCH Research in social epidemiology examines how features of social and institutional context (e.g., a neighbourhood’s economy, demographics, social cohesion, political organisation, and employment patterns), rather than individual characteristics or health behaviours, influence persons' risk for disease and poor health (Eckenwiler, 2002). Eckenwiler (2002) stated the rationales of social epidemiology research: •

•

Public health advocates can use research in social epidemiology to set priorities for social, economic, and health policy to better promote health among society's most vulnerable groups. These groups of people tend to be held individually responsible for their poor health status, asymmetrically situated in relation to health and social policy makers, and disenfranchised from decision making processes. Therefore, it is unlikely for them to have their needs adequately understood. Social epidemiology research can lend strength to the notion that social justice is a proper moral basis for public health (Eckenwiler, 2002).

In contemporary the three main theories for explaining disease distribution are: (1) psychosocial, (2) social production of disease/political economy of health, and (3) ecosocial and other emerging multi-level frameworks. All seek to elucidate principles capable of explaining social inequalities in health (Krieger, 2001). According to (Krieger, 2001), a psychosocial framework pays attention to endogenous biological responses to human interactions; a social production of disease/political economy of health framework focuses economic and political determinants of health and disease; whereas ecosocial and other emerging multi-level frameworks seek to integrate social and biological reasoning and a dynamic, historical and ecological perspective to develop new insights into determinants of population distributions of disease and social inequalities in health.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY Discourse analysis has been a popular research focus in education, sociology, and linguistics. Recently, CDA has emerged to argue strongly that a discourse can enhance some people and discriminate against others. CDA is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose and ultimately to resist social inequality (Fairclough, 2001, Van Dijk 2001, Wodak, 2001). “CDA scholar plays an advocatory role for groups who suffer from social discrimination” (Myer, 2001, p.15). Social power, social practice, and social justice have received special attention in CDA. It is interested in “the role of discourse in the instantiation and reproduction of power abuse (dominance), and hence particularly interested in the detailed study of the interface between

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Exploring the Relationship between Social Epidemiology …

123

local and the global, between the structures of discourse and the structure of society” (Van Dijk, 2001, p.117). The concept ‘hegemony’ is critically dealt with in CDA. According to Van Dijk (1997) when he examines discourse as interaction in society, hegemony is often used to denote social power. Hegemonic power is present in various social institutions such as education, health, and business. “Hegemonic power makes people work act as if it were natural, normal, or simply a consensus. No demands, requests or even suggestions are necessary” (p.19). As Myer (2001) points out, people in different social contexts are social actors involved in discourse and they do not exclusively make use of their individual experiences and strategies. They mainly reply upon collective frames of perceptions, referred to as social representations. “These socially shared perceptions form the link between social system and the individual cognitive system and perform the translation, homogenization and co-ordination between external requirements and subjective experience” (p.21). Fairclough (2001, p.122) points out that every social practice includes the following elements:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

-

productive activity; means of production; social relations; social identities; cultural values; consciousness; and semiosis.

As stated, these elements are present in all social practices. Thus they are useful in examining social practices in other fields such as health, education, business. After a brief discussion of what CDA is about, it is interesting to ask the question: what CDA has to do with social epidemiology. It firsts appears that SE and CDA are unrelated as the former is about health and the latter is about discourse analysis. However a close examination of these two fields reveals that SE and CDA deal with fundamental issues relating to social and economic aspects of discourse, social behaviours and resource distribution. For example, Harvard University researchers have found that children of parents from working-class backgrounds are nearly twice as likely to become depressed when they get older than children from higher-income, white-collar families. This research was carried out by social epidemiologists who were interested in the relationship between social economic conditions and depression. The findings of such a study can be used by CDA researchers to further examine different types of discourses in which children and their parents live their experiences. How do they view themselves and relevant others in these discourses? (Roache, 2001) Another common feature of research in both social epidemiology and critical discourse analysis is social equity or inequity. Kawachi and Kennedy (1999) point out from their research that there are huge inequities among nations and among American people undermine health, welfare, and community life. According them, the gap between per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) among nations is astounding. The income ratio between the richest and poorest countries increased from a three-fold difference in 1820 to more than 75-fold nearly 200 years later. This figure should capture the interest of CDA researchers who are

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Quynh Lê

124

critical of the economic power of rich nations and their political influences exerted on poor nations (Roache, 2003). Social epidemiology researchers at the University of Minnesota, for example, conducted research on the prevalence, determinants, and prevention of alcohol abuse and related social and behaviour problems such as traffic crashes, homicides, suicides, rapes and other assaults, drowning, and teenage pregnancies. They studied environmental factors that contributed to the development and prevention of alcohol-related problems. This kind of research is important to CDA researchers in the sense that CDA researchers are not satisfied that these are the expected correlations between environmental factors and health conditions, which seem to be ‘obvious’ or ‘normal’. CDA researchers are keen to challenge the concept ‘nominalisation’ so that policy makers need to be more discourse-conscious. Social epidemiology is primarily concerned with various aspects of population health which are socially motivated. Though it is more interested in informing health organisations and health policy makers about the health problems facing certain social groups and communities, it is less explicit about pushing for organisational changes. This is where CDA can make a significant contribution to social epidemiology. Discourse analysis can make a significant contribution to researching organizational change, and addressing such general concerns as the following: when organizations change, what is it that changes? What makes organizations resilient in the face of change, resistant to change, or open to change? How are external pressures for organizational change internalized in organizations? How may organizational members respond to them, and what outcomes are possible? (Fairclough, 20005, p.939)

The relationship between social epidemiology and CDA can be briefly described as follows: •

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

•

•

•

CDA and SE are both interested in social inequalities, injustice, and vulnerable social actors. CDA challenges the concept ‘normalisation’ and SE provides evidence which supports CDA challenges. For CDA, normalisation is a way to create false consciousness among people in society, particularly to the socially disadvantaged. SE can show that those who suffer poor health are those who are socially disadvantaged. They live in an unhealthy environment and have limited access to health facilities. CDA examines discourse in terms of social injustice, power (or lack of power), inequalities. It can use insights gained from SE research to identify what areas of health or social practices in health institutions which suffer most in terms of poor health facilities and poor assessment to health resources. CDA attempts to describe, explain and scrutinize how different communities, institutions and organizations operate in a social context in terms of power, interaction, control, management, policy and communication. Such findings from CDA are useful to social epidemiology researchers so that areas of most concern in SE research can be identified and pursued. Thus both CDA and SE can be mutually beneficial.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Exploring the Relationship between Social Epidemiology … •

•

• •

125

Public health advocates can use research in SE and CDA, particularly healthorientated CDA to set priorities for social, economic, and health policy to better promote health among society's most vulnerable groups. Social epidemiology research can strengthen the notion that social justice is a proper moral basis for public health. This is consistent to the way in which CDA scholar plays an advocatory role for groups who suffer from social discrimination. In terms of research triangulation, CDA researchers can use evidence (data analysis) from social epidemiology to strengthen their analysis and discussion. Social epidemiology can be used as a tool for CDA and vice versa. As CDA is interdisciplinary, it can provide SE enriching multidisciplinary tools and perspectives to deal with broader issues in SE.

These are just a few aspects which are used to support the relationship between CDA and social epidemiology. We can expect more common grounds between these two seemingly unrelated fields.

CONCLUSION The emergence of social epidemiology as an important branch in health studies indicates that though clinical epidemiology has made great contribution to the understanding of health problems facing people of all walks of life, its clinically based research has its own limitations as health is not merely a clinical condition but is fundamentally socially determined. This is the basis on which SE is accepted as a significant development in health research. As previously stated, it first appears that SE and CDA have nothing to do with each other. However SE needs CDA to understand the social practices in the health context and to address social injustice in health so that the quality of life of different health community can be improved.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES AIHW. (2004). Australia's health 2004, Vol. 2005 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra. Berman, L. F. and Kawachi, I. (2000) A histroical framework for Social Epidemiology. In L. Berman & I. Kawachi (Eds): Social Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, Eckenwiler, L. (2002). An ethic of particularity in social epidemiology research and public health policy. The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA. (Online). Retrieved March 20, 2005 from http://apha.confex.com/apha/130am/techprogram/paper_41392.htm Evans, T., Whitehead, M., Diderischsen, F., Bhuiya, A., & Wirth, M. (2001). Challenging inequities in health from ethics to action. New York: Oxford University Press. Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Myer (Eds), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 121-138). London: Sage.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

126

Quynh Lê

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Fairclough, N. (2005). Discourse analysis in organisational discourse, and organisational change. Organisational Studies, 26, 915-939. Kawachi, I., & Kennedy, I. (1999). Income inequality and health: pathways and mechanisms. Health Services Research, 34(1), 215-227. Keane, T. (1990). The Epidemiology of post-traumatic stress disorder: some comments and concerns. Retrieved March 20, 2005 from http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/publications/ rq/rqhtml/V1N3.html Krieger, N. A. (2001). Society, biology and the logic of social epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology, 30, 44-46. Marmot, M. (2001). Economic and social determinants of disease. Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, 79(10), 988-989. Myer, M. (2001) Between theory, method, and politics: positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak & M. Myer (Eds), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 14-31). London: Sage. Roache, C. (2001). Gilman uncovers link between depression in adults and specific early childhood factors - June 2001. Harvard Public Health NOW. Retrieved October 5, 2005 from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/jun22/index.html Roache, C. (2003). New book spotlights tremendous inequalities between nations and within United States - February 7, 2003. Harvard Public Health NOW. Retrieved October 8, 2005 from http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/feb7/book.html University of Minnesota, School of Public Health. Retrieved October 8, 2005 from http:// www.epi.umn.edu/research/index.shtm Van Dijk, T (1997). Discourse as Interaction in society. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.): Discourse as social interaction (pp. 1-37). London: Sage. Van Dijk, T. (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In R. Wodak & M. Myer (Eds): Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 95-120). London: Sage. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Myer (Eds), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp.1-13). London: Sage.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

THE INTERNET: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE Daniel Rolf

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT The Internet provides a global, high speed, data communications network on which an increasing number of inter-personal communication services are being built. In the early 1990’s emphasis was placed on its speed of operation which led to it being described as the “Information Superhighway”. This ‘Superhighway’ opened up new avenues for discourse and held the potential to break down not only geographical boundaries but also the barriers of race, creed and culture by providing connectivity and services to aid human communication. The “Superhighway” is now replaced by the “Global Village”, a gentler metaphor implying harmony, tranquillity and peaceful coexistence. However, this powerful medium has empowered the individual in ways previously unimagined by providing an opportunity for anyone to speak and be heard by the world. This empowerment, although liberating to the individual and to open societies, is perceived as a threat by those groups, large and small, who rely on the control of discourse to control their members. Governments who control discourse can control the minds of their citizens by being selective about the information they receive in news or through any other available medium. The complexity of the Internet means that exercising control over discourse is difficult and expensive, but not impossible. Control happens “behind the scene” in a way that is far from obvious to the unwary individual. In this chapter we explore the connection between Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the Internet and demonstrate the power of discourse over the Internet and the consequential battle for its control.

Keywords: Internet, Web 2.0, censorship, Golden Shield

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

128

Daniel Rolf

INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

In the 21st century communications can be instantaneous in effect and global in reach. Modern technologies have provided the means to break many of the barriers that even a generation ago limited the nature and scope of human discourse. Now, with the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, an individual citizen can reach out across social, political and geographical boundaries, as if the whole world were in their home, and share their thoughts and ideas with everyone. At least, that is the way it could be. So, why is it that we have not achieved this Utopian state of discourse? What can CDA tell us about the reasons behind restrictions on the Internet and, what can the Internet mean for CDA? Let us start by looking at discourse and critical discourse analysis and move towards their interactions with the Internet. Discourse describes how people interact with each other. It is shaped by social and cultural factors and helps us to build our beliefs and identity, knowledge and relationships (Van Dijk, 2001). The critical analysis of discourse requires looking beyond the superficial use of language and semiotics to find what motivations and intentions lie behind. How does an episode of discourse relate to the larger social contexts of which it is a part? Critical discourse analysis refers to a set of typically qualitative techniques which can be used to identify and understand fundamental social issues at play during a discourse (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Wodak & Meyer, 2001). Thus stated, CDA is not to be thought of as a research method but rather a cross-discipline drawing techniques from traditional discourse analysis, linguistics, psychology and the social sciences. In fact, some prefer the label Critical Discourse Studies to emphasise this breadth (Van Dijk, 1997). Being critical requires being independent and unbiased. The analyst must be particularly careful. In the fields of quantitative scientific research it has long been understood that the mere presence of an observer within any system under observation may distort the observations making it essential to apply strict practices throughout experimentation and data analysis in order to minimize any undue influences this might give rise to. CDA is no different in that the analyst (as researcher) brings to the analysis process many aspects of their own self in their interpretation of the world around them. All due care must be taken to understand and remove these potential biases from the analysis process and to look beyond the superficial to seek out what underlies it. A key focus in CDA is to look for evidences of how power is being used and to relate these to the existing social context in which the discourse is occurring (Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Wodak, 1989). The information society represents a new stage of human civilization, a new and qualitatively superior way of life, which implies the intensive use of information in all spheres of human activity and existence, with major economic and social consequences. The information society allows widespread access to information for its members, a new way of working and learning, greater possibilities for economic globalization, and increasing social cohesion (Fairclough, 2005).

The nature of discourse on the Internet follows, to a large extent, the traditional media types of audio, video, text and imagery but now, with the advent of widely available software tools and web services, all of these media types can be combined together and quickly made available for others to download with ease. Prior to the advent of the Internet communication

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Internet: A Critical Perspective

129

was a much slower and less open process. In the twentieth century rapid delivery of the news could be made by the familiar means of radio, television and, at a slightly slower pace, the printed media. In all of these cases biased reporting can occur due to media ownership influences and the biases of individual reporters. Documentary programs and printed material such as biographies and factual texts take longer to prepare and distribute. There may also be issues associated with an individual’s access to the information, for example, the cost of radio and television licenses (in some countries), the costs of printed media and the cost and availability of texts. In the developed world we tend to take the issue of availability for granted as radio and television coverage typically runs to the vast majority of the population and most population centres have outlets selling newspapers and books. There are also censorship issues which affect any and all of the different types of media. There are rules which govern what can and cannot be said so that protections can be implemented for the young and morally sensitive. In a country like Australia we pride ourselves on having free speech where all issues can be openly debated leading to the development of rules and laws that provide society-determined protections.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE So, has the advent of the Internet made an impact on the way people conduct discourse and, if so, how? The first point to make has to be the distinction between the Internet and the World Wide Web (hereafter referred to as the “web”). The Internet refers to the global infrastructure and interconnections that provide the foundations for computer-to-computer transmission and reception of digital data. The web refers to the services that are provided by using this infrastructure, such as “web sites” – collections of multimedia as linked electronic documents. A second consideration is the open nature of the Internet. No single group of people controls this infrastructure and service provision. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) looks after the standardization processes so that all the technology can be made to speak the same (data communications) language. The Internet technology is built around the TCP/IP suite of protocols which allow all such “speakers” to be able to exchange data with each other. The meaning associated with the data is left to the programs and people who use them, but this process of standards development and evolution is itself an open process. Requests for Comment (RFC) are made to the Internet community as a whole so that discussion is not limited to a select few. However, even though RFCs are open to anyone to respond to, those who are able to participate in the process are very technically focused so this group is to some degree self selecting. All devices, regardless of their geographical location, and therefore the political affiliation of their owners, must use the accepted standards to be able to “speak” and “listen”. The web refers to the interconnected services built on top of the Internet. Currently, the web is seen by many as focusing on creativity, information sharing and collaboration amongst groups of people and this has given rise to two slightly different visions referred to as “Web 2.0” and the “semantic web” (or Web 3.0). Web 2.0 refers to the tools we have now such as wiki’s, blogs, folksonomies and social web sites (like “YouTube” and “FaceBook”). In Europe, the Futurum discussion forum is an interesting example of a Web 2.0 site (which was aimed at closing the perceived rift between politicians and citizens) (Wodak & Wright, 2006).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

130

Daniel Rolf

Web 3.0 proposes to offer a clearer definition of “information” so that people and computers can successfully tackle issues such as logical reasoning and proof, just in the web environment. In principle, anyone can put anything (that can be represented as data) onto a computer system and connect to the Internet. Similar laws to those that operate on the nature of what can be written and displayed in text, audio and visual media are likely to apply to both Internet and non-Internet based “publications”. One major difference, however, is that webbased publishing is potentially global in distribution. Another is that the web is a forum that allows, indeed encourages, responses, and many news media web sites which publish news articles on a daily basis provide mechanisms to allow their readers to upload comments and opinions which appear on the same web page as the original article. This kind of mechanism is ‘moderated’ meaning that there is an accountable person who actively ensures that comments adhere to all legal and responsible criteria that apply to that web site. For those who prefer to avoid this level of censorship there is the blog and personal web page. Anyone, subject to local laws, can write what they wish on their own web site. A blog is rather like a diary written for global consumption and can therefore contain comments allowable under freedom of speech but which may contravene a news site’s rules were it to be posted there. Moving one step further, there are social web sites where individuals can add their own commentary to a “shared space” and allow select people or everyone to view. Sites such as the social networking site YouTube1 act in this way, promoting the idea of sharing ideas and information. Of course, and perhaps cynically, this sharing is promoting the use of the Internet and thus increasing the revenues of the telecommunications providers as well as providing a forum for advertising revenue as well. Now we can see the extent of web freedom. Each and every one of us who is able to access the web can use this global platform to publicize our views and listen to and learn of the views of others. What once was news on a local scale can now be news on a global scale available to all whom, like us, have access and may be interested. Whereas once a minor act of military suppression in a far off corner of a far off country could pass with little or no international comment, now with the connectivity offered by the Internet such news can be globalised in an instant. This global participation certainly is an example of giving “Power to the People”, but it is also likely to be seen as a threat to those who need to control the free speech of others to maintain their own control, unfortunately, there is still something of a digital divide. Some countries do not have the resources, both financial and technical, to be a part of this freedom (Israely, 2007) whereas there are other countries where access to the Internet is strictly controlled. Age is also an issue. The current younger generations, starting with generation Y, have embraced technology and it is not uncommon to find young children using a computer before being able to write and, in many cases, read. The older generations are not necessarily so competent and may shy away from technology preferring a more localized and personal method of communication.

1

http://www.youtube.com/

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Internet: A Critical Perspective

131

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CENSORSHIP AND CONTROL As stated already, the Internet is an interconnection of many networks and each country has its own national infrastructure to support its own internal requirements. Connecting a country to the global Internet typically occurs at only a few points. China, for example, has three major points of connection to the rest of the world on the Eastern coast: two links to Japan that connect at Shanghai and at the Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin area and a third link via Hong Kong. Also, there are some slow speed connections that run across Central Asia (carrying little traffic) and some satellite based connections that are of premium cost. About a decade ago the Chinese Government commenced an Internet security project referred to as “Golden Shield”. The idea was to “protect” national network users from immoral materials which are fairly common on the “open” web. Anyone inside China trying to access information from the outside world must connect via one of the controlled connection points. For obvious reasons these connection points can be referred to as “choke points” because they deal with all data travelling into and out of the country and, as such, they are ideal locations for censoring the data flow and, therefore, all access to “foreign” ideas and information. Control is carried out by inspecting every piece of data which passes through each of the choke points using four main techniques. When one attempts to download a web page the data being transferred contains the name of the web site as well as the web page. The name must be translated into the Internet address of the computer holding the web page, an action called a Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup. During this process, the name is compared to a list of unacceptable web sites and if a match is found a warning is sent back to the requester saying “Site not found”. The second technique scans the website name to look for words that are “forbidden” and if a match is found a similar rejection will result. If these two checks have been passed the request message for the web page is sent off to the web server, but whilst this is proceeding a copy of the request is being analysed to check its content for forbidden words or phrases or Internet addresses. If anything forbidden is detected a “Site not found” or “The Connection has been Reset” message is returned to the user instead of the requested page. The fourth method is much more sophisticated and is referred to as deep packet inspection. The actual content of the web page is scanned for “forbidden items” and if any are detected the address of the external site is entered in to a “black list” for a short period of time and the requester is given the “Reset” message. Further attempts to access the offending page cause the black out time to be increased for each subsequent attempt. An article in the Australian Information Technology supplement (AustralianIT, 2008) cites an example of Golden Shield censorship. Just prior to the beginning of the Beijing Olympics a rock music album entitled “Songs for Tibet” was released on the popular iTunes web site. The album was a compilation of songs by a number of prominent artists advocating “Tibetan Independence”. Shortly after the album appeared, the site became inaccessible from China. Associated with the site was a facility which allowed people to review and make comments about the album and this, apparently, became a focus for exchanges between proTibet and pro-Nationalist “netizens” (Citizens of the web). When the offending album and commentary was removed the iTunes web site became visible to the Chinese Internet once more. The Chinese Internet site china.org.cn carried the story from its Chinanews.com source under the title “Netizens incensed over Tibet album on iTunes” (ChinaNews, 2008). The

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

132

Daniel Rolf

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

article was written from the point of view of the Chinese Internet community as indicated by the extract: “…angry netizens are rallying together to denounce Apple”. Apple is the name of the company which markets iTunes and the iPhone. The article described the album and named the artists and included comments attributed to the community of netizens such as: “They… expressed a wish to ban the album’s singers and producers” and “Some say they will boycott all Apple products…including the iPhone…”. The threat is clear: certain businesses and some prominent individuals’ work will be negatively affected because of the people’s view of this album. A slightly different interpretation suggests that the message is as much for internal as it is for external consumption. This is not a government message but a message from the people. It is telling those that use the Internet that everything is under control because the netizens are vigilant and of a focused opinion (which is against Tibetan independence). All data sent over the Internet (email, data file transfers, web page requests etc.) contains unique identifiers for the sending and receiving computers. The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the sender’s computer and the web page server are both present in the data providing a globally unique identification for each device. There are regulations regarding international and national allocation of these identifiers so, in principle, it is possible to obtain the actual geographical location of any computer anywhere on the Internet from its identifier. If that computer happens to be one in an Internet café or access centre (which anyone can use) inspection of usage records can lead to the identification of an individual account and, therefore, the person using the computer. In China, Internet users must use their real names and personal details when signing up for an account and when logging in to use a computer. If the computer is a home computer it should be equally straightforward to identify the household but not necessarily the individual user (only the Internet account holder). Setting up a blog site within China will be open to the same aspects of control. Amnesty International (Kumar, 2006) cites many instances of people who have contravened the State laws in ways “solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and opinion” and been imprisoned as a result. The report states that most of the contraventions occurred because individuals were sharing their views via web or email exchanges. The Internet company Yahoo has, on at least one occasion (RSF, 2005), provided government authorities with the details of an individual user who was responsible for sending emails which contained comments about a government decision, an act which resulted in conviction and imprisonment. In this case the company, Yahoo, specifically provided the connection between email and user and gave up the user’s personal information to the authorities.

THE GLOBAL BATTLEFIELD There are ways around the Internet censorship discussed above. One method is to encrypt all the data sent so that the content of each message is meaningless to the choke point filters. There are several freely available systems that will do this and so a “battle” develops to gain and keep control of the discourse pathways. The importance of these pathways comes to the forefront during a genuine military conflict. In early August of 2008 Russian forces attacked Georgia in response to Georgian military actions in the breakaway province of South Ossetia. The reason given by the Russians for the attack was to defend the “lives and dignity” of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Internet: A Critical Perspective

133

Russian citizens living in South Ossetia (O'Flynn, 2008). During the lead up to the conflict there was a growing discourse between pro-Russian and pro-Georgian groups on the Internet. Government web sites on both sides carried their respective nationalist stands whilst other ‘aligned’ web sites and blogs carried the message to the people. Information is power and power is control so controlling the opposition’s ability to distribute their side of the story becomes an important military tactic (VanDijk, 2001; Wodak, 1989). At the time of the Russian invasion many of the Georgian government web sites were apparently “hacked” and also targeted by Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. The hacking was evident because the information on the government web servers was defaced. Images were attached to certain web pages depicting the Georgian president together with Adolf Hitler and in another case pro Russian imagery was included. A Denial of Service attack occurs when a web site receives so many illegitimate requests that it cannot process them all, or spends all of its time trying, and consequently cannot give service to legitimate requests. A DDOS attack occurs when these illegitimate requests come from many different computers (possibly tens of thousands or more) scattered throughout the Internet. A group of people could coordinate themselves to bring about such a DDOS attack but there are more insidious mechanisms available to those “in the know”. At any instant of time there are many millions of individual computers connected to the Internet, each of them able to look outwards to “surf the web”. However, at the same time each one is potentially a target for someone or something to look into. Certain “hacking” techniques can result in “trojan” software being delivered to insecure computers. The software lays dormant until awakened by remote command. The name “Trojan” comes from the Trojan Horse of Greek Mythology. A gift in the form of a huge wooden horse left behind outside the gates of the city of Troy by the retreating Greek army. When the Trojans took the “gift” inside the city’s defensive walls they were unaware it contained Greek warriors and was part of a cunning plan to get inside the city. Trojan software enters a computer by exploiting security weaknesses in the normal operating system and application software. The now-infected computer could be a home computer and the user could be totally oblivious to what is happening (except, perhaps, that things are running more slowly than usual). Once awake this program can be remotely instructed to become like one of thousands or more others and send messages to a specified target as part of a coordinated DDOS attack. There are people who develop and deploy such insidious software throughout the world for a variety of reasons and the systems they create are referred to as “botnets” in recognition of the fact that they behave like a network of remote controlled robots and each infected computer is called a zombie. One such botnet recently came to light in the news (Mills, 2008) because an enterprising hacker was trying to sell or lease its use to anyone with enough money (approximately €10,000 would do). Its size was estimated to be about 100,000 zombie computers distributed world wide, powerful enough to cause a significant Denial of Service attack to any system. Of course, it is possible to download similar software by choice or perform similar actions independently, becoming a willing participant in such attacks, and this was one response used to explain the Georgian situation. The DDOS attacks could have been the result of motivated people anywhere. Even when the attack is obvious, identifying the mechanism being used is not and, in this case, a war of words on where responsibility lay began. Was this a coordinated attack promoted by the highest levels of the Russian leadership? Was it the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

134

Daniel Rolf

result of patriotic citizens exercising their right to protest perhaps with, or maybe without, any State involvement? Or was it just an isolated event exploited by the Georgian side? On a much sadder note the perceived power of free speech and the Internet entered the news again at the end of August 2008 with reports of the shooting of a web site owner. Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of a Russian web site was ordered to close it after a Russian court ruled that it was spreading extremist statements (BBC, 2008). The site subsequently reappeared under another name whereupon the owner was arrested. The official comment from the committee investigating his death was that during the arrest an “incident” occurred in which the owner “received a gunshot wound to the temple area". In the world of Italian politics, too, the blog is proving to be a powerful force for change. Specifically, the blog site of Beppe Grillo is, at the time of writing, ranked as (approximately) the fifth most widely accessed site on the entire web. Once a stand-up comedian, Grillo became disillusioned with the corruption in Italian politics and created his blog as a way of focusing public attention on key national issues. In some cases this has led to the public disclosure of the corrupt behaviour of key political figures which, in turn, has led to the suggestion (typically by those who are the targets of Grillo’s blog) that bloggers should be licensed (presumably by the State). Power is control and to control the Internet in such a way, thus restricting an individual’s opportunity to make use of the Internet, would be nothing less than choking one of the major media of discourse for the twenty-first century.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION My purpose is not to provide solutions or definitive statements but simply to stress how certain activities, visible or invisible, can be in operation which can have a serious influence on the conduct of discourse. The Russia-Georgia conflict and the use of the web to spread disinformation and distort the balance of the discourse, the suppression and silencing of Magomed Yevloyev or the potential licensing of blogs sites, such as Beppe Grillo’s, are just examples of one group trying to control the discourse and the minds of others. I have tried herein to examine the role of the Internet and the web on human discourse. In its infancy the metaphor for the web was “The Information Superhighway” placing the emphasis on speed of operation, but currently you are more likely to hear of “The Global Village”. The change has little to do with the technology but more to do with how we use it and what we use it for. The Internet technical standards are open and free, anyone can join, but human to human communication and the sharing of ideas over this medium are not open and free. The Internet is a medium for carrying the elements of discourse to and from anywhere in the world (Antarctica is served by satellite connections!) and doing so instantly. The Internet is also a subject of discourse in its own right. Just as controlling the mass media of newspapers, television and radio gives the controllers the power to influence the masses, so control of the Internet must give this power also. However, the distributed nature and scale of the Internet make such control very difficult as communication is no longer unidirectional – from press to reader – but truly peer-to-peer as anyone connected can reach out to any or all other connected people. The Internet is a medium where those privileged to have a connection can ‘speak their minds’ on a global stage and therefore be viewed as a threat by, and to, those who fear the freedoms of speech and expression. Critical Discourse Analysis can help us to

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The Internet: A Critical Perspective

135

understand how some would manipulate the meaning and position of the Internet within their society and, also, how discourse across the Internet can be influenced by those same groups.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Australian IT. (2008, 26 August). ITunes hit after Tibet song. The Australian IT Supplement. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/ 0,24897,24239016-15322,00.html BBC. (2008, 31 August). Kremiln critic shot in Ingushetia. BBC News. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7590719.stm China News. (2008, 8 August). Netizens incensed over Tibet album on iTunes. china.org.cn, from http://www.china.org.cn/china/national/2008-08/08/content_16161481.htm Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. The critical study of language. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical discourse analysis. Marges Linguistiques, 9, 76-94. Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 258-84). London: Sage Publications. Israely, J. (2007, 31 October). Bringing cheap computers to the world. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1678273,00.html Kumar, T. (2006, 01 February). Human Rights and the Internet in China. Testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, The United States Congress. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGUSA 20060201001 Mills, E. (2008, 21 August). Brazilian Charged in U.S. in connections with operating botnet. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://news.yahoo.com/s/cnet/8301100931002299083 O'Flynn, K. (2008, 19 August). Cross us and we will crush you, warns Medvedev. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article 4557369.ece RSF. (2005). Information supplied by Yahoo! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison [Electronic Version]. Reporters without Borders. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884. Van Dijk, T. (1996). Discourse, power and access. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 84-104). London: Routledge.Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). Discourse studies. A multidisciplinary introduction. London: Sage. Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 352-371). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Wodak, R. (1989). Language, power and ideology. Studies in political discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

136

Daniel Rolf

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R., & Wright, S. (2006). The European Union in Cyberspace. Multilingual Participation in a virtual public space. Journal of Language and Politics, 5(2), 251-275.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

TALK AT WORK: CREATING WORKER IDENTITIES Geraldine Castleton

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Working with analytic techniques of applied ethnomethodology as an example of critical discourse analysis, this chapter draws on talk from the workplace to demonstrate how particular worker identities become constructed, with differing consequences for workers and workplaces being achieved through this talk. The seminal work of Sachs (1972) and Heritage (1984) is used to explicate the use of membership categorisation analysis (MCA) as an interpretive analytic device for unpacking meaning in everyday discourse, in this instance talk collected by way of interviews. It is demonstrated how interviewees establish “taken for granted” accounts of work, and the role of literacy at work, which then enable informants to provide an explanation of how and why some workers are inhibiting industries’ capacity to respond to contemporary economic and political climates that require nations to be economically more competitive in a globalised marketplace. Informants established a clear link between workers' ability to do their job and their levels of literacy skill, thus providing an assembly of the literacy competence workers need to be “good” workers in contemporary society. From this perspective it was established that some workers who may have been described as “good” workers in traditional workplaces, are now described as “poor” workers, that is not up to the standard required for the demands of today’s work, with little concern for the consequences of this “work” for the workers involved.

Keywords: literacy, ethnomethodology, workplace, membership categorisation device, quality Discourse, discursive practice

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

138

Geraldine Castleton

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION This chapter uses critical discourse analysis to examine how talk in the workplace is used to describe and define certain workers and their capacity to contribute to contemporary globalised economies. These economies have placed the skills, in particular literacy skills, of current and future workers in many countries under scrutiny. The recent release of the report on Australia’s performance in the international adult literacy and life skills survey, for example, identifies literacy skills as being integral to the new work practices required of the contemporary Australian labour force (ABS, 2008). Over the last two decades a range of official reports and reviews released in countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, have been united in their focus on a “sense of urgency and crisis” (Darrah, 1992, p.264) caused by a poorly-skilled workforce. A feature of much of this literature is the representation of literacy as a functional, employment-related skill, and workers’ limited literacy skills as a prevailing cause of nations’ poor economic performance (Castleton, 2000, 2006; Comings & Soricone, 2007; Holland, 1998; Hull & Grubb, 1999; Taylor, 2008). The talk in this chapter comes from nine individuals with management responsibilities within workplaces, selected on the basis that they would have well-developed views and opinions on the relationship between literacy and work. The critical discourse analysis used in this instance draws on analytic techniques from the field of applied ethnomethodology (Eglin & Hester 1992; Heritage 1984; Hester & Eglin, 1997; Garfinkel 1967, 1974; Jayyusi 1984, 1991; Sacks 1972; 1997). The concepts of “work”, “workers” and the role of literacy at work, hereby known as “workplace literacy”, are explored to examine the importance of how these individuals define, describe and act on their understandings of these relationships in response to contemporary economic and political climates that require nations to be economically more competitive in a globalised marketplace. In interview, each individual was first asked to identify their role within the organization/group they represented. Following this step, and as the nature and consequences of changing work practices figures prominently in literature on the relationship between literacy and work, all interviewees were asked to address this issue. From this point onward, the interviews proceeded in various sequences as each participant was given the opportunity to approach the topic as they preferred. Participants were invited to discuss, describe and evaluate what, if any, connections they made between the categories of “work”, “workers” and “workplace literacy”. In their talk about work and workers, the informants drew on a cultural history of professional and community interpretations that they used to present talk they believed to be both meaningful and trustworthy. The method of interpretive analysis employed here draws on membership categorization analysis (MCA), described by Freebody (200, p.156) as a “way of explicating how speakers draw on and reconstruct common cultural sense in specific situations”, in this instance, workplaces. According to Garfinkel (1974), an accounting for stable organization of social activities can be revealed through participants’ understandings of these activities that are always available as participants go about these normal activities (Schiffrin, 1994, p.233). It is argued that not only does social action display knowledge but the processes employed in the describing of such action contribute to the creation of knowledge. It is through our actions that we produce and reproduce the knowledge that makes individual conduct and social circumstance understandable.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities

139

Sacks (1972) is credited with developing ways of understanding when and how members achieve description, and in doing so describing the apparatus employed in this process. Sacks (1992, p.119) stated the issue is to understand “how a human gets built who will produce his activities such that they're graspable in this way”. From this position “culture” is approached as an “inference-making machine”; a descriptive apparatus, administered and built up by everyday actions in specific contexts. According to Sacks, in the course of our accounting of everyday events we draw on a range of categories to describe them. In addition, accounting procedures depend on an understanding and application of category-bound characteristics (Freebody, 2003), which are used to attach certain attributions, actions or competencies to the people involved in the social action being described. MCA, thus “focuses on explicating…” aspects of how speakers use categorizations of people, attach certain attributes to those categorizations, and thereby produce orderly sensible accounts of every day experience (Freebody, 2003, p.157). Within accounting practices each identity is heard as belonging to a category from some particular collection of categories, described by Sacks as a membership categorisation device (MCD). Membership categories constitute the natural groupings of categories that members of a society feel “go together”. In this sense categories are culturally available concepts that members may, and do, use in the accomplishment of everyday tasks. With these principles in mind, membership categorization analysis (MCA) was thus applied to the corpus of interview data. In this procedure, the analyst’s task is to illustrate the conceptual and interpretive procedures that operate within an over-arching informing framework that the speaker uses to make the talk coherent and intelligible within the broad cultural context of its use. From this perspective, the data can be systematically interrogated to answer the following questions: What were the categories of people established in and by the talk?; What kinds of people were present so that the talk could be heard as sensible?; What contrasts were set up in the talk – what relationships are provided between categories and are these stated or left implied?; What attributions were made to the categories in and by the talk?: What were the cause-effect accounts that thus were able to be made by these category – attribute connections? What substantiating evidence is then provided to support the category – attribution work undertaken in and by the talk? These interpretive procedures draw attention to the categories of listener built into the talk and the positioning of the hearer with respect to the speaker. This process documents how certain attributes, knowledge, and assumptions are attached, often by implication, to categories of people and how these attributes, knowledge and assumptions provide certain avenues for understanding and practice, in this case with respect to “work”, “workers” and “workplace literacy”, and allows the documentation, in a principled way, of the views of the participants with respect to these categories, and to note points of agreement and contestation.

TALKING UP “WORK”, “WORKERS” AND “WORKPLACE LITERACY” The talk of the participants typically drew on the membership categorization device (MCD) of “work” in that the social world of work is generally made up of the categories of “management”, “supervisors” and “workers”. The category of “workers”, or at least particular kinds of “workers”, and “supervisors” are usually explicitly described within the talk, while the category of “management” is normally implicated. The category of “government” is also

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Geraldine Castleton

140

called upon on occasions, generally cast as a “body” to whom industry is accountable for issues such as workplace health and safety. In order to achieve shared understandings and meanings, informants drew on well established categories within this MCD from commonly held discourses on how work was done in the past, as well from some more recent discourses emerging out of “new times” or a “new work order” (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996). Working within the established categories from traditional discourses on work enabled the informants to describe various ways in which certain workers were becoming a problem because they do not possess the characteristics that now need to be attributed to the category of “worker” within new, compelling discourses. The accounting practices succeeded in constituting and reproducing the institutional settings of which they are a fundamental and elementary part. The “known-in-common” world (Heritage, 1984, p.216) that emerged from the descriptions of the informants supported the one typically presented in the literature (Castleton, 2000, 2006; Gee et al, 1996; Holland, 1998; Hull & Grubb, 1999; DfEE, 2001), that is, a world in which there is a problem in the contemporary workforce that has been created by “workers”, and that this problem has dire consequences for society as a whole.

DESCRIBING WORK IN TODAY’S WORKPLACES There was a high degree of consistency across the interviews as informants talked about changing work practices, indicating the presence of widely held, institutional points of view on this topic. Even though they gave local accounts of work practices, the informants made sense of their world by drawing on the “quality Discourse” that entails new ways of coordinating and being coordinated at work (Gee, 1994, p.6). This discourse depended heavily on its taken-for-granted, commonsense qualities for its acceptance and understanding. The overall effect achieved by operating out of the “quality Discourse” was that participants were able to assemble an identity for a “good” worker in this environment. Working within this context, it is possible to summon a range of discursive practices that distinguish this discourse from traditional ways of doing work. A good worker becomes one who:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

-

-

is able to participate in the new work arrangements required for Quality Assurance, including maintenance of the necessary accountability and recording procedures and working in teams; is multiskilled; can cope with the demands of new technology as it is introduced into the workplace; can work safely; can participate in the training necessary to implement work changes; and can contribute in a positive way to the changing industrial relations climate.

What was assembled through the talk of the informants was a description of an effective, “quality” worker by means of a list of attributes functioning to establish a collective categorization. An example of such attribution:

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities

141

We like multi-skilling here. We like an operator out there on one machine to be able, if someone’s away, move to another machine and be able to operate that.

This collective then became an organizational designator for “quality” or “good” worker. Each of the items that make up the list has a relationship to each other, established in and legitimated by the “quality Discourse”. Because of the persuasiveness of the consensual, commonsense argument presented by that discourse, it is easy to overlook a significant feature of such lists, namely the process of selection involved in their creation, and the logic behind that process (Jayyusi, 1984). The dilemma that arises out of the need to describe what “good” workers look like is one of “practical translation” (Jayyusi, 1984, p.79). That is, in the process of selecting certain attributes, it is possible to obscure the origin, intent and standards applied in their creation, and consequently “mask their essentially moral character” (Jayyusi, 1984, p.79). Other attributes and skills that workers may possess, that were once seen as essential for doing their various jobs, and helped them be described as good workers, now become lost or deemed inconsequential. For example, according to traditional discourses on work, “working safely” may simply have meant working without injuring oneself or another worker, while, by the terms of the “quality Discourse”, working safely may now require additional attributions, such as being able to read safety procedures as well as write safety reports. This means that the worker who cannot read and write to the required level is no longer deemed a “safe worker”. The outcome of this accomplishment is that workers who do not have the various attributes ascribed to workers today as determined by the “quality Discourse”, can be seen to be performing “poorly”, and therefore cannot also be “good” workers. It is from this perspective that informants were able to offer explanations for poor worker performance or working habits.

OFFERING ACCOUNTS OF LITERACY AT WORK

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Most of the participants gave similar responses when asked to interpret the term “workplace literacy”, describing it as meaning more than just reading and writing. They all talked of literacy in the workplace as including the ability to communicate effectively through reading and writing as well as orally. They focused on the functional role of literacy as an aid in getting the work done, generally aligning “reading” to “reading something” as the following extract exemplifies: Being able to communicate with others, and er (.) and being able to read the Quality Procedures and any other procedures in the place and also being able to (.) fit in, in the in the training programs that we're developing (SS).

Similarly, the majority of interviewees drew on commonly held notions of literacy skills as necessary for work originating from the functional literacy discourse. They referred to such tasks as: -

talking to each other getting instructions, reading documents erm (.1), reading the notices; being able to apply those as well (NL); and to communicate in writing (SA).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Geraldine Castleton

142 or -

the ability to understand and interpret written instructions at a minimum level (EE).

What emerged from the descriptions provided by the informants is a clear link between workers' ability to do their job and their levels of literacy skill, thus providing an assembly of the literacy competence workers need. In the following extract, one participant described what he regarded as the literacy demands of work by giving an account of the possible consequences of workers lacking that required literacy competence: ... basic skills to survive on the job where they had er (.) as I'm concerned, you know, the safety liability here at (Company name) we were killing ourselves, that was one of the main area er under the Act that the (Company name) in fact could become er found liable if er someone was to, was injured and we knew that they could not have an understanding sufficient to be able to cope with such things as reading safety books (A0).

This segment of talk reinforces one of the strong themes emerging from new discourses on work, namely an increased obligation on workers to work safely. The description of the need for the “basic skills to survive on the job” situate this informant's casting of literacy within the functional skills discourse, and from this perspective the hearer is able to infer certain attributes that would make workers poor performers in the process of safe work. In this example, workers’ inability to read the safety books/manuals is offered as a potential cause of serious safety problems for individuals and for the organisation. A number of other informants also raised the issue of literacy within the aegis of workplace health and safety, often providing anecdotal evidence to support their claims that workers with low literacy skills were a cause for concern to industry. Heard within this interpretive framework, workers become burdened with a moral responsibility to work safely; being a low-literate worker is thus heard as contrary to the moral order.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF POOR LITERACY AT WORK The following section further documents how attribution procedures were achieved in the talk of one of the key informants. The account is given in response to a question about how industry personnel talked of the issue of literacy in the workplace, and is typical of explanations given by all informants of the links between poor work performance and low literacy levels: WA: I: WA:

I:

the [training personnel in industry] talk about it in terms of ‘it used to be okay’. Mm But now because they have to do have to do these different reporting mechanisms they are required to undertake this training in whatever, we are finding that they aren’t coping with it, not coping it is the way they describe it. they mean that they aren’t understanding fully the the training that i.e., being given.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities I: WA:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

I: WA: I: WA: I: WA: I: WA: I: WA I: WA:

143

So and why is that a concern then why, why do the talk about it as a concern? What are what are the effects of that not coping? Well I guess, I guess it means that you know, they they won’t understand the new procedures. They won’t participate in them or are unable to participate in the new reporting requirements or er unable to understand the manuals that are involved with the new machinery whatever. And so It just and so what what does the bottom line then become is they can’t do their jobs as effectively therefore as someone who can understand the change so the outcome is productivity is affected? I would think so. Mm or there’s more likelihood of accidents mm, yes or these the people won’t be able to progress from where they are and they may be required to progress through industry training to certificate or whatever so (.) and everyone must do these things.

This talk is again couched in the language of the “quality Discourse”. The ways in which workers cannot cope are clearly explained in terms of their poor literacy skills as defined by the informants. Though worker performance, and by implication literacy skill levels, “used to be okay”, it is no longer satisfactory, as many are unable to participate in new reporting requirements and to understand new procedures, manuals or operating machinery. Notably, it is only “workers” who are reported to be “not coping”, other workplace personnel, by implication, are coping with the new demands. This account also offers certain consequences for workers who are unable to take on the required new identities as workers who can meet the demands of training, work safely and obtain necessary industry qualification. In the talk such workers are set up in opposition to those who “can understand the change”, or “are coping”, and thus, because of the way binary oppositions (Derrida, 1991) operate, are aligned against these workers, thereby being displayed as “inferior” and incapable of being the “knowledge” workers (Gee, 1994) required in the contemporary workforce. The effect of this kind of treatment is that such workers are seen to be operating against both the social and moral order of the workplace.

CREATING WORKER IDENTITIES As previously discussed, talk of “new” work demands provided a starting point from which all participants constructed and explained a correlation between literacy and work. The ascribed correlation between inferior work performance and low literacy skill was realised by recourse to a complex set of causal relations. Invariably inferior work accomplishment was explained in terms of level of literacy skill that was then related to an intricate pattern of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

144

Geraldine Castleton

culturally defined attributes that included ethnicity, cognitive or personality deficiency, schooling background and socio-economic status. The assembly of workers with a specific range of cultural attributes thus allowed for the formulation of taken-for-granted propositions that informants applied in their explanations of the causes and effects of inferior, or “less than quality” worker accomplishment. The following section of talk demonstrates how the attribute “non-native speaking”, the most commonly-called up attribute, was drawn on to account for literacy problems and consequent concerns for industry. In this section of talk the Group Safety and Training Manager of a large multi-national manufacturing company describes the difficulties he perceives with literacy in the workplace, and why the company became involved in workplace literacy training: Okay, the problem we had with er literacy is that we, in the past they [the company] employed Europeans and also er (.) Vietnamese and their English was pretty poor. Now they communicated okay with themselves but not much with the other erm the other employees, the Australians, and also we found that you know, they've got to, they got to be able to read the Quality Procedures, the safety instructions and all that sort of thing and with us heading towards computer based training, there's a lot of reading involved er (.1) so we were having difficulties with it (SS).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A recurring theme that non-English background workers are presented as an obstacle to good work practices is picked up in this talk; they are attributed with ineffective literacy skills as “their English was pretty poor”. In other words, their own discursive practices, that they had fashioned in order to do their jobs, have now become inappropriate. The consequence of this shift was described as meaning they could not read workplace texts such as Quality Procedures and safety instructions and would not be able to participate in the company's computer based training. The effects of the transformation are borne out later in the interview when the interviewee is responding to a question seeking to find out the percentage of the company's workforce who were of non-English speaking background: SS The guy that we er probably in charge of the mills here before he's still with us but he's at the other plant, erm, (.) he was real keen on hiring erm, Vietnamese because of, they were good workers (.1) and they were days before we had a lot of safety and quality around you know, so communication wasn't, didn't seem to be a problem to them but I Right SS you know I So what made them good workers? SS Keen, you know, they they didn't grumble about, (.) obviously there were safety problems out there and er (.) they weren't grumbling about things like that, they'll they'll work anywhere. I They'll do the job? SS Yeh, however they hired people like me and er the quality people to improve the other areas and so we're putting a few constraints on things.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities

145

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Here we find some conflict arising out of a tension between discursive practices tied to traditional discourses on work and those associated with the more recent “quality Discourse”. In the past, workers of non-English speaking background had the admirable attribute of being prepared to “work anywhere”, by implication, even under unsafe conditions, therefore making them attractive employees. Significantly, the product that this company manufactures, that is steel products, has not changed over recent times, just certain aspects of the environment in which it is produced. What remains unsaid in this particular segment of talk is, that in previous work environments, it may have been the native speaking workers who were the less than “good” workers. This move involves a shift in the traditional standard relational pair relationship. Within old ways of working the non-English speaking worker stood as the “good” worker in opposition to the native speaking employee who could be framed the “not so good” worker because of his/her unwillingness to work in an unsafe environment. Under new working arrangements this oppositional pattern is reversed. Also what is not examined by the informant is how the non-English speaking workers perceive this transformation in which they have moved from being the “good” workers to being the undesirable employees. The shift in values evident in the section of talk that has occurred as a result of the influence of the “quality Discourse”, reaffirms earlier comments of this informant, where he also described how non-English speaking background workers were once valued for attributes that now work against them. Category attributions stemming from this new discourse have lead to contrasting accounts between then and now. The interviewee reports that the company is taking measures to deal with the problems created by non-native speaking employees by adopting a policy of only employing English speaking workers who can pass a screening test of basic literacy skills. SS [That's right], you know, we just can't spend the time. We don't have enough er spare people that we can have under training out there to learn literacy skills, and its too risky too, you know, it's a risky environment out there and, you know, if we bring them in and they can't understand the signs and things like that it's risky for us, right from day one. So, we put them through the test and er you know, generally we're asking them to be able to read and write. I So (.2) why has it suddenly become, you know, risky, hasn't it always been, or what what's happened that now, at this particular [time] SS [We're focussing] more on quality and safety rather than just production I Right SS and these people are excellent workers, you know, they put in a good day's work and and you, don't plague you about doing overtime, they're they're always putting them their hand up for overtime. The problem is that erm you know, we're focussing more on having our quality and safety up there with the level with our production, they're all on equal par or or striving to get there and er that drags us back, that holds us back because of the fact that these people have become a problem for us. Within this talk non-English speaking background workers are heard as traditionally having the attributes of “excellent” workers, regardless of their level of English competence. This meant they were valued for putting in a good day's work and not creating difficulties when there was overtime to be completed. However, under new working arrangements these attributes no longer constitute what it means to be “good” workers who now are required to

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

146

Geraldine Castleton

be able to read and write (English), otherwise they pose a “risk” to the company. Within the “quality Discourse” management is no longer attributed with being prepared to take the risk involved with employing non-English speaking background workers with poor English, though in this instance, the concern was for the hazard involved to the company, not to the worker. The attributes that were once valued by this employer, namely compliance, commitment and excellence, will no longer be attributed to non-native speaking workers, who will not even be considered for employment if they do not come to work equipped with those attributes now privileged by the screening text. Within the account of work offered by this informant, workers' poor literacy skills are heard as calling for answers in racial terms, with the interviewee giving specific examples of the consequent effects of employing non-native speaking workers:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

SS Now in the past the Vietnamese and some of the others that used hand signals, well we want to get away from that, I mean, erm (.) with with the mills and when the stuff's forming er steel product, if product starts coming out of the end and it's poor we want to be able to [stop it] I [Stop it] SS And that hasn't happened in the past, it's been allowed to continue. Now we, we can put some of that down to communication problems I Right' SS 'between operators, you know, and so (.) we want to improve that by putting on headsets so that the verbal communication then has to improve, so these guys aren't good at that. If a Mill Operator doesn't understand what they're saying we'll still have that problem, so, yes, it's just as important. I Right is that, has it always been that way, do you think, or or is it becoming, it's it's SS its becoming more noticeable now… with (.) quality people now, you know, we have a quality system and everything and statistics are showing that, you know, we have to improve in some of these areas and er that's one. According to this account, the degree to which certain adults are able to carry out their responsibilities as “workers” is the extent to which they are literate. Workers’ knowledge and practices, such as using hand signals, that “used to be okay” are misrepresented and effectively silenced in discourses that now describe contemporary work. Due recognition is not given to the reciprocal “ways of doing” that form a fundamental part of social life, including work. Indeed, in another part of the interview, this same informant noted how his company “was real keen or hiring erm [sic] Vietnamese because of, there were good workers [in the] days before we had a lot of safety and quality around”. What remains unexplored by this informant, and typically by other informants, is how workers now deemed to be performing “poorly” perceive the transition from being the “good” workers of the past to being the undesirable employees of the present. It can be seen that more than pure definitional work is accomplished through such accounting endeavours. The phenomenon of poor literacy at work, or what is meant by “workplace literacy” is created by the calling up of particular culturally available categories of persons and their respective practices, thereby justifying a focus on the literacy skills of workers. According to the accounts offered, the extent to which certain adults are able to carry out their responsibilities as “workers” is the extent to which they are literate. The

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities

147

category of worker with poor literacy skills identifies workers as not adequately skilled, and provides a basis for explaining why the economy is performing badly at local, industry and international levels, without attaching responsibility to other stakeholders such as management, industry and the government.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONSEQUENCES OF WORKPLACE TALK The informants' talk generally sustained the proposition presented in policy-based versions of literacy at work, e.g., Skills for life (DfEE, 2001), with each informant drawing on particular instances from their own local environment to give different inflections on the themes presented. Informants typically made links between poor work performance and workers’ low literacy levels while the rhetoric of the “quality Discourse” enabled the participants to account for failure to achieve “quality” work in terms of workers’ deficiencies in cultural capability and disposition. The talk reinforces versions of work presented in popular discourses on workplace literacy as described by Hull (1997) and others (Castleton, 2000; Holland 1998; Hull & Grubb, 1999; Taylor, 2008). The workplace itself was rarely named by the informants as playing a role in workers' literacy achievement or their consequent poor work performance, such that more organisationally-based problems that have to do with how work is organised, and with what work processes are valued were not heard. The part played by the workplace, as offered in the talk, is to build upon already instituted versions of a set of cultural and social experiences that workers bring to today's work environment. From this perspective blame cannot be placed with workplaces, or by connotation, with “management” or anyone else, for workers' poor literacy skills and their ensuing inability to be “good” or “quality” workers in these new times. A notable feature of the talk is the moral ordering that the “new” workplace embodies. Workers are ascribed roles that extend beyond their workplaces to include responsibility for their country's social and economic prosperity. The degree of their literacy competence, that is resolved to be a consequence of factors beyond the world of work, is strongly denoted in this moral order. The interpretive moves employed here have demonstrated how the link between literacy and work has been socially constructed out of a range of prevailing discourses in the workplace. Out of this fuse of ideas, a particular version of certain worker identities, namely workers with poor literacy skills, has received a preferred reading and hearing. However, there are significant omissions and silences in these contemporary understandings that do not allow for a proper account of work, workers, or for how “literacy is made” at work.

CONCLUSION The dominant discourse presented on worker identities not only offers limited understandings of the inter-relationships existing between workers, work and literacy, but also works to constitute and strengthen particular power relations within work settings and beyond. These findings reinforce Foucault's (1980) contention that power and knowledge are

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

148

Geraldine Castleton

interrelated and inseparable so that any field of knowledge constitutes at the same time certain power relations. Within the increasingly segregated workforce found in today's workplaces, such formulations define some as winners and others as losers. Contemporary discourses of work privilege a particular account of work that creates new social realities in workplaces. Within these workplaces great emphasis is placed on discourse practices associated with new identities that are to be assumed by workers. The power structures evidenced in the different roles offered to “knowledge – workers” and the “others” (Gee, 1994), constituted within these discourses become apparent, however, when it is realized that assuming these new identities exposes certain contradictory practices that, while seemingly servicing all workers, may actually privilege a few at the expense of the many. The new discourses on work name those experiences considered to be important to contemporary society, establishing differentially valued discursive practices as they are displayed by some, thereby denying credibility and validity to the experiences of others. Within new discourses of work, workers are typically categorized as “skilled” or “unskilled”, with all the rewards on offer in the “enchanted” workplace (Gee 1994, Gee et al, 1996) available to the skilled, and a bleak future for the “other”, the unskilled.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES ABS – Australian Bureau of Statistics, (2008). Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey, Summary Results, Australia 2006 (reissue). Cat 4228.0. Retrieved December 7, 2008 from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/4228.0Main%20Features 22006%20(Reissue)?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=4228.0&issue=2006 %20(Reissue)&num=&view. Castleton, G. (2000). Workplace literacy: Examining the virtual and virtuous realities in (e)merging discourses at work. Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21, 91-104. Castleton, G. (2006). Putting language, literacy and learning to work. In G. Castleton, R. Gerber & H. Pillay (Eds.), Improving Workplace learning: Emerging International Perspectives (pp. 135-150). New York: Nova Science. Comings, J. & Soricone, L. (2007). Adult literacy research: Opportunities and challenges. Cambridge, Mass: National Centre for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Darrah, C. (1992). Workplace skills in context. Human Organization, 5(3), 264 - 273. Darrah, C. (1997). Complicating the concept of skill requirements: Scenes from a workplace. In G. Hull (Ed.), Changing work, changing workers: Critical perspectives on language, literacy and skills (pp. 87 – 96). Albany: State University of New York Press. Derrida, J. (1991). Signature event context (A. Bass, Trans). In P. Kamuf (Ed.), A Derrida Reader: Beyond the blinds (pp. 115 – 132). Hertfordshire: Harvester & Wheatsheaf. DfEE (2001). Skills for life: The national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills. DfEE: Nottingham. Eglin, P. & Hester, S. (1992). Category, predicate and task: The pragmatics of practical action. Semiotica, 3, 243 - 268.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Talk at Work: Creating Worker Identities

149

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972 - 1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Freebody, P. (2003). Qualitative research in education: Interaction and practice. London: Sage Publications. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. Garfinkel, H. (1974). On the origins of the term “ethnomethodology”. In R. Turner (Ed.) Ethnomethodology (pp. 95 – 104). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gee, J. (1994). Quality, science, and the lifeworld: The alignment of business and education. Occasional Papers in Adult Basic Education, 4. Sydney: Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Action Coalition. Gee, J. Hull, G. & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hester, S. & Eglin, P. (1997). Membership categorization analysis: An introduction. In S. Hester & P. Eglin (Eds.), Culture in action: Studies in membership categorization analysis. Studies in ethnomethodology and conversational analysis, No. 4 (pp. 45 – 61). Lanham MD: University Press of America. Holland, C. (1998). Literacy and the new work order: An international literature review. Leicester: NIACE. Hull G. (Ed.) (1997). Changing work, changing workers. Critical perspectives on language, literacy, and skills. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hull. G., & Grubb, N. (1999). Literacy Skills and Work. In D. Wagner, R. Venezky & B. Street (Eds.), Literacy: An International Handbook (pp. 311-417). Boulder Co: Westview Press. Jayyusi, L. (1984). Categorisation and the moral order. London: Routledge. Jayyusi, L. (1991). Values and moral judgement: communicative praxis as a moral order. In Button, G. (Ed.), Ethnomethodology and the human sciences (pp. 23 – 35). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1972). On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 85 – 98). New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston. Schegloff, E. (2007). Categories in action: person-reference and membership categorization. Discourse Studies, 9, 433-461. Schriffin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourses. Oxford: Blackwell. Taylor, N. (2008). Metaphors, discourse and identity in adult literacy policy. Literacy, 42, 131-136.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 13

PERFORMANCE ANXIETIES: GRAMMAR AND TEACHER IDENTITY Megan Short

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT The dominant discourses that animate and circumscribe teaching practice, both enable and delimit, through the propagation of authoritative “scripts”, the types of professional performances enacted by teachers. Such institutionally articulated scripts and the performances they compel, are relays for the exercise of power in that by conforming to and reproducing an iterable model or identity category provided in discourse, citations of the script enact authorised identities principally through the repetition and shoring up of professional or discipline specific norms. The ritualised repetition of such norms thus functions as a dividing practice, marking off the boundaries that separate the legitimate from the illegitimate teacher performance, the proper from the improper, the correct from the incorrect. Using analytical tools developed in poststructuralist theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), this chapter will explore the regulatory functions played by several governing discourses of grammar teaching by exploring how the development of beginning teachers’ performance of professional identity is marked by reference to dominant conceptions of grammar. How teachers are positioned and framed by prescriptive or descriptive discourses of grammar teaching, and the types of teaching performance that are enabled or foreclosed by such positionings, obviously has significant implications for the way in which grammar is taught.

Keywords: Identity, grammar, performativity

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

152

Megan Short

INTRODUCTION …we can read ourselves against other people’s pattern, but since it is not ours…we emerge as its effects, its errata, its counternarratives. Whenever we try to narrate ourselves, we appear as dislocations in their discourse. Edward Said, After the last sky: Palestinian lives

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

There is no ‘being’ beyond doing, acting, becoming. Fredrich Nietzsche, On the genealogy of morals

In this chapter, the way in which pre-service teachers describe their own perceptions, experiences and understandings of grammar provides the data for theorising about the way in which the discourses prevalent in grammar teaching operate as positioning or framing narratives in the formation, performance and maintenance of teachers’ professional identities. The reflections of the pre-service teachers considered in this chapter were elicited as part of their participation in an undergraduate unit on educational linguistics that utilised a critical approach to language awareness. The discourses analysed in this chapter are conceptualised as the ordering frameworks that delineate teachers’ lived experiences and include, among others, discourses of childhood, language education, literacy, social justice. The written statements provided by the pre-service teachers in response to prompt questions, will be considered as substantive texts and, as cultural products or representations, “…constitute systems of knowledge or belief, and in their interpersonal functioning constitute social subjects and social relations between (categories of) subjects” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 6). The relationship between discourse and text is figured in the chapter as interdependent: as regulatory frames that circumscribe ways of coding various cultural products, orders of discourses shape the production and reception of texts which, in turn both sustain and potentially disrupt discursive regularities. The theoretical terrain traversed in this chapter, represents a staking out of the provisional terms of reference of a dialogue between the concept of performativity (Butler, 1990, 1993) and some of the governing discourses that inform substantive aspects of the process of becoming-teacher. The notion of performativity developed by Butler foregrounds the constitutive force of becoming, observing that “identities are constructed iteratively through complex citational processes” (Parker & Sedgwick, 1995, p.2). Such citational transactions are both transformative and legitimating. By addressing individuals as particular types of subjects, or, to use an Althussarian turn of phrase, by interpellating them, dominant discourses generate “scripts” that constitute and maintain identity categories – “competent” teacher, “effective” teacher, for instance. The performance of the script legitimates the identity category by referencing and shoring up a norm concerning the necessary conditions for a given performance to be received and “read” as a “proper” recitation of a particular identity category. The performance is readable, signifies what appears determinate, because it repeats hegemonic social conventions associated with particular identity categories and, in its iteration and reception, the performative act constitutes both the identity and the discursive conditions for its reproduction. Performance thus enacts a double gesture: it both constitutes identities and maintains the boundaries (core and periphery, inside and outside) that circumscribe identity categories in general.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity

153

In nominating that the unit took a “critical” approach, there was an explicit aim to underscore the way in which language intersects with social experience, especially in relation to the teaching experience and, in this, the aim was twofold. The first aim was to enable the pre-service teachers to move beyond the task of merely describing language events, to being able to analyse them in terms of ascendant and sometimes contestatory discourses. Put another way, pre-service teachers were encouraged to look at the way in which language usage and teaching in the classroom might be a site for the reproduction of culturally and socially inscribed relationships of power between the teacher, student and their wider social context. The second aim was to provide the pre-service teachers with multiple discourses or lenses for situating grammar in order that a diversification of possible approaches to language learning practice might be enabled. Opening up a space for possible ways of “thinking otherwise” about language, potentially militates against the effects of language learning and teaching hegemonies and the discourses that maintain their ideological naturalisation, thereby affording an active negotiation with a range of discourses about language and teaching.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK – DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY Our discussion will take as a starting point a conception of discourses as language originative events that have real social effects in that they “impose themselves upon social life…they produce what it is possible to think, speak and do” (Hunt & Wickham, 1994, p. 9). To talk about the ascendant discourses involved in teacher identity and in teaching grammar, it is necessary to locate discourse within a “discourse plane”, in this instance, the field of education, as well as to interrogate the conditions for the establishment and consolidation for the becoming teacher of a “discourse position”, taken as an “ideological location of a person” (Jaegar, 2001, p. 49). Fairclough (1995, following Foucault, 1980) conceives of orders of discourses – similar to discourse planes - forming within and through institutional bodies, such as schools and universities, but cautions against conceiving of them as monolithic discursive structures. Within the “order of discourse” of a school or university, there exists a plurality of ideological positionings and norms that whilst not necessarily always characterised by antinomy, disable the “order” as consisting of a unitary discursive position. Having noted this caveat, it is important to recognise that the institution is a means by which discourses are developed, maintained and reproduced and, as Foucault notes, “…every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it” (Foucault, 1972, p. 227). Identities are fluid, non-linear and evolutionary. Who we are, who others think we are and the social, political and cultural conditions that shape our identities are in continual dialogue with each other. This notion of dialogue is important as it evokes an exchange in which a professional teacher’s identity is in a state of continual formation. Teachers are both constituted and positioned by a range of discourses, as: …the individual subject as constructed within and by her/his negotiation of a range of possible positionings in relation to the discourses which constitute contemporary society and her/his interactions with or experience of these and other events and practices. The sociallyconstitutive discourses construct particular positionings for the individual subject (CrannyFrancis, 1992, p. 7)

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

154

Megan Short

Construction and maintenance of a professional identity is an active process in which performativity – the “living out” and “citation” of an identity – is central. The notion of performativity (Butler, 1990, 1993) is a useful heuristic tool for understanding “ways that identities are constructed iteratively through complex citational processes” (Parker & Sedgwick, 1995, p.2). Identity that is performed is “...not something one is, it is something one does, act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts, a verb rather than a noun, a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’” (Salih, 2002, p. 55). Through “doing”, “being” is established and becomes the foundation of the emergence of identity. Teachers “become” teachers in a substantive way, in and through their lived experience of teaching as collections or repertoires of intellectual, physical, social, political, linguistic, cultural and historical acts and representations. Such acts are not reducible to the animating agency of the actor, but rather represent the performance of specific sets of socially and historically contingent norms or conventions that designate or “hail” the actor as having membership to a particular identity category. In much the same way as a priest’s illocutionary act of pronouncing a man and woman, “husband and wife”, enacts something, brings a particular state of affairs into being as it were, so too a teacher standing before a class and addressing her students, brings into being a certain authorised and legitimate professional identity. Developing a professional identity as a teacher involves an ongoing examination of past experiences and a continual interpretation of current experiences as the teacher lives through them (Kerby, 1991). Connecting a social, political, cultural and psychological past self to a present “becoming” is not, however, a passive process. Derrida notes that,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

…inheritance is not reducible to receiving. When we inherit, we don’t simply passively receive something. We choose, we select, we reaffirm. So at the heart of the experience of inheritance you have a decision to reaffirm, to select, to filter and to interpret. There is no inheritance without some interpretation and some choice (Derrida cited in Patton & Smith, 2006, p. 77).

The process of integrating past experiences into a professional and lived “present” self for a teacher informs the way in which a teacher can “become” a teacher through the performance of multiple possible selves. The process of becoming a teacher is also a process of subject formation, that is, in becoming a teacher, the teacher is also formed as a subject of a specific set of institutional discourses and norms that provide positioning frames of reference which provide signposts for the location of the professional self. A teacher is constituted through the ways in which institutions such as the school, the college, the university organise their discourses as well as the discourses that exist between and within knowledge domains within those institutions, such as the competing discourses about prescriptive and descriptive grammar.

THE PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS A cohort of pre-service teachers in their second year of a four year undergraduate education course in a regional Australian university were asked, as part of their study in an educational linguistics course, to contribute postings to an on-line bulletin board. These contributions were a response to three sets of questions about grammar, their beliefs about

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity

155

grammar and the role of grammar in language and literacy education. The pre-service teachers were encouraged to write freely and the responses were not marked in terms of content or structure. As a result, the responses were candid and raised many questions about how grammar is perceived in teaching and learning and how teachers should position themselves as teachers of grammar in their overall language teaching approach. The pre-service teachers were asked to respond to a series of questions in an online discussion by writing short responses, from 200-500 words. There was no prescribed word limit. They were required to complete a posting for each question as part of their assessment. As a hurdle requirement, there were no grades associated with their participation in the online discussion board. They were asked not to “read up” in order to construct an answer, and they were asked not to give references. It was important that they didn’t frame their thoughts in a formal writing or essay format. The questions that they were asked to respond to aimed to capture their thoughts, feelings and beliefs about grammar.

DOMINANT DISCOURSES – THE DISCOURSE ‘PLANE’ OF EDUCATION AND GRAMMAR

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Flowing from the pre-service teachers’ responses was an awareness of social positioning related to grammar usage. Students were asked to respond to the prompt: “Some educators think that people of different social backgrounds use language differently and that this is not wrong or right, just different. Other have a view that people use grammar incorrectly and they need to learn grammar. What is your view?” Some of the responses provided an acknowledgement of the way in which grammar was used as a tool for social division between those who were “educated” and those who were not. Dominant themes could be identified as those that spoke to the link between socio-economic status and language usage. The following statements provide little equivocation on the issue: …I hate to think this, but really the use of grammar can (not does) convey social status. …I do believe that people from a low socio-economic background will often use grammar incorrectly and I also believe that they should be given the opportunity to learn correct grammar. Regardless of background, every child should have the opportunity to speak grammar correctly. …Grammar can be defined as many things, however I generally view it as something that people use to determine how well educated one may be. …People from Lower Socioeconomic status backgrounds may need to be corrected in their use of grammar if they are to participate in the rest of society. Regardless of how wrong the system is, middle class “correct” grammar will always be favoured in higher education, the workplace and in general conversations with “higher ups” (Pre-service teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

The discourse that these responses are engaged with is one that links differences between membership of a social, economic or educational level to language usage. The judgements that can possibly be made of a speaker who does not engage with the dominant discourse of “correct” grammar relegate the speaker to a less privileged social/linguistic/educational position. Grammar is thus a positioning discourse, one in which identities are assigned and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

156

Megan Short

constructed through performance. In this process, the way in which power is part of an exchange of meaning is evident. Fairclough (1995) highlights the issue of language, power and identity when he observes that, “…it is mainly in discourse that consent is achieved, ideologies are transmitted, and practices, meanings, values and identities are taught and learnt” (Fairclough, 1995, p.219). The discourses identified by pre-service teachers are discourses that have foundational linkages to the institutional discourse of “education” as the discursive “plane” upon which this discourse originates. The element that is of interest to exploring identity construction is the existence and activity of social cognition, as described by Van Dijk (1993, 2001) to be, in part, socially formed and shared conceptions of social events, groups and relations (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 257). The position that some of the preservice teachers held on dominant discourses were reproductions of specific dominant discourses particular to education.

NOT JUST ONE DISCOURSE – SITES OF RESISTANCE A feature of the way in which power was described by Foucault was the way in which power provides for sites of resistance, indeed, “…there are no relations of power without resistances” (Foucault, 1980, p. 142). In the following texts provided by the pre-service teachers, there is evidence of conflict at play as the respondents resist the implications of the polarity of “good grammar/bad grammar” and seek to describe how a dominant discourse might instead be nested within a set of divergent discourses. The pre-service teachers resisted the totalising discourse of grammar and society in the following:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

…I feel that language is a tool used to express who we are; it denotes where we have come from and the type of people we will become. Grammar is of course important…but important to whom? If we go about “correcting” grammar do we take away the sense of identity that language variations like slang have worked so hard to find? …I strongly believe that different grammars within a language define what language is. If a language was meant to be spoken the same way by everyone it would have been defined in a rule book with distinct limitations as to what and how the language is to be spoken by all users (Pre-service teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

Rather than reproduce a hegemony of social, linguistic and educational exclusion based on familiarisation with a particular usage of language/grammar, these pre-service teachers are giving voice to those language users who may be marginalised. Such resistance indicates an awareness of the way in which discourse, material through the interplays of education and language, is constitutive of identities. In disrupting the hegemony of grammar discourse, the pre-service teachers are finding other ways of positioning themselves in relation to grammar. The first respondent aligned language to a personal, intimate view of self, in itself a marker of identity. The “correcting” of grammar is considered a potential threat to a linguistically developed identity provided through usage of a language type based on a particular slang. The second respondent presents multiple grammars as constitutive of language and clearly resistant of a unitary reading of grammar as based on rules. How might the concept of resistance be important when considering how teacher identity is formed? Given that the context of social practices plays a role in the unfolding and analysis of those practices (Gee,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity

157

2004), the possibility of resistance against dominant discourse and practices of grammar teaching provides for a backdrop against which the pre-service teachers are constituting themselves which, as Barker describes it, could be viewed as a “..background of the distribution of power/knowledge through the social domain” (Barker, 1993, p.79). Awareness of a distinction between multiple discursive positions for teaching and using grammar links to the distinction between a prescriptive and descriptive approach to teaching grammar.

DISCOURSE POSITIONS – PRESCRIPTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR The question, “What does grammar mean to you?” elicited responses that indicated that defining grammar was a difficult task:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

…The whole idea of grammar is a bit strange to me. It’s sort of like a mystery subject that you miraculously know, without ever learning. …This is one of the most interesting things about grammar, the fact that you can use grammatical rules everyday and still be unable to describe what those rules are. …Even if we can’t describe or talk about grammar we still use it. …The thing that worries me about my knowledge of grammar is that I am not able to confidently explain my knowledge to others as I don’t have a solid grasp on the rules and techniques. This is because grammar is something that comes subconsciously to me (Preservice teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

Defining grammar is not an easy task as grammar is not a singular concept, but a way of explaining, exploring and structuring a range of language events. Yarrow (2007) noted the paradox that “for a subject that seems to be characterised by the fierceness and inflexibility of its rules, notions of what grammar is, are surprisingly loose” (p. 176). The responses from the pre-service teachers are characterised by a sense of perplexity in trying to define what they know of grammar, as they experience grammar both as a part of their personal language capabilities and as a “subject” area. A gap exists between the two fields of knowledge as they explain that they know grammar in the sense of being language users, but they don’t “know” grammar in the formal sense of a system of rules. A salient feature of the responses from the pre-service teachers which has implications for their discourse position was a tendency to define grammar as being either descriptive or prescriptive. According to a prescriptive perspective, grammar consists of rules that should be adhered to in order to speak and write correctly. A descriptive grammar approach describes the way that grammar “works” in everyday interactions and is “…the central organising system for all the meaning-making resources in a language, and it really consists of a series of options...” (Collerson, 1997, p. 2). The following responses capture elements of both descriptive and prescriptive grammar: …The word grammar to me means the rules that make written and verbal language make sense. It’s about joining words in a logical and appropriate order to create meaning. …To me grammar means the way the English language is spoken.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

158

Megan Short

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

…To me grammar is a means for us to communicate in a manner that allows us to interpret information and understand each other. …Grammar to me is the collective definitions of rules that guide our use of language. …To me grammar is the rules that we comply to, to be able to write a sentence or a number of sentences that make sense. …The first thing I think about when discussing grammar is confusion (Pre-service teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

Prescriptive and descriptive grammars place the grammar-user in different subject positions and call for different performances, as prescriptive grammar relies on knowledge of rules in order for the grammar to be understood and mastered, whereas descriptive grammar privileges the way in which grammar in-use makes language meaningful. The two conceptions of grammar represent a range of ideological variations and as such, prescriptive and descriptive approaches to teaching grammar engage the grammar-user in multiple discourses. The discourse of prescriptive grammar is regulatory and concerned with the limits of correctness in relation to grammar use and is aligned to Standard English. Prescriptive grammar can be identified as a dominant discourse through the way in which prescriptive grammar imposes “rules” for correct usage upon the way in which grammar is understood to work as a system. A descriptive approach to grammar teaching privileges a discourse of grammar as functional, socio-cultural and informed by context. Descriptive grammar is also characterised by the diversity of multidisciplinary theoretical contributions to the corpus (Derewianka 1990; Halliday, 1978; Halliday & Hasan, 1993; Ryles & Campbell, 1998). In terms of discourse being constitutive of social practices and collective and personal identities, prescriptive grammar operates a type of “dividing practice” by reinforcing the notion that there is a “right” way to use language predetermined by correct usage of grammatical structure in speaking and writing and, in order to be viewed as a competent “grammar-user”, there should be an adherence to grammatical rules. Descriptive grammar is concerned with “…the meanings being expressed through language” (Collerson, 1994, p.142) and legitimates the variety that exists in language as a function of its flexibility and responsiveness to context. What types of identity performances as a teacher are enabled or disabled by being ascribed a discourse position from descriptive or prescriptive grammar and how might potential teaching practice be impacted? For the pre-service teachers whose conception of grammar is prescriptive, their own expectations of the limits of grammar as a subject area are concerned with knowledge of rules and performances of “correct grammar” as models for their students. In becoming teacher, their identity is situated in close proximity to a discourse that is characterised for demarcating correct and incorrect language usage. The implication persists of “correct” as equated with inclusion to a dominant discourse and “incorrect” as exclusion from that discourse. Butler notes that a similar normative process is at work in the process of performativity in that, “The normative force of performativity – its power to establish what qualifies as “being” – works not only through reiteration, but through exclusion” (Butler, 1993, p.188). The following texts reveal anxiety for the pre-service teachers when considering grammar and teaching: …To me the word grammar has always meant a certain amount of downfall. …The word grammar is a scary word for me. …I wonder how I am going to teach students grammar when I am still learning new concepts myself.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity

159

…Personally I do not know a lot about grammar. …I presumed that I knew a lot about grammar because I was able to spell and use punctuation…I have realised that I am not very grammatically aware at all (Pre-service teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

Descriptive grammar recognises the variance within English as well as the varieties of English as functional elements of a living language at work. There is also recognition that students will engage with language variation in different contexts (Collerson, 1994, p.142) and encounter grammar in-use that varies from the standard prescriptive form. The preservice teachers who encountered grammar as descriptive considered context and function in their definitions:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

…Grammar is to language what lines are to an athletics track. Grammar is to language what a steering wheel is to a motor vehicle. In this context, grammar is the guiding force in our language. Without grammar, our language would simply be a jumble of letters and words. Grammar is the force that controls and converts our letters into words, words into sentences and so on. It produces meaning from the written and spoken word. …I think grammar is similar to road rules. Without them, the roads would be havoc and it would be like driving in the dark without the lights on. …While we might like to think otherwise, the reality is that language is important in whom we are and our sense of identity and it is used to socially stereotype individuals. To try to change it means to try to change the way a person is perceived by their own social group. …Grammar is the building blocks of what we as individuals need to effectively communicate to others in our society. I also see grammar as that vital link, cog, call it what you will, however, I see grammar as the foundation for good communication (Pre-service teachers’ responses posted on a bulletin board).

An obvious feature of these texts is the use of the stylistic techniques of analogy and metaphor as the pre-service teachers describe a broader, diverse and responsive grammar and theorise as to how it might “work” in everyday lived experience. In these texts, grammar is functional in that it provides light to travel by, it is a cog that enables communication and it is also the lines on an athletics track to provide guidance. There is also an awareness of the way in which language usage signifies social membership and allows for the formation of relationships coupled with recognition that changing a person’s language is a potentially violent act. Being situated in the discourses of descriptive grammar provides a pre-service teacher with a discourse position that draws on the social practice of “learning”. At first glance, there are significant distinctions between the discourse positions provided by prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Neither position is more “free” than the other, neither is less binding or ideologically loaded. The distinction is how the identity is “done” – in a prescriptive discourse, teacher identity is developed through gaining competence within an established tradition. In a descriptive discourse, identity is “done” through an engagement with the immediate social and linguistic needs of the student. Such engagement requires an awareness of the social, political and cognitive context.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

160

Megan Short

CONCLUSION As institutional sites, schools and higher education institutions are the context within which a complex of discursive elements that inform pre-service teachers’ fashioning of “viable” professional identities are articulated, framed and negotiated. Education presents for the beginning teacher a backdrop of competing discourses – historical, social, political, curricular – that constitute teacher identity and it is argued that through the performativity of identity, beginning teachers become teachers in a complex lived experience of overlapping discourse and practice. The work of identity formation, of becoming a situated someone, can be conceived of as performance which cites from an imbricated network of discourses standing in varying strategic relation to one another. It is from within this network of discourses – the discourse plane of education – the teacher’s identity is constituted. Salih (2002, p. 56) notes that, “Identities are the effects of discourses” and the contribution of discourse to identity formation cannot be underplayed. The discourse plane for the beginning teacher can be oppositional, contradictory, and present challenges to the development of a viable teacher identity. It has been argued in this chapter that through the performativity of a teacher’s identity, the teacher “becomes” a teacher.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Barker, P. (1993). Michel Foucault: Subversions of the subject. Hempsted, U.K.: Allen and Unwin. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge. Collerson, J. (1994). English grammar: A functional approach. Newtown, N.S.W: Primary English Teaching Association. Cranny-Francis, A. (1992). Engendered fictions: Analysing gender in the production and reception of texts. Kensington, N.S.W: New South Wales University Press. Derewianka, B. (1990). Exploring how texts work. Rozelle, N.S.W.:Primary English Teaching Association. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Gee, J. (2004). Discourse analysis: What makes it critical? In R. Rogers, (Ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 19-51). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates, Publishers. Halliday, M. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Performance Anxieties: Grammar and Teacher Identity

161

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Halliday, M. & Hasan, R. (1993). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University. Hunt, A., & Wickham, G. (1994). Foucault and law: Towards a sociology of law as governance. London: Pluto Press. Jagar, S. (2001). Discourse and knowledge: Theoretical and methodological aspects of a critical discourse and dispositive analysis. In R. Wodak & M. Myers (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 32-63). London: Sage. Kerby, A. (1991). Narrative and the self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lazar, M. (Ed). (2005). Feminist critical discourse analysis. Hampshire, U.K: Palgrave Macmillan. Nietzsche, F. (1887). On the genealogy of morals (Zur genealogie der moral), trans. Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Parker, A., & Sedgwick, E. (Eds.) (1995). Performativity and performance. New York: Routledge. Patton, P., & Smith, T. (Eds.) (2006). Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction engaged – The Sydney seminars. Sydney: Power Publications. Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Free Association Press. Ryles, G., & Campbell, R. (1998).Grammar in context. Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Said, E. (1986). After the last sky: Palestinian lives. New York: Pantheon Book. Salih, S. (2002). Judith Butler. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, T. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 4 (2), 249-283. Van Dijk, T., (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In Wodak, R., & Myers, M. (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 95-121). London: Sage. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage. Yarrow, R. (2007). How do students feel about grammar?: The framework and its implications for teaching and learning. Changing English, 14 (2): 175-186.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 14

BEING CRITICAL ABOUT METAPHOR Daniel Rolf ABSTRACT

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Metaphor has long been a focus of linguistic study as it entertains us with descriptive and imaginative associations between dissimilar entities of thought and practice. However, the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) showed that there was much more to metaphor as they proposed a fundamental linkage between metaphor and how human beings actually think. It is for this reason that studying metaphor within discourse can yield fundamental, underlying, truths that may not be apparent to the discourse participants and analysts who are focused only on the language and linguistic details. From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, being critical about metaphor and how it is used can yield interesting results about the thought process and ideologies behind a discourse event. For example, this has been shown, to great effect, by many authors when analysing the discourse surrounding the events of the first and second gulf wars. In this chapter we will consider some of the theories developed to better understand metaphor and how it relates to human thinking. We will then consider critical discourse analysis and how the critical analysis of metaphor has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool within this context.

Keywords: Metaphor, Conceptual Metaphor Theory

INTRODUCTION Metaphor, has until fairly recently, been viewed as a matter of language. Describing something by using words and phrases normally associated with something else in an imaginative way. Clearly, the use of metaphor within any discourses is an important area of study given their social and cultural foundations and their ability to “connect” between differing entities. In fact, research over the past three decades has shed light on metaphor as

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

164

Daniel Rolf

being fundamental to human thought processes, in fact “[…] human thought processes are largely metaphorical” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 2003). In studies of metaphor the work of Michael Reddy, in particular his paper “The Conduit Metaphor” (Reddy, 1979), stands out as being a precursor to a paradigm shift in the way metaphor is now understood. In this work Reddy analysed a single example, the language we use to talk about language, in a very rigorous manner and made the observation that much of our everyday English regarding this topic is metaphorical in nature. Prior to Reddy’s analysis, metaphor was considered to be figurative and research was typically confined to the linguistic metaphors of poetry. Reddy demonstrated that metaphor was the basis upon which we conceptualise the world around us and that this has an influence on the way we behave. From these beginnings cognitive science and linguistics have developed a new stream in order to more fully research and understand the systems of metaphorical thought. One of the major changes that occurred was the distinction between what is figurative and what is literal. Prior to Reddy the starting point in metaphor research was the language and its literal meaning from which the true meaning of a metaphor could be derived. Reddy turned this, and thus the classical theory of metaphor, on its head. The conduit metaphor shows how our language for discussing language is, itself, structured rather like a complex metaphor. Reddy estimated that over two thirds of the language used to discuss language is based on this metaphor. Simply put, the conduit metaphor says that a speaker’s ideas are put into words and then sent along a conduit to a hearer according to a “standard” process. The ideas are considered to be objects which can be put inside linguistic expressions, called containers. The containers are then sent across a conduit to the listener where they are unpacked to retrieve the original objects, the ideas. One inference from this is that sentences have meaning in themselves regardless of the speaker or the context in which they are spoken. However, sometimes context is crucial in defining meaning and sometimes a sentence has a meaning that is different depending on who is speaking or the context in which it is spoken. The conduit metaphor does not apply to sentences that require contextual knowledge in order to determine their meaning.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY In their seminal work, “Metaphors we live by”, Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) state that “Metaphors are not mere matters of words” but are mechanisms for understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that human thought processes are metaphorical in nature and that metaphorical thought is key to the understanding of human behaviour in such fields as politics, law and religion where their use is, perhaps, most publicly visible right through to the general discourse interactions between people. This linkage with fundamental human behaviour can be seen in various ancient historical records and even in certain basic animal behaviour patterns and it is quite likely that the foundations of metaphor in human communication have come from the evolution of our prehistoric “animal” pattern recognition, comparison and mimicry behaviours (Premack, 2004). So, accepting this hypothesis, understanding the metaphorical thought processes in operation in certain human activities may give insight into why we behave the way we do, and vice versa.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Critical about Metaphor

165

Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) also point out that poetry has been the source for much of the earlier study and analysis of metaphor, and that this research had been confined to that of language and the use of that language to convey meaning, experience and emotion. Lakoff and Johnson postulated that metaphor was much more than just a linguistic construct, being more closely connected to how we experience and interact with the world around us being anchored in our very thought processes. Further, they state that evidence for this interpretation comes from no less than five areas: generalisations governing polysemy, inference patterns, novel metaphorical language and patterns of semantic change plus experiments carried out in psycholinguistics. The outcome of their analyses is Conceptual Metaphor Theory, a theory based on linguistic analysis that treats metaphors as long lived, stable conceptualizations fundamentally linked to the way we think. In Conceptual Metaphor Theory a metaphor is described by a system that links together a source domain and a target domain. There are ontological mappings between the two domains and this can be represented by referring to the metaphor, or rather the set of ontological correspondences that make the metaphor, with a mnemonic of the form target domain is (or as) source domain. The source domain contains “literal entities, attributes, processes and relationships” (Deignan, 2007) which are connected by their meaning in some way and stored in a related sense in the brain. The target domain is abstract in nature but adopts the structure, at least in part, of the source domain via the metaphorical link. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) identify many fundamental metaphorical concepts where the language is of lesser significance than the source to target associations. One of these is “Argument as War”. They make the point that people don’t just talk about arguments using the same terminology as if they were talking about war but that arguments are fought and won or lost and the metaphor is illustrating the nature of the actions we perform. For example, attacking, demolishing or shooting down another’s arguments convey the “argument is war” metaphor and influence the structure of discourse of argument. If a society were to have a different metaphor for argument, they hypothesise, it would be likely that the discourse of argument would itself be different.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

OTHER EXPLANATIONS OF METAPHOR Fauconnier & Turner (1998) developed a different cognitive framework for the understanding of metaphor. Their Theory of Blending has many similarities with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, for example treating metaphor as conceptual and using the idea of conceptual domains. However, Blending Theory assumes the general conceptual structures from Conceptual Metaphor Theory and is focused on the integration of multiple concepts. This means it has essentially broken away from the linear mapping of source to target domain and the restriction of a single mental representation in each. Also, blending theory research is less interested in the fundamental, well established, conceptual relationships and more on those that are spontaneous or short lived. Now the “domain” is replaced by a “mental space”, a temporary construction in the mind of a speaker which holds general or long lived representations about a situation. These mental spaces do not equate to, but have some association with, a domain in Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Blending Theory uses four mental spaces, two of them having a strong association with the source and target domain of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

166

Daniel Rolf

Conceptual Metaphor Theory and these are referred to as the input spaces. The remaining two are referred to as the “generic” space and the “blend” space, the generic space being the common conceptual structure shared by the two inputs and the blend space being the space where the content of the input spaces interact. The true meaning of the metaphor under study is evident in the blend space. This model was proposed as a method of studying complex linguistic structures where there could be no assumption of a strict one-way projection of concepts (from source to target domain) and where ideas were being dynamically brought together in the mind during discourse resulting in real time metaphor construction and use. As such, it offers an alternative, and perhaps more adaptive, way of understanding the creation and growth of new metaphors such as we find in the Internet and its associated cultures. Looking for deeper connections between metaphor and thought led to “The Context Limited Simulation Theory” which was proposed in Barsalou (1999) where he discussed “Perceptual Symbol Systems” presenting a perceptual theory of knowledge from a cognitive science and neuroscience perspective. An experience yields an effect by causing a pattern of activation in the sensory-motor areas of the brain. This activation gives rise to a perceptual state which is considered as having two components. The first is an unconscious representation of the physical input and the second is an optional conscious experience. A subset of this perpetual state can be captured by selective attention and stored in long term memory. Perpetual symbols are formed in the sensory-motor areas of the brain and are representations of one’s perceptions of an experience. Those symbols that share a relationship are treated together in a simulator that, when triggered, produces simulations of some perceptual component. Language controls the simulator’s output because of associations triggered by certain words. To paraphrase more simply, we have an experience, or experiences, which cause our brains to wire in a certain way. Whole experiences are schematically mapped into a related collection of perceptual symbols and a word can trigger a simulation process based on these recorded perceptual symbols. This is in keeping with the neuroscience maxim which states “What fires together wires together”, referring to neurons in the brain becoming physically associated after an experience causes them to activate. Still at the cognitive level, another theory, “The Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models” theory, has been described in Evans (2007) as being of great use in interpreting the sociocultural meaning of metaphor. Put very simply, this theory considers that words have no meaning but they provide access to the knowledge we have in our minds. Meaning is only possible if a complete utterance is considered together with the entire non-linguistic context. This context information is used to refine the knowledge access process. For example, a word conveys information that allows our brains to perform an encyclopedic look up. This is called the lexical concept part of the theory and yields the semantic potential, that body of knowledge, associated with the word. All of our knowledge is structured in some way and the cognitive model part of this theory describes the structure in terms of knowledge units referred to as cognitive models. The lexical concept gives rise to a cognitive model profile which is a structured set of these knowledge units. A word in an utterance will lead to a primary cognitive model which is connected to other, secondary, models. An utterance will lead to an access route through this interconnected set of models causing resonances between the primary model and certain secondary. It is in this way that meaning comes about. Metaphors involve “vehicle lexical concepts” which say something about “target lexical concepts” causing a clash to occur between the target and vehicle primary cognitive model profiles. A variety of cognitive models are activated in this process leading to more available

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Critical about Metaphor

167

information and thus greater possible resonance. This is a very dynamic process that allows an understanding of the dynamic nature of metaphor use in discourse situations. Perhaps more closely related to discourse analysis than the cognitive theories, the Discourse Dynamics Framework (Cameron, 2007) was developed where thought and culture are key principles. Cameron lists linguistic, cognitive, affective, physical and cultural aspects as being those most important in understanding discourse. Of course, it is the real time dynamic nature of the complex system formed by these dimensions and their interconnections which shapes the discourse. The complex system can be viewed as being made of multiple agents engaged in multiple interactions where social systems, groups or individuals, are defining a specific context. This framework focuses on the face-to-face interactions in real time looking at how meanings are negotiated and how language is used to construct understanding between the various participants. In fact, the participants reach out to each other by trying to take into account each others’ world view in order to achieve the necessary level of communication. Words, phrases, metaphors are all intrinsically related to the context in which they are being used and are owned by all, the speaker and the listeners together. Cameron (2007) shows different types of metaphor phenomena in the context of time. At the shortest, micro-genetic time scales process metaphor and linguistic metaphor are in operation. Neurological activity can be observed (through techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and the brain is processing input in a purely lexical way. Linguistic metaphors are not necessarily processed metaphorically. Moving to longer time frames takes us into the discourse long period, of the order of an hour in length, where several processes are happening. Systematic metaphors are seen to emerge from the micro-genetic time scale. From a socio-cultural perspective groups of people interact in multiple discourse events over a period of time and this may give rise to “within-group metaphors” - particularly interesting because they serve to reinforce the social and cultural connections between the group members. On longer time scales Etymological metaphors act. They may lose their original metaphorical interpretation which is a challenge for those researchers working on old texts as this lost interpretation becomes crucial to their analysis.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND METAPHOR Having looked at the dynamic nature of discourse and metaphor we must now look at the methods available for their analysis. Critical Discourse Analysis considers language from a social perspective and pays particular attention to the context in which language is used (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997). Wodak explains the meaning of the word “critical” in this context by stating: Critical means not taking things for granted, opening up complexity, challenging reductionism, dogmatism and dichotomies, being self reflective in my research, and through these processes, making opaque structures of power relations and ideologies manifest. Critical, thus, does not imply the common sense meaning of being negative – rather skeptical. Proposing alternatives is also part of being critical (Wodak, 2007, p.4).

Critical Discourse Analysis is trans-disciplinary in nature and really describes multiple approaches for analysing discourse, typically seeking to understand situations of struggle and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

168

Daniel Rolf

conflict by identifying power issues. Many different approaches and trends exist all with their own theories, methodologies and associated focal areas). The use of the word “transdisciplinary” (although inter-disciplinary is also used) is quite specific as Critical Discourse Analysis operationalises theories and techniques from one discipline to another (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2005; Wodak & deCilla, 2006). Within Conceptual Metaphor Theory we have the hypothesis that “thought is metaphorical in nature” which implies that metaphor can lead to an understanding of underlying ideologies “whose assumptions may be ignored if we are unaware of them” (Charteris-Black, 2004). Stable metaphors can become ideologies and by critically focusing on metaphor in discourse social and cultural implications can be inferred. Metaphor is an excellent tool with which to communicate abstract or complicated ideas such as can be found in the disciplines of science or politics. Critical Discourse Analysis has been used to great effect in the study of political speeches and texts. As Wodak says: “For Critical Discourse Analysis, language is not power on its own: Rather it gains power by the use powerful people make of it” (Wodak, 2006, p.714). It is common to use metaphor in the description of complex and abstract phenomena, of which war is one example. George Lakoff (1991) analysed the use of metaphor in statements made by the U.S. Administration prior to the commencement of hostilities in the first of these wars. Lakoff comments on the nature of the metaphors used to set out the case for going to war and to justify the costs of such a war. In both cases, especially the latter, metaphor can cloud or hide the reality. Lakoff uncovered “War as a Fairy Tale” as the conceptual metaphor being used to “sell” the war to the American public. As with all fairy tales there is “a Hero, a Crime, a Victim and a Villain” (Lakoff, 1991). In the first gulf war the victim was Kuwait, and in the second war, the Iraqi people. In both cases the villain was Saddam Hussein and the hero was the U.S.A. in combination with the victim. Meadows (2005) used Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Metaphor Analysis to analyse the way the U.S. Administration built solidarity within the coalition whilst, at the same time distancing themselves from the Iraqi regime. Meadows identifies the employment of an “us and them” focus along with the fairy tale metaphorical concept and, as the situation changed on the ground in Iraq during the second war (the U.S. forces were not viewed as the “good guys” by the Iraqi people) so did the nature of the discourse. The “War as a Fairy Tale” metaphorical concept was maintained by “Conceptually fragment[ing] the Iraqi people into subcategories each of which is either us or them” (Meadows, 2005). By so doing, the nature of the discourse has been consistently maintained. Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory at the level of discourse can yield interesting results but when used as part of a Critical Discourse Analysis register level approach O’Halloran (2007) reports that problems may occur. O’Halloran examined a section from a textbook (Lee, 1992) in which a “hard news” item was analysed for metaphor. He identified problems in the analysis and showed how they related, specifically, to the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to a Critical Discourse Analysis register level approach. The theory of register examines the way language varies according to the type of situation in which it is used, looking at what situational factors determine what linguistic features (Halliday, 1979). O’Halloran’s solution is to use “corpus-informed interpretation” as part of his critical analysis. A large text corpus drawn from texts of a similar nature to the text under study was used to look for “collocational and phraseological evidence” which led to a different end result regarding the analysis of the metaphors. Interestingly, O’Halloran draws a conclusion that “To be as conclusive as possible, it must be said that a combination of corpus

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Being Critical about Metaphor

169

inspection and reader response exploration is needed” (my emphasis). The use of a corpusbased approach is developed further by Charteris-Black (2004) in his book “Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis” which develops an approach to using corpus linguistics with Critical Discourse Analysis. Cienki (2005) notes some questions which have been raised about Conceptual Metaphor Theory and how it appears to require English speakers to possess cognitive models of individual metaphors. Cienki (2005) cites Steen (1994) as saying many applications of Conceptual Metaphor Theory are, in fact, making claims “on the level of a hypothesised ‘supra-individual’ ” and, as a consequence, questioning the word “we” in “Metaphors we live by”. However, reference to Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 2003) shows ample discussion regarding the social and cultural nature of metaphor suggesting, perhaps, that such claims are somewhat harsh. Metaphor is dynamic. The old will disappear and new will be formed according to various social and cultural parameters. Yet we learn the new. If we have no model then we must have the necessary foundations to build one.

CONCLUSION Language is a “meaning making process” yet, sometimes, the language used in discourse can hide meanings or “paint a different picture” of what is really happening. Participants in a discourse cannot help but introduce personal biases, because of their social and cultural backgrounds and because of their particular motivations for engaging in discourse. Using metaphor can provide imaginative, interesting, and sometimes misleading associations in discourse which can hide the real issues and distort the power plays which are at work. Only by being “critical” can discourse be analysed to uncover and understand underlying meanings and power relationships and a crucial aspect of this process is the attention paid to metaphorical constructs. Being critical in ones approach to discourse analysis and to metaphor analysis is essential.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 577660. Blackwell, A. F. (2006). The Reification of Metaphor as a Design Tool. ACM Transactions on Human Computer Interaction, 13(4), 490-530. Cameron, L. (2007). A Discourse Dynamics Framework for Metaphor. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphor-analysis/theories.cfm?paper=ddfm Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: University Press. Cienki, A. (2005). Researching conceptual metaphors that (may) underlie political discourse. Paper presented at the ECPR Workshop on Metaphor in Political Science. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~potfc/Granada/Papers/Cienki.pdf.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

170

Daniel Rolf

Deignan, A. (2007). Conceptual Metaphor Theory Theories of Metaphor in Discourse: Contemporary Theories of Metaphor. Retrieved 20th October, 2008, from http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphor-analysis/theories.cfm?paper=cmt Evans, V. (2007). Towards a cognitive compositional semantics: An overview of LCCM Theory. In U. Magnusson, H. Kardela & A. Glaz (Eds.), Further Insights into Semantics and Lexicography (pp. 11-42). Lublin, Poland: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical discourse analysis. Marges Linguistiques, 9, 76-94. Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage. Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (1998). Conceptual Integration Networks. Cognitive Science, 22(2), 133-187. Halliday, M. A. K. (1979). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold Ltd. Lakoff, G. (1991). Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf. Peace Research, 23, 25-32. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2 ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980, 2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lee, D. (1992). Competing Discourses: Perspective and Ideology in Language. London: Longman. Meadows, B. (2005). Distancing and Showing Solidarity via Metaphor and Metonymy in Political Discourse: A critical study of Americam statements on Iraq during the years 2004-2005. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 1(2), 1-17. O'Halloran, K. (2007). Critical Discourse Analysis and the Corpus-informed interpretation of metaphor at the register level. Applied Linguistics, 28(1), 1-24. Premack, D. (2004). Is language the key to human intelligence? Science, 303, 318-320. Reddy, M. J. (1979). The Conduit Metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Steen, G. J. (1994). Understanding metaphor in literature. New York/London: Longman. Van Dijk, T. (1996). Discourse, power and access. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 84-104). London: Routledge.Wodak. (2007). What is Critical Discourse Analysis [Electronic Version]. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(2). Wodak, & deCilla. (2006). Politics and Language: Overview. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2 ed., Vol. 9, pp. 707-719). Oxford: Elsevier.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 15

CONSTRUCTING PUBLIC OPINION * THROUGH METAPHORS Júlia Todolí ABSTRACT

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is widely assumed that metaphor is a salient feature of discourse, with a two-fold function. Firstly, it helps make complex issues understandable to the public, and secondly, it helps promote and legitimize the ideological viewpoints of particular groups. The main aim of this paper is to look into the Plan for restoring the Islamic wall in Barri del Carme (València, 2002) to show how the authors of the plan use metaphors to mystify the reality and to illustrate the discursive resistance expressed by residents and residents’ associations. We will shed new light on how conventionalized metaphors (mainly, war metaphors and disease metaphors) are commonly accepted as natural ways of naming a reality, and therefore function as a powerful device for mystifying the reality and constructing consensus. In contrast, (one-shot) image metaphors and less conventionalized linguistic metaphors, are not pervasive in all kinds of discourses, are not natural ways of naming a reality and can lead to discursive subversion.

Keywords: disease, metaphor, gentrification, marketisation, war

*

The present article is an updated version of the paper presented at the International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis, held at the University of Tasmania (Launceston), 15-18 November 2005. A shorter version was published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis. Theory into Research (pp. 724-731). In Thao, Lê (ed.) University of Tasmania: Launceston.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

172

Júlia Todolí

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION As linguist and as resident of an area of the old city which is undergoing a process of gentrification, I became interested in metaphors when I realised that they are often used to mystify the impact some redevelopment processes will have upon the affected residents. The Plan for Restoring the Islamic Wall in Barri del Carme (Valencia, Spain), for instance, allows to show how disease metaphors function as a powerful device in constructing consensus and masking reality. The plan, which was supposed to aim at the restoration of the Islamic wall and at the construction of some houses and public equipment, affected 200 people (40% of the population of the area), and anticipated the demolition of 16 buildings and the reuse of 17 construction sites. However, the real goal of the plan was to redevelop a residential area into a tertiary one by getting rid of the residents, since the type of equipments that were to be set up in the area was not specified at all. The residents, who were neither asked nor informed while the plan was being drafted, gathered in associations, organized debates and round tables, launched awareness-raising campaigns for the citizens, wrote press articles and proposed an alternative plan that was sustainable and respectful towards both cultural heritage and neighbourhood. Throughout the campaign they were anonymously menaced, their houses were qualified as chapapote,1 they were bought and sold again three or four times by different building societies and their message was labelled as protest song. Eventually, in 2004, they achieved that the plan be withdrawn and a new plan was put forward, which is respectful with most of the existing buildings and keeps the population. However, up to now no budget has been approved and no schedule for an action plan has yet been proposed. At the moment, the only activity that can be seen in the affected area is that of the real estate agencies, who buy whole buildings, try to throw the inhabitants out through some estate mobbing and resell these buildings for twice or three times the original purchase price. In the following sections, I focus on how architects and urban planners try to mystify realities by means of metaphors, and the resistance that residents and residents’ association oppose. The data for this study consists of the urban project outlined by the technical specialists; opinion articles from newspapers published form 2003 to 2005; round tables where architects, urban planners, archaeologists and residents have discussed the project, and leaflets from campaigns organized by the residents’ associations. These discourses are analyzed through a combination of Critical Discourse Analyses (Fairclough 1998, 1992, 1995, 2003) and Conceptual Metaphor Theory as used in cognitive linguistics (Kövecses 2002; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Steen 1999). This study differs from other research projects on metaphors relying on Conceptual Metaphor Theory where I adopt a language-in-use approach to metaphor, where metaphors occur naturally and language users are an integral part of the research. I insist on how metaphors are used to subtly convey a particular ideology as well as on the interactional aspects of metaphors to shed new light on how more-or-less conventionalised metaphors are

1

The word chapapote refers to the oil spill that reached the coast of Galicia (north-west of Spain) and caused important environmental damage to the coastline.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors

173

processed by speaker, since some scholars have pointed to the need to distinguish degrees of familiarity in metaphors processed by speakers (Giora & Fein, 1996; Low, 1999).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

METAPHORS, THOUGHT AND IDEOLOGY For a long time metaphors were seen as a rhetorical device and more specifically as a matter of poetry. Today, however, many cognitive linguists recognize that metaphors play a central role in thought and structure our perception and understanding of reality and that we define our reality. Some mental thoughts are so difficult to describe in words that language users often use metaphors to convey their ideas. Lakoff & Johnson (1980), for instance, point out that many abstract topics that are central to our existence, such as love and death, are known and understood through metaphors by setting a link between two semantic areas or domains: the source domain, typically concrete, and the target domain or domain we talk of metaphorically, typically abstract. Therefore, when we use a conceptual metaphor such as HAPPY IS UP (in the metaphor literature, small capitals letters are used to label conceptual metaphors) we are mapping ideas form the source domain of upward direction (and movement) onto the target domain of emotion. The relationship between metaphorical thinking and speaking is often described by saying that conceptual metaphors such as Happy is up are realised by linguistic metaphors such as “I am feeling up”. Linguistic metaphors are in turn used as evidence for the existence of underlying conceptual metaphors. On the other hand, metaphors are also seen by some scholars as potentially ideological and many of them have analyzed texts in which metaphors are used to convey particular interpretation of the situation or event. This ideological component stems from the fact that a metaphor by its nature sets and equation between the metaphorical and literal meaning that does not actually exist and even though the two meanings must resemble each other, they are not identical (Low, 1988) and some aspects of the topic are inevitably lost. Thus, very often, language users draw upon metaphors to deliberately present a biased view of a situation or event. Researchers, who are concerned with the effects of metaphors, do not suggest that reality can be accessed directly, but they claim that metaphors should not be accepted uncritically; rather, their inferences should be made explicit, and then challenged and alternative metaphors should be explored. In this paper, I will highlight how some metaphors are used to present a particular message, hide some aspects of reality and convey a particular ideology. My key research questions are: which are the metaphors used by speakers involved in some redevelopment processes? Which are the entailments of these metaphors? What ideology do they reflect? And what role do metaphors play in the construction of arguments and public opinion?

METAPHORS WE LIVE BY Most of our metaphors have evolved in our culture over a long period, but many are imposed upon us by people in power (political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

174

Júlia Todolí

advertisers, etc.) and people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). One of the most salient metaphors we live by is the metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR which is why we often talk about arguments in terms of war. Although there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle and the structure of an argument (attack, defence and counterattack) reflects this. Another salient metaphor we live by is the health metaphor, which is when we speak about abstract concepts in terms of body and health and, therefore, we map onto these concepts some properties of animates or human beings. But the most interesting thing is that both metaphors, the war metaphor and the health metaphor, have been related to each other for a long time. In the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance, medicine has evoked military metaphors against disease to promote the idea that illness is an enemy to be defeated and to engage people in a common cause, namely, in a treatment focused on medications. Sontag (1989), on the other hand, gathers an abundant supply of examples on the way we speak about illness in terms of war and shows how doctors, in their crusade against cancer and in order to kill the cancer, bombard with toxic rays and chemical warfare. And vice versa, military operations are seen as hygienic, as a means to clean out fortifications, and bombs are portrayed as surgical strikes to take out anything that can serve a military purpose (Lakoff, 1991). Both metaphors are still alive in our culture and have an important role in understanding complex matters such as economy and foreign policy. The health metaphor is also drawn upon to talk about social problems. Fairclough (1989, p.120), for instance, has pointed out how disease metaphors are frequently used to speak about social unrest portraying the status quo situation as the healthy situation and presenting other interests as attacks on the health situation, and presenting other interests as attacks on the health of society as whole. According to him:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The ideological effect of disease metaphors is that they tend to take dominant interests to be the interests of society as a whole, and construe expressions of non-dominant interests (strikes, demonstrations and ‘riots’) as undermining (the health) of society per se (Fairclough, 1989, p.120).

And he concludes that “different metaphors imply different ways of dealing with things: one does not arrive at a negotiated settlement with cancer, though one might with an opponent in an argument. Cancer has to be eliminated, cut out (Fairclough, 1989, p.120). In the following section I will specifically show how disease metaphors are used in urban planning in Spain to hide a social change, namely, a process of gentrification or redevelopment of a neglected area, and to create consensus about it.

DISEASE METAPHORS Conceptual metaphors are grounded in, or motivated by, human experience. It is claimed in Conceptual Metaphor Theory that we talk about mental processes in terms of physical experience and that the metaphors we use to speak about mental processes are motivated by bodily experience. What is more, according to Boers (1997, p.49), when there are various metaphors available to conceive an abstract concept?

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors

175

The likelihood of a given source domain being used for metaphorical mapping may be enhanced when it becomes more salient in everyday experience. Although bodily experience is probably the most basic source domain for metaphor, people’s awareness of their bodies may vary as well. One circumstance under which the awareness of one’s bodily functioning is enhanced when it starts malfunctioning, i.e., when one becomes ill (Boers, 1997, p.49).

In the project of the restoration of the Islamic wall in Valencia, for instance, the health metaphor arises as a powerful device to persuade people of the advantages and disadvantages of the plan, and technicians and institutional representatives use the health metaphor both to defend and attack the plan. The pro-project technicians, for instance, establish a doctor/patient relationship (and thereby, an expert/non expert relationship) with the affected environment to justify the urban operation. This way, the proposed plan is seen in example (1) as a therapeutic solution to a disease, namely, as a sanitizing by means of a delicate urban surgery although it entails the demolition of several buildings and the expulsion of their residents.2 (1) The redistribution suggests the cleaning up or sanitizing of a district in social and economic decline through the delicate application of urban surgery that both respects and adheres to the existing environs

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The anti-project technicians also use also the health metaphor, but this time, they use the metaphor to make residents aware of the consequences of the operation, namely, the expulsion of the affected inhabitants and the redevelopment of a neighbourhood into a tertiary area. For the anti-project representatives, the plan is a matter of major surgery in (2), and more specifically, a lineal metastasis, which entails extirpation and amputation of urban tissue in (3). (2) But, in addition, I think they travel little, or rather they travel badly. They are incapable of seeing and learning from what is happening in the rest of Europe where, some years ago, they almost completely abandoned the idea of operations of major surgery, a restructuring on an overwhelming scale (…) (Fernando Gaja, architect and urban planner, round table). (3) Although it is not acknowledged, the applied strategy is based on what is known as the lineal metastasis formulated in the 1950s by Oriol Bohigas, which consists of a traumatic restructuring, amputation and extirpation of urban tissues. (Fernando Gaja, architect and urban planner, round table) The same anti-project representative maps the health metaphor onto the affected residents, who are referred to as patients in (4). (4) For the more enlightened and eminent urbanists it is about a surgical operation that tries to kill the patient. The patient, in this case, being the hundred families who would have their houses expropriated and would witness the destruction of the economic and social fabric that keeps the Barrio del Carmen (old town) alive .

2

The sample is written or spoken either in Spanish or in Catalan. In this paper I present the English translations only.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

176

Júlia Todolí

Thus, recontextualisation of medical discourse into urban planning discourse means that the planned urban intervention can be perceived, on the one hand, as a necessary measure to be taken, but also, on the other hand, as an operation that can kill the patient and the square. Therefore, even groups with different interests share the health metaphor at a general level, they exploit it differently at the level of detail.

THE WAR METAPHOR

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Some metaphors are so naturalized within a particular culture that people find it extremely difficult to avoid them in their discourse, thoughts or actions. That’s the case of the so called war metaphor or the metaphorical construction of argument as war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle and the structure of an argument (attack, defence and counterattack) reflects this (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.4). This kind of militarization of discourse is also a militarization of thought and social practice (Chilton, 1996). The other intervening party, the residents affected by the plan, places the urban plan in a situation involving conflict, and thereby recontextualise the situation into a world of war. They use the words war, fight, attack, defence and resist, to describe their situation and actions, they organize barricades and they claim the plan to be withdrawn, as in examples (5) to (10). (5) Participation of the citizens now… El Carme at war! (José Luís March, affected resident, Levante-EMV, 24-2-2004). (6) We are fighting and we will continue to fight, and the administration had better that it too has a fight on its hands (Josep Campos & Toni Picazo, Residents association “Amics del Carme”, Levante-EMV, 3-5-2003). (7) The battle has started, articles in the press, meetings, symbolic barricades, referendums, community suppers, petitions (Josep Montesinos, anti-project, LevanteEMV, 28-2-2004). (8) Throughout these years, the problems have continued (red-light districts, drug dealing, noise pollution...). In spite of all this, the neighbours have resisted (Josep Montesinos, Anti-project, Levante-EMV, 9-3-2002). (9) Mrs Mayor. We are defending one of our human rights, the right to a home. We are defending our homes, our families, our old people, our right to live, our lives with dignity. We hope that our local council and our mayor will defend the same rights (Josep Montesinos, anti-project, Levante-EMV, 4-4-2003). (10) It has been announced that the neighbours are going to reject the plan and demand its withdrawal (Josep Montesinos, anti-project, Levante-EMV, 1-1-2003). In the last decades, the enterprise culture has spread out among the war metaphor and the health metaphor, and nowadays we talk about war and illness in business terms. Thus, the patients have turned into clients (Goldbloom, 2003), and the war is seen as a transaction with costs, namely, casualties, and gains or well-being and security (Lakoff, 1991). In my opinion, there is indeed a hypermetaphor, the business metaphor, invading both the metaphor of war and the health metaphor or overlapping them. But the fact is that we often use them in

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors

177

contexts where there are two opponents or a transaction from one person to another one. The plan of recovering the Islamic wall allows to show how these metaphors (the health metaphor, the war metaphor and the business metaphor) arise together, and function as a powerful device of constructing consensus.

THE MARKETIZATION OF DISCOURSE Another example of naturalized metaphor we are hardly ever aware of is the business metaphor. As Fairclough (1992, p.195) points out, people are not only quite unaware of it most of the time but they find it very difficult to escape from this metaphor in their discourse practices. It is what he calls the marketization of discourse, which entails also a maketization of thought and practice. In the plan for restoring the Islamic wall, the business metaphor is above all used by the pro-project party. More specifically, we can find words such as low activity and substandard vs. potentiality, improve and beneficiaries to describe the current, real situation, and the outcome of the situation.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(11) It’s true that the attributes of this concrete network have, for the reasons that I have given, contributed to the very negative image of the neighbourhood, and also have led to a very level of activity completely at odds with the district’s potential. One has to think of the area’s value as a cultural image, and also through its central location. It has a heritage of buildings, but many of them are in extremely bad condition and, here, extremely bad conditions mean substandard conditions of the basic facilities with many reasons to improve the situation, to improve it for the honourable people who live in the district […]. People, but particularly residents, must be allowed to participate in the process. And, particularly, residents, because they are the ones who are going to be the beneficiaries of the operation, if it turns out well; and the damaged, if it turns out badly (Juan Pecourt, pro-project, round table). (12) But the area that we’re talking about, being the epicentre of Muslim Valencia, has never realised its full urban potential (Juan Pecourt, pro-project, Levante-EMV, 162-2003). (13) The activity that one sees nowadays in the old quarter [pictured], is low-grade and of poor quality (Carolina Járrega, pro-project, round table). The authors talk also about costs, balance, damages and about good business that can arise by means of this operation, as in examples (14) to (16). (14) The first impression is one of large, unoccupied spaces in most of the inner courtyards of the blocks, which permits an intervention with lower social costs (Project. “Modification of the PEPRI of the Carmen in relation to the Muslim city wall”, 2002). (15) The displaced have not been “disadvantaged”; consequently an excellent balance (Juan Pecourt, pro-project, Levante-EMV, 16-3-2003).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

178

Júlia Todolí (16) This is proof that they viewed this [the affected neighbours of other plans carried out in the old historic quarter] as good business (Juan Pecourt, pro-project, LevanteEMV, 16-3-2003).

But the most salient business word and indeed the alleged goal of the plan is to assign worth to the wall. The authors don’t speak about recovering the wall, but they refer to the operation in terms of worth, as in (17). (17) It is about re-establishing the worth of archaeological elements. And when one talks of re-establishing worth and value what it means […] Assigning worth to archaeology is not about the rehabilitation of a particular and placing it in the middle of a park of geraniums, but placing it within the context that gave the original piece its meaning. Through the intervention with the four blocks, what we want to do is assign value to the physical existence of the element (César Mifsut, co-author of the project, round table). In the next sections, I will look into the different kinds of metaphors and show that there are some differences in the way we perceive these metaphors.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS AND IMAGE METAPHORS As I mentioned above, when one conceptual domain is understood in terms of another conceptual domain, we have a conceptual metaphor. These metaphors can be more or less conventionalized, and the boundaries between innovative (or creative) and conventionalized metaphors are fuzzy. Many of the metaphorical expressions we have talked about so far are fixed by convention and are examples of conventionalized metaphors or of what Lakoff & Johnson (1980) call metaphors we live by. This is namely the case of the linguistic metaphor sanitizing, which is used in urban planning to label the redevelopment of a neglected area by increasing the rents and getting rid of the residents or, in corporate discourse, to design the process of increasing gains by getting rid of employees, for instance. Although the real goal in both cases is the wish to increase gains, the aim is seen as therapeutic solutions to a disease, in which the unhealthy situation is taken for granted: when we talk in terms of sanitizing, we are presupposing that something or somebody is unhealthy or sick, and has to be cured. Other metaphors like extirpation, amputation, metastasis and kill the patient, for instance, which are drawn upon to refer to the redevelopment of the area, are extensions of what we call disease metaphors, they are emergent metaphors, they are more creative and their use is limited to certain texts, contexts or speakers. These emergent or active metaphors are more pragmatic, since they are highly dependent on the context and have to do with language use and users within specific contexts. In addition to these cases, which are part of whole metaphorical systems, there are also metaphors that are not based on the conventional mapping of one conceptual system onto another, but rather on one mental image being superimposed on another by virtue of their similar appearance. They are therefore referred to by the scholars as (one-shot) image

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors

179

metaphors, since, through them, we bring into correspondence two rich images for a temporary purpose on a particular occasion3. A popular example is when we say that a woman has an hourglass figure, which involves mapping the image of an hourglass onto the image of a woman, fitting the middle of the hourglass to her waist (Lakoff & Turner, 1989). I have found in the data some image metaphors. The most salient and controversial one is, without a doubt, the use of an ecological disaster in Galicia, namely, the use of the word chapapote (tar) to refer to the buildings leaning against the Islamic wall, as in (18). (18) This will only be achieved through a change of image which does away with the tar of the “developmental brand” and which strives for a link between the (necessarily) current moments with an ever-more distant past (Juan Pecourt, proproject, Levante-EMV, 16-2-2003). Another instance of what I see as an example of image metaphor is the use of the phrase song of protest in (19) to describe the residents’ claims, and therefore highlighting the idea that they are behind the times or are against progress. (19) There has been more reaction: drawings on the walls with hawks threatening the residents, a ‘falla’ (papier-mâché satirical figure) criticizing the administration with echoes of Ana Belén’s protest song, with its calls of “We shall not be moved”, etc. (Juan Pecourt, pro-project, Levante-EMV, 16-2-2003).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Both metaphors are examples of what Steen (1999, p.94) calls “degrading metaphors”. But the most interesting one-shot image metaphors are those used in urban planning discourse to hide the destruction of the urban layout. It is well known that redevelopments of neglected areas often lead to the demolition of buildings and the destruction of the urban layout by opening broader spaces. However, there is a strong regulation that forbids such destructive processes in the old town quarters, as these quarters are the history of the city and have to be protected in order to preserve the collective memory. Thus, urban planners will try to avoid words such as destruction or demolition, and instead of these, they use metaphors like esponjar (“sponge”). Example (20) is very interesting as the speaker, an anti-project representative, unravels these strategies of naming that aim at masking a reality. (20) Normally, terminological confusion is symptomatic of more far-reaching confusion. The proposals for Valencia, like those for Barcelona, where they originated, are often described as spongings. But they are absolutely not. Although these operations have proved resistant to a general identification and definition, I think that these types of projects can be labelled as restructuring (Fernando Gaja, anti-project, round table). The essence of a metaphor is that by mapping one concept or image onto another it necessarily highlights some meanings and hides some others, since metaphors set an equation 3

For cognitive linguists (one-shot) image metaphors are isolated metaphors and therefore they do not play a central role in conceptual organization. But some scholars have pointed out their importance. Semino (2002), for instance, has analyzed a corpus of texts discussing the economic aspects of the European Union and has found out that isolated one-shot image metaphors are the norm.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

180

Júlia Todolí

between two meanings that resemble each other but are not identical. Thus, by using the word esponjar, for instance, architects and urban planners don’t give an accurate picture of the topic, since this metaphor foregrounds the idea or process of opening spaces, which is congruent with the metaphor of the sponge, but hides the destruction of the historical urban layout and the eviction of the residents that often precedes such processes, which is not congruent with the meaning of the metaphor (the sponge). In other words, urban metaphors, like other metaphors, can hide aspects of reality, by highlighting some contents and backgrounding some others. But in the area of urban planning metaphors matter more, because they constrain our lives and can lead to dehumanized neighbourhoods, to quarters without residents, mostly called tertiary areas.

THE EFFECT OF METAPHORS

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

If metaphors structure the way we think and the way we act, it is reasonable to assume that metaphors play a central role in the construction of social reality and therefore they can change reality and construct consensus or public opinion. However, in my point of view, there are some differences in the way we perceive metaphors. Conventionalized metaphors (called inactive metaphors or dead metaphors (Goatly, 1997)) are commonly assumed to be natural ways of naming a reality, as they are pervasive in all sorts of discourses and all languages. On the contrary, most (one-shot) image metaphors are not perceived as natural ways of naming since, through them, we bring into correspondence two rich images for a temporary purpose on a particular occasion. Therefore, these kinds of metaphors are more likely to lead to a discursive subversion. This is the case of the innovative metaphors song of protest and tar drawn upon to describe the protest actions carried out by the residents and the affected buildings, respectively. These metaphorical expressions led to the reactions in (21) and (22). (21) To the contrary, the editing team dismissed the neighbours’ actions as songs of protest, their legitimate right to defend their houses as “riots”, and their buildings were described as tar, fit only for demolition and not worth preserving (Josep Montesinos, anti-project, Levante-EMV, 28-2-2004). (22) The term tar has now come to be used to define those later constructions, a term that searches to find a parallel —and from our point of view, not an appropriate one— with a totally different problem (Press announcement from the “Colegio de arqueólogos” of Valencia). And the same happened in the case of extensions of disease metaphors such as delicate surgery. While the term sanitizing is assumed as a natural way of naming the redevelopment of a quarter or building, the expression delicate surgery had a subversive effect and aroused a set of discursive reactions, as shown in (23), where the speaker makes a claim for a minor surgery; or in (4) (see above), where the plan was seen as a lineal metastasis. (23) We are aware of the major management challenge (and not economic in nature), implied in opting for minor surgery and dialoguing with residents and gaining their

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Public Opinion through Metaphors

181

support (Miguel Ángel Piqueras, anti-project, residents’ association “Amics del Carme”, Levante-EMV, 21-02-2004). Example (24) is very interesting since when the authors of the plan refer to the project in terms of surgery, they are taking up the role of an expert, the surgeon, while the affected residents are given the role of patients and, therefore, are implicitly portrayed as non-experts. Thus, when the speaker in (24), an affected resident, subtly calls the authors of the plan butchers he is degrading them to the role of a non-expert. (24) It is about working with the scalpel, with the chisel, and putting the butcher’s knife aside for other tasks (Jorge Palacios, anti-project, Levante-EMV, 30-3-2003).

CONCLUSION Summing up, instead of constructing consensus, one-shot image metaphors like chapapote (tar) or less conventionalized metaphors such as delicate surgery can have a subversive effect as it happens in poetry since the reader does not remain indifferent to the images being mapped. On the other hand, conventionalized metaphors such as sanitizing are not contested or reactivated by the opponents to counterattack or show disagreement, as they are seen as natural ways of naming a reality.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Boers, F. (1997). When a bodily source domain becomes prominent. In J. Gibbs, & G. Steen (Eds.), Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics pp. 47-56. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Deignan, A. (2005). Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London/New York: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. W. (1999). Researching metaphor. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and Applying Metaphor pp. 29-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giora, R. & Fein, O. (1999). On understanding familiar and less familiar figurative language. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1601-1618. Goatly, A. (1997). The language of metaphors. New York: Routledge. Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

182

Júlia Todolí

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1991). Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. Peace Research, 23, 25-32. Low, G. (1999). Validating metaphor research projects. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and Applying Metaphor pp. 48-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Low, G. (1988). On teaching metaphor. Applied Linguistics, 9, 125-147. Pecourt, J., & Mifsut, C. (2002). Plan Especial de Protección y Reforma Interior de la muralla árabe del Carmen. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana/RIVA. Round Table. Debat sobre el Pla Especial de Protecció i Reforma Interior de la Muralla Árabe, held at the Universitat Politècnica de València, 8-5-2003 Semino, E. (2002). A sturdy baby or a derailing train? Metaphorical representation of the Euro in British and Italian newspapers. Text, 22, 107-139. Sontag, S. (1989). Illness as metaphor and AIDS and its metaphors. Farrar: Strauss & Giroux. Steen, G. (1999). Metaphor and discourse. Towards a linguistic checklist for metaphor analysis. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor pp. 81104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 16

CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THROUGH CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This paper aims to provide a tentative description of how social responsibility is discursively constructed in the genre of corporate sustainability reports, as illustrated by Comalco’s Sustainable Development Report 2004. Far from being value-free conveyors of objective information, such reports rhetorically construct companies’ conceptions of their responsibilities to society. We analyse the Comalco report at both lexicogrammatical and discursive levels. Examining relational, mental, and material processes, we find that the report positions Comalco as a socially responsible corporate citizen, while only partially validating this claim in terms of actual achievement. We also find that the report draws predominantly from traditional technical-business discourses, but that these are juxtaposed alongside sustainability-ethics discourses. Thus, the report exemplifies interdiscursivity that is still in a state of ongoing contestation. While it appears to portray apparently antithetical discourses as complementary, there is little space for dialogic negotiation, ensuring that functionalist discourses supporting an enlightened self-interest ethical perspective predominate.

Keywords: communication, corporate social responsibility, interdiscursivity, reporting, sustainability

INTRODUCTION In recent years, a new genre has emerged among large corporations in the form of reports on social and environmental or “sustainability” issues. A recent study among 16 countries found that, on average, 41% of the top 100 companies in each country published such a

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

184

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

“sustainability report” (Centre for Australian Ethical Research, 2005). Ostensibly, reports in this genre appear similar to financial reports, typically appearing to present objective facts regarding company performance and future intentions. Unlike their financial counterparts, however, these reports have no standard format, leaving companies relatively free to determine what they include and what they exclude. Thus, company report writers have a significant role in constructing the meaning of social and environmental responsibility. The nomenclature “report”, therefore, with its connotation of value-neutrality, may conceal the rhetorical function of such documents, which is to establish the company’s reputation as a socially responsible “corporate citizen” (Marsden & Andriof, 1998). Indeed, sustainability reporting has been described as principally an impression management strategy (Hooghiemstra, 2000), a public relations effort (Elkington, 1997), and even a form of advertising (McWilliams, Siegel, & Wright, 2006, p.5). Nevertheless, it also reflects shifts in societal expectations of large corporations. A genre is characterised by “a system of action that became institutionalised and is recognisable by repetition” (Czarniawska, 1999, p.10), by “consistent patterns of meaning” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p.7), or by “recurring patterns of communicative practices” (Putnam, Phillips, & Chapman, 1996, p.393). Thus, sustainability reports can be seen as recurring, communicative practices that collectively construct meaning regarding the role and responsibility of business in contemporary society. In this article, we analyse how one company discursively constructs the meaning of social responsibility in its 2004 sustainability report.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONTEXT: CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Traditionally, business has opposed discussion of social and environmental issues (Gray & Milne, 2002), and neoclassical economics has further marginalised conceptions of community and social concern (Reed, 1996). Hence, corporate sustainability and social responsibility are relatively new concepts. The concept of sustainability was popularised in the ‘Brundtland report’, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p.43). In recent years, the term ‘sustainable development’ seems to have surpassed ‘sustainability’ in government and corporate discourses, perhaps because it seems to offer the promise of caring for the environment without questioning the desirability of economic growth (Tregidga & Milne, 2006). The Brundtland definition, therefore, has been criticised for being anthropocentric and utilitarian (Livesey, 2002). Corporate social responsibility (CSR), meanwhile, may have origins in industrial philanthropy, as exemplified by Joseph Rowntree (Frankental, 2001). Bowen (1953) proposed that business leaders had obligations to pursue policies in line with society’s objectives and values, and Goyder (1961) advanced the concept of ‘the responsible company’. Since the 1980s, the dominant meaning of CSR has been that corporations have responsibilities beyond those towards shareholders, and beyond legal obligations (Jones, 1980). Nevertheless, corporate sustainability and CSR are inextricably intertwined, and are often used interchangeably to refer generally to social and environmental concerns.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

185

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The extent of corporations’ supposed responsibilities is contested, and may depend on whether business executives take a neoclassical economic perspective, an ‘enlightened selfinterest’ perspective, or a moral obligations position (Moir, 2001). Recent literature suggests that the neoclassical position (Friedman, 1970; Henderson, 2001; The Economist, 2005) has receded, while a “moral obligations” position (Brock, 1996; Gibson, 2000) has never been considered consistent with economic “realities”. Accordingly, the “enlightened self-interest” perspective dominates, manifested in notions such as instrumental stakeholder theory (Donaldson & Preston, 1995; Freeman, 1984) and the “business case” for social and environmental responsibility (Hargroves & Smith, 2005; Hawken, Lovins, & Lovins, 1999; Holliday, Schmidheiny, & Watts, 2002). Because the discourses of sustainability and CSR comprise elements of neoclassical economics and managerial capitalism juxtaposed with previously antithetical discourses, such as environmentalism and community development, their emergence can be seen as an example of interdiscursivity. Interdiscursivity represents the joining, or overlapping, of different discourses into a new discursive order or text (Wodak, 2001, p. 67). Thus, it is more than merely the combination of various texts (intertextuality), since it refers to the whole system of language that draws on (in this case, contesting) discourses (Fairclough, 1992, pp. 115-120). It does not represent a new, stable state, but rather an ongoing contestation, which may “allow for new fields of action” (Wodak, 2001, p. 66). Thus, sustainability and CSR constitute a new, unstable discursive order, exposing ambiguities between competing paradigms and discourses (Livesey, 2002). The resulting interdiscursivity is the outcome of sociopolitical struggles to challenge existing hegemonic relations and “naturalised discourse conventions” (Fairclough, 1995, p.94). Through this interdiscursivity, large corporations seek to demonstrate that addressing social and environmental concerns is consistent with economic development (Dunphy, Griffiths, & Benn, 2003; Elkington, 1997, 2001; WRI, UNEP & WBCSD, 2002), typically publishing annual reports as evidence of this “Triple Bottom Line” (Elkington, 1997) performance. The genre of “sustainability reports”, therefore, exemplifies interdiscursivity, since it incorporates dialectically opposed discourses, such as environmentalism, community, neoclassical economics, and management. However, the prevalence of sustainability reporting between different industries is uneven. In Australia, the mining industry produces proportionally one of the highest numbers of such reports (CAER, 2004), perhaps because of its high level of public scrutiny concerned with adverse environmental impacts and a history of Indigenous dispossession (AMEEF, 2002; Banerjee, 2000; Whiteman & Mamen, 2002).

Comalco’s 2004 Sustainable Development Report Typical of such reporting is the 50-page Comalco Sustainable Development Report 2004 (Comalco, 2005). The company was chosen for analysis because it has publicly sought to be an industry leader in sustainability. In the manner of this genre, the report combines quantitative technical data, narrative text, and aesthetically-pleasing images of industrial plants and machinery, flora and fauna, scenic landscapes, cheerful staff, and local community members. Following a Message from the CEO, a Business Overview, and Performance Highlights, the main section is divided into three sub-sections, under the headings People

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

186

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

(social concerns), Planet (environmental concerns) and Prosperity (economic concerns). This is apparently an adaptation of the sustainable development slogan, “people, planet, profits”, and reflects the notion that contemporary western corporations are subject to a “triple bottom line” of financial, social, and environmental accountability.

METHODOLOGY In analysing the report, we adopted principally an inductive, heuristic approach. We assumed that the report would be interdiscursive, but did not predefine the different discourses represented. We conducted four analyses on a corpus of 18,936 words, considering both lexico-grammatical and discursive levels:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1. Considering Comalco as the actor. An electronic search for phrases containing either ‘Comalco’, ‘we’, or ‘the company’ produced 153 sentences. We considered the processes (verbs) to investigate Comalco’s performance as actor. This lexicogrammatical method draws on Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (Eggins, 1994; Halliday, 1994), in which the concept of verb (be, have, and action) is replaced by six types of processes, viz. material, mental, relational, behavioural, verbal, and existential. 2. Identifying discourses represented in the genre. We searched manually for terms (discourse identifiers) to identify the different discourses represented in the report. This enabled us to describe the interdiscursive nature of the report. Following a theoretical coding approach, we allowed the discourses to emerge from the data (Flick, 2002, pp. 177-185; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). We then compared our classification with the output from Leximancer, software that analyses the content of texts and displays it in a conceptual map (Smith & Humphreys, 2006). 3. Considering how Comalco positions itself as speaker. We manually analysed manually the 153 sentences to investigate how Comalco positions itself with respect to social responsibility. 4. Other textual characteristics. We manually analysed the corpus further, to consider other textual characteristics of this genre.

FINDINGS Considering Comalco as the Actor Those 151 instances where Comalco is grammatically the Subject-Actor1 were selected and the processes (verbs) identified; other processes in the sentence were not considered in this phase. Of the six possible processes, two did not occur (behavioural and existential) and one (verbal) occurred only once. Of the remaining 150 instances, there were 99 material 1

The actor (the person/thing doing the ‘action’ in the verb) does not always appear in the subject position because in passive voice the actor occurs in the indirect object: e.g., “5000 tonnes of bauxite were mined by Comalco”.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

187

processes, 33 mental processes, and 18 relational processes. Analysis of these instances provides putative descriptive information about this report genre, as well as insights into how Comalco positions itself subjectively and discursively.

a) Material Processes Material processes, which are simply understood as ‘doing’ or ‘action’ verbs in commonly understood grammar (Halliday, 1994, pp. 109-112), were analysed for tense (simple past, present, future) and concrete/abstract dimensions (see Table 2). Table 2. Material verbs by tense and concrete/abstract

Past 32

Concrete: 68 Present 27

Future 9

Past 8

Abstract: 31 Present 14

Future 9

Concrete material processes predominate in the report. Most of these are in the past tense, as would be expected in a text outlining past events. A typical sentence is:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1. In 2004 Comalco spent over A$15 million on community contributions… Frequently, the concrete action is delivered as a grammatical metaphor where the verb is changed to a nominalisation [production] with another abstract verb [achieved] introduced (see Eggins, 1994, p.63): 2. In 2004, Comalco also achieved record production at most sites across the business. Grammatical metaphors involving nominalisations are very common in technical writing genres. In the following sentence from a mining engineering report, for example, the verb/process provide is converted into a nominalisation, which requires another verb/process to be imported: The design makes provision for building steelwork to be added if required in the future. This grammatical form helps to produce the effect of a technical or financial report, suggesting the structural and content ambiguity of an emerging genre. The numerical strength of the concrete material process is somewhat deceptive as the ‘actions’ include procedural issues (n=4: e.g., embarked upon…a programme); statements of commitment and philosophy (n=3: e.g., have developed a holistic approach); and strategic and target development (n=2: has set a reduction target). Thus, there is a lack of concreteness of action. Of the relatively few concrete future processes (n=9), the intended action is directed towards setting targets (n=3). The 27 instances of present tense are appropriate to report ongoing activity (e.g., Comalco employs). Abstract material processes are not defined in traditional systemic functional linguistics, but were identified by McKenna & Graham (2000)2. To put it simply, a material verb involves an action performed by an actor. This action (in transitive verbs) will be conducted on a Goal (answered by the probe “Did it to what or whom”) or on a Range (which restates the process or the extent of the range) (Eggins, 1994, pp. 231-235). Thus, The veterinarian tested the horse provides an Actor+Material Process+Goal, whereas “The student asked a 2

There has been on-line discussion of this notion among SFL theorists: e.g., http://discurso.files.wordpress. com/2008/04/sysflinglistabril08discusion-sobre-procesos-existenciales.doc

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

188

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

question” provides an Actor+Material Process+Range construction. In each of these examples, the material process involves a clear action that requires human effort. However, abstract material verbs provide an implied action that is not specific, such as strive, focus (which is actually a metaphor from a physical action), attempt, and endeavour. Thus, they are hard to confirm. For example, if someone says, “I will cook dinner tonight”, there is clear material evidence, or absence of it, to assess whether it has been done. However, if someone says, “I will endeavour to cook dinner tonight”, the absence of a meal does not indicate the degree to which the core process (or verb, endeavour) has been fulfilled. In the report, the most common process is focus; typically, the report says, 3. We will also focus on initiatives to engage and involve employees. 4. …focuses on monitoring and improvement of processes… Other abstractions include strive, demonstrate, and pursue. These processes appear to have the rhetorical purpose of positioning Comalco as genuinely committed to social responsibility, yet the abstraction of the material process makes it hard to test their achievement.

b) Mental Processes Mental processes basically express thinking and feeling. Issues of thinking that involve belief:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5. We believe our ongoing sustainability depends on… recognition: 6. We recognise the importance of safety… and cognition: 7. We identify root causes … are typical of a business report. However, one would probably consider it less usual to find expressions of feeling in a report. This occurs in expression of pleasure (n=2; e.g., Comalco was pleased that). The affective processes (feeling) are reasonably evident in expressing commitment (n=8): 8. Comalco is committed to … or aim (e.g., = hope, wish; n= 6): 9. …we aim to minimise our footprint. Each of these verbs forms a verbal group complex3 that is conative in purpose: 10. We are striving to achieve leading industry practice. Conation connects knowledge and affect to behaviour to indicate the “personal, intentional, planful, deliberate, goal-oriented, or striving component of motivation, the proactive (as opposed to reactive or habitual) aspect of behaviour” and “is closely associated 3

Advice received from Australian SFL experts was divided about whether the processes were in fact mental; with two experts suggesting that “is committed to” is relational. However, of more importance is the notion of conation.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

189

with … volition, defined as the use of will” (Huitt, 1999). In other words, these verbal groups purport to indicate a corporate state of mind that is deliberate and goal-directed at the very least, if not affectively committed to doing something in the future that is beyond conventional corporate financial objectives. Notably, the core process in the verb-complex is not the action (minimising the footprint or achieving best practice) but the intention, belief, or feeling (aim, strive).

c) Relational Processes These processes (typically using verbs to be or to have) perform two functions: attributing (p is the attribute of q: The dinner is cold) and identifying (p is the identity of q: This is a cold dinner). Although there are only 18 instances (Table 3) of this with Comalco as the grammatical subject (called ‘carrier’ when attributing, and ‘token’ when identifying), they are significant because they express how Comalco represents itself. The intensive identifying function represents Comalco as an impressive company (e.g., eighth largest aluminium company), but also a good corporate citizen (e.g., a major sponsor) who is part of the solution, despite acknowledging that it is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases. The attributive possessives reinforce Comalco’s impressive corporate status (owns 59 percent), balanced by its corporate citizenship (we have an overriding commitment). Table 3. Relational processes - Comalco as Carrier (Attributive) or Token (Identifying)

Intensive Circumstantial

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Possessive

Attributive Frequency Example we will be trained 3 and competent Comalco is 2 currently on track we have an 5 overriding commitment

Identifying Frequency Example Comalco is a major 8 supplier 0 0

To summarise, the relational processes present Comalco as both an impressive company and a good corporate citizen. The mental processes express belief in, and recognition of, sustainability principles, at the level of thought and affect. However, the material processes tend only partially to validate such claims in terms of actual achievement.

Identifying Discourses Represented in the Genre Lexical selection can conceal ideology, because it “construes the social order without referring to the system it is construing” (Halliday & Martin, 1993, p.113). Thus, studying lexical choices can inform us of the ideological assumptions within a text. As noted earlier, sustainability reports ostensibly fit the genre of financial reports, purporting to present objective information regarding company performance and intentions. However, a key difference is that they draw upon discourses that appear to be antithetical to the discourses of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

190

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

neoclassical economics and managerial capitalism, presenting implicit contradictions. Reading and re-reading the report enabled us to identify certain terms that could be seen as instantiations of various discourses. We have called these terms discourse identifiers because they characterise a discourse in terms of its ontological components (e.g., an auto-mechanical discourse would include chassis, and crankshaft) and, in many cases, its ideological orientation (e.g., fuel efficiency reducing emissions compared with petrol-heads pushing their powerful machines to the limit). Accordingly, we have listed the discourse identifiers, classifying these into what we consider to be the principal discourses in the report (Table 4). Some discourse identifiers (e.g., ‘eco-friendly’, ‘holistic’) are included here even though they appear infrequently, because the appearance of terms that would not conventionally appear in a company report may signal significant discursive strategies. The coding process provided six major discourses, each with typical discourse identifiers. Three of these are traditional technical-business discourses (Management and Business; Industrial Production; Economics and Finance) and three are sustainability-ethics discourses (Environment; Community; Ethics). A fourth sustainability-ethics discourse, ‘New age’, may be present, but is not sufficiently indicated to be conclusive. The technical-business discourse identifiers (825 instantiations) strongly outnumber the sustainability-ethics discourses (221 instantiations); however, their concurrent presence strongly indicates the interdiscursivity of the report. It can be seen, then, that whole discourses, genres, or systems of language (Fairclough, 1992, pp. 115-120) are overlapping into a new discursive order, allowing for “new fields of action” (Wodak, 2001, p.66). On the one hand, the report comprises discourses of Management and business, indicated by terms such as target and strategy; of Industrial production (e.g., operation, refinery); and of Economics and finance (e.g., efficiency, competitive). On the other hand, the report also comprises apparently antithetical discourses, such as Environment (e.g., sustainable, stewardship); Community (e.g., partner, neighbour) and Ethics (e.g., respect, integrity). The report, therefore, appears to exemplify interdiscursivity, but is still predominantly drawn from traditional management, business, industrial, and economics discourses. Next, we compared the above classification with output from Leximancer. As explained above, Leximancer is a software programme that analyses the content of texts and displays this content in a conceptual map, deriving concepts using an in-built thesaurus (Smith & Humphreys, 2006). Concepts that appear in close proximity on the map appear in similar conceptual contexts in the analysed text (i.e.,, they co-occur with similar other concepts). A map displaying extracted information from the Comalco report is shown in Figure 1.. This map was very stable after 3000 iterations. From this map, on the left-hand side, we can see that concepts relatively new to business discourses, such as ‘community’ and ‘environmental’, appear in similar contexts to more conventional business concepts, such as ‘management’ and ‘systems’. This finding tends to confirm that the report interdiscursively blends apparently antithetical discourses. Conversely, concepts relating to the physical business of Comalco—producing aluminium from bauxite— are to the right of the map, conceptually distant from most other concepts. The same applies to concepts relating to adverse environmental impacts (e.g., ‘greenhouse’ and ‘emissions’), in the bottom right quadrant.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

191

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Table 4. Discourses & Discourse Identifiers in Comalco Report Discourse and discourse identifiers MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS target(s) manage / managing / management system(s) strategy / strategic excellence risk add(ing) value / value-added/ing tools measure(ment) procedure(s) world-class key results areas benchmark INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION operation(s) / operational smelter(s) refinery/ies supply / supplied / supplier(s) mine(s, d) technology

Frequency in report 484 154 91 65 63 23 22 19 16 11 7 5 4 4 264 82 72 46 39 19 6

ECONOMICS AND FINANCE prosperity efficiency economic viability growth competitive(ness) economic performance assets audit revenue(s) investment shareholder

77 20 19 7 6 5 4 4 4 3 3 2

Discourse and discourse identifiers ENVIRONMENT sustainability / sustainable stewardship footprint biodiversity environmentally friendly eco-friendly

Frequency in report 122 105 10 3 2 1 1

COMMUNITY stakeholder(s) partner(s) neighbour(s) heritage host mutual cultural awareness customs side-by-side ETHICS respect responsible / responsibly cooperative(ly) integrity ethics / ethical fair(ness) honest(y) care open equitable

54 18 12 6 5 4 4 2 2 1 45 10 8 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 1

‘New age’ wellness holistic

7 6 1

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

192

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

Figure 1. Leximancer analysis of the report.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It appears, therefore, that the report interdiscursively integrates relatively abstract notions, such as ‘management’ and ‘community’, while keeping the ‘dirty business’ of the company’s industrial processes and impacts at a conceptual distance. The significance here is that, by portraying apparently antithetical discourses as complementary, and by marginalising contentious issues, the report conveys the impression that mining and minerals processing can be entirely consistent with broader societal values and expectations. In turn, this reinforces orthodox assumptions regarding the purpose of business in society: 11. At Comalco, we believe that our operations and our products can make a positive long-term contribution to a sustainable future…. This means our business performance is critical to providing superior returns for our shareholders. Accordingly, when apparently antithetical discourses do co-occur, managerialist and market-oriented discourses tend to subsume the alternative discourses, by providing an underlying, logical rationalization (italicized below) for adopting social and environmental initiatives: 12. Comalco seeks continual improvement in business performance and in its contribution to sustainable development in order to enhance shareholder value.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

193

13. Comalco believes that good health is good business… 14. Comalco is committed to fostering healthy relationships with these communities, as they are fundamental to our long-term sustainability. 15. In order to be successful and grow, Comalco needs to ensure that our business activities are undertaken responsibly and managed to maintain or improve environmental quality. 16. We recognise that our overall business sustainability is enhanced by our performance in non-financial aspects of business, including health, safety and environmental performance. That is, the ‘enlightened self-interest’ perspective, which perhaps dominates corporate approaches to social responsibility and which inheres in instrumental stakeholder theory (Donaldson & Preston, 1995; Freeman, 1984), is evident in the text of this sustainability report. The company’s discursive choices are clearly circumscribed by the prevailing discursive formation of management and economics. The assumption is that good business and shareholder value are inherently desirable, and therefore incontestable, non-ideological objectives. Consequently, the report justifies being socially responsible not for its own sake, but because it is consistent with conventional conceptions of business.

Considering how Comalco Positions itself as Speaker

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

For this part of the analysis, we again analysed the 153 sentences containing either ‘Comalco’, ‘we’, or ‘the company’, to investigate how Comalco positions itself with respect to social responsibility. This enables us to describe more deeply the interdiscursive nature of the report, illustrating how Comalco rhetorically positions industrial processes as consistent with, even contributing towards, social and environmental goals. As noted above, the report draws on various discourses in an effort to portray Comalco as concurrently a socially-responsible and commercially-successful company. Indeed, the report attempts to create an impression of Comalco as able to deliver both sustainability and community development. Firstly, Comalco is rhetorically positioned not as an inherently unsustainable user of vast amounts of non-renewable resources (Jenkins, 2004, p.31), but as actually contributing to sustainability. In each case, there is an assumption that the goal, here underlined, can be realised within the existing business paradigm: 17. At Comalco, we believe that our operations and our products can make a positive long-term contribution to a sustainable future. 18. At Comalco, we believe that aluminium is one of the most versatile and useful materials on earth and is essential for a more sustainable society. 19. Therefore, we are determined to be part of the solution and seek to work with all our business partners towards sustainability. Secondly, Comalco is rhetorically positioned as a ‘partner’, ‘neighbour’, and ‘host’ to the communities where it operates, notions that suggest an equal power relationship, with

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

194

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

Comalco regularly consulting these communities. The goal of each statement is again underlined: 20. Wherever Comalco operates, our vision is to be the preferred partner for communities. 21. We set out to build enduring relationships with our neighbours characterised by mutual respect, active partnership and long-term commitment. 22. This will mean sitting down with members of the community and other interested parties to listen to their views on what we are doing and how we report our progress. 23. Wherever we operate we will take care to engage our host communities…. Significantly, these are promissory statements, with no declared timeframe. Because they are not verifiable statements of achievement, they are very difficult to challenge. Moreover, Comalco does not explain what it means by “community”. In practice, when minerals companies talk of “community engagement”, they are mostly referring to communications with local residents. Typically, such communications comprise newsletters, information sessions and complaints responses (Beach, Parsons, Brereton, & Paulsen, 2005). However, “community” is a highly contested term (Burkett, 2001; Hopper, 2003; Little, 2002; McKenna, 2005), and the absence of definition may incline the reader to imagine “community” as a shared dream of living among friendly, sympathetic, trusting, mutually supportive people (Bauman, 2001), a nostalgic, idealised simulacrum, rather than a really existing community. The polysemic nature of the word “community”, therefore, enables companies to make affirming statements without providing tangible evidence of enhancing community wellbeing.

Other Textual Characteristics

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Further close analysis of the report’s textual characteristics suggested that two other discursive effects are present: technocratisation and reification.

Technocratising Social Responsibility Reflecting the strategic management foundations of stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984), social responsibility is progressively being incorporated into conventional business notions of risk assessment, measurement, performance, and systems. In particular, despite suggestions that, in some contexts, measurement is meaningless (Clegg & Hardy, 1996), managers increasingly strive to “measure” social impacts, perpetuating the adage, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Indeed, attempts to measure social impacts of business in ‘Western’ societies can be traced to Myrick (1941), suggesting a long and persistent effort to translate social phenomena into “manageable” language. Comalco’s report provides plentiful examples of terms, phrases, and clauses that suggest this technocratisation, such as: 24. targets for safety performance; 25. performance and achievement in the area of environmental stewardship;

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

195

26. key results areas (KRAs), which include specific one and five year targets for selected performance indicators; 27. the model that will integrate our health, safety and environmental management systems; 28. engagement tools. These examples feature some of the linguistic features of technocratic language (McKenna & Graham, 2000). These include the use of nominals and nominal groups to classify objects and things (performance; achievement; key results areas (KRAs); performance indicators; management systems; engagement tools). Many of these become mantric nostrums, “abstract notions that obscure real events,” and … are used over and over in public discourse performance” (p.235). Combined, these help to reduce human agency in the technocratic process. Comalco thus technocratises its approach, implying that social responsibility can be achieved via technological advancement and management systems, and that progress towards it can be measured. The significance here is that technocratic discourse works to defend power interests through a specific political and economic agenda (McKenna & Graham, 2000). It also assumes that the current western economic paradigm, characterised by economic globalisation, individual libertarianism, mass production, and competition, need not be challenged (Korhonen, 2002). Such a challenge would be paradigmatically inconsistent, and thus cannot be stated in the report.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Reification While social responsibility is an abstract concept, Comalco does provide some tangible evidence of actions that could be described as exemplifying social responsibility. For example: 29. In 2004, Comalco spent over A$15 million on community contributions in areas such as commercial initiatives, community investments and charitable gifts. 30. In 2004, Comalco committed an additional $1 million to the Comalco Community Fund for the Gladstone Region for distribution over the next three years. 31. In conjunction with the community, Comalco Weipa has set employment targets for Local Aboriginal People. However, the tendency to account quantitatively for actions and relationships can lead to the problem of reification (Lukács, 1971). That is, when social responsibility is measured by, for example, financial donations and Indigenous employment targets, the whole notion of social responsibility is assumed to be reducible to quantifiable ‘key performance indicators’. This phenomenon prevents deeper reflexivity, and hinders dialogic negotiation, concerning the responsibilities of business in contemporary society. This leaves no space to contest either the adequacy of the numbers concerned, or more abstract dimensions of social relationships such as trust, mutuality, and respect.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

196

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This paper set out to provide a tentative description of how social responsibility is constructed in the genre of corporate sustainability reports, as illustrated by Comalco’s Sustainable Development Report 2004. The report’s features can be described at a linguistic, genre, and discourse level.

Linguistic Features The linguistic features incorporate the lexis and the grammatical characteristics. 1. Material processes (or action verbs) predominate in sentences where the company is the actor. Concrete processes outnumber abstract ones. Abstract processes often simply function in the normal technical fashion of using grammatical metaphors [i.e., the action verb is changed to a nominalisation]. 2. The use of abstract material processes, which are strongly represented, presents implied non-specific actions such as strive and focus that are hard to confirm. They allow the company to position itself rhetorically as genuinely committed to some ideal, while making it difficult to test actual achievement. These processes occur in complex verbal groups such strive to reduce emission levels. The central process is the striving rather than the reduction. 3. Abstract material processes and mental processes are generally goal-directed, and have a conative purpose indicating intention and volition. 4. Mental processes, which express thinking and feeling, are present in a relatively limited way. Thinking-based processes involve belief (we believe), recognition (we recognise), and cognition (we identify), and are typical of a business report. Affective processes are evident in expressing commitment. 5. Relational processes allow the organisation to represent itself in a positive way using attribution.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Genre features 1. The report ostensibly fits the genre of financial reports, purporting to present objective information regarding company performance and intentions. 2. The report displays the linguistic features of technocratic language. These include the use of nominals and nominal groups to classify objects and things, many of which become mantric nostrums and which reduce human agency. 3. Inherent in this genre is the reification of actions and relationships. This hinders dialogic negotiation about the responsibilities of business, about the adequacy of the company’s approach, and about more abstract dimensions of social relationships such as trust, mutuality, and respect.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

197

Discourse Features Discourse identifiers characterise a discourse in terms of its ontological components and its ideological orientation. When discourse identifiers overlap into other discursive orders, new fields of action are created. The effect is to portray apparently antithetical discourses as complementary. Nevertheless, the report shows a preponderance of managerial, industrial, and economic discourse identifiers over environmental and community identifiers. ‘Corporate social responsibility’ represents an unstable discursive order, in which the social responsibilities of business, and the appropriate content of reports in this emerging genre, remain contestable. Accordingly, in such reports, companies are relatively free to construct their own understanding of social responsibility, with little dialogic negotiation. Such documents could form part of a company’s integrated marketing strategy to position it benignly as a responsible corporate citizen. In this report, Comalco rhetorically positions itself in this way, but in a way that is predominantly abstract and promissory. An important feature of ideology is to cast history in a certain way or to ignore it. Here, the historical record is for the previous year. There is no acknowledgement of the mining industry’s adverse environmental record or its brutal relationship with Indigenous people. This ahistorical context limits the potential for genuine dialogue. Three limitations with this study can be identified. Firstly, whereas we have examined only verbal text, social responsibility, as a discursive phenomenon, can be seen as multimodal (Iedema & Wodak, 1999). Thus, a more complete understanding also requires attention to visual text (Jameson, 2000, p.33). Indeed, Graves, Flesher, & Jordan (1996) argue that visual design has become central to company reports, functioning rhetorically to assert certain values, ideologies, and truth claims. Secondly, as this analysis examines only one document, its findings are not generalisable, but they do provide some possible lines of enquiry. Thirdly, as such reports form part of a suite of social responsibility ‘dialogue’ (which may also include websites, planning documents, newsletters, and community meetings), they should be understood as part of an overall communicative strategy. Nonetheless, this study provides a useful starting point for future analysis.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation (AMEEF). (2002). Facing the future: The report of the MMSD Australia project. Melbourne: AMEEF. Banerjee, S. B. (2000). Whose land is it anyway? National interest, Indigenous stakeholders and colonial discourses: The case of the Jabiluka uranium mine. Organization & Environment, 13(1), 3-38. Bauman, Z. (2001). Community: Seeking safety in an insecure world. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beach, R., Parsons, R., Brereton, D., & Paulsen, N. (2005, 14-17 August). Engaging on the ground: Site-level community engagement practices in the Australian minerals industry. Paper presented at the International Conference on Engaging Communities, Brisbane. Bowen, H. R. (1953). Social responsibilities of the businessman. New York: Harper & Row.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

198

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

Brock, G. (1996). Meeting needs and business obligations: An argument for the libertarian skeptic. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(6), 695-702. Burkett, I. (2001). Traversing the swampy terrain of postmodern communities: Towards theoretical revisionings of community development. Journal of Social Work, 4(3), 233246. Centre for Australian Ethical Research. (2005). The state of sustainability reporting in Australia 2005: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage. Centre for Australian Ethical Research. (2004). The state of sustainability reporting in Australia 2004: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage. Clegg, S. R., & Hardy, C. (1996). Introduction: Organizations, organization and organizing. In S. R. Clegg & C. Hardy (Eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies (pp. 1-28). London: Sage. Comalco. (2005). Sustainable Development Report 2004. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://comalco.migrate.f5.com.au/document_get.aspx?id=520. Czarniawska, B. (1999). Writing management: Organization theory as a literary genre. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, T., & Preston, L. E. (1995). The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 65-91. Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S. (2003). Organizational change for corporate sustainability: A guide for leaders and change agents of the future. London: Routledge. Eggins, S. (1994). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics. London: Pinter Publishers. Elkington, J. (1997). Cannibals with Forks: The triple bottom line of 21st century business. Oxford: Capstone. Elkington, J. (2001). The Chrysalis Economy: How citizen CEOs and corporations can fuse values and value creation. Oxford: Capstone. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The critical study of language. Harlow: Longman. Flick, U. (2002). An introduction to qualitative research (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Frankental, P. (2001). Corporate social responsibility - a PR invention? Corporate Communications, 6(1), 18. Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Marshfield, MA: Pitman. Friedman, M. (1970, September 13). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine, pp. 32, 33, 122, 124 & 126. Gibson, K. (2000). The moral basis of stakeholder theory. Journal of Business Ethics, 26(3), 245-257. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine. Goyder, G. (1961). The responsible company. Oxford: Blackwell. Graves, O. F., Flesher, D. L., & Jordan, R. E. (1996). Pictures and the bottom line: The television epistemology of U.S. annual reports. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 21(1), 57-88.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Constructing Social Responsibility through Corporate Sustainability Reporting

199

Gray, R., & Milne, M. J. (2002). Sustainability reporting: Who's kidding whom? Retrieved April 11, 2005, from http://www.accaglobal.com/pdfs/environment/newsletter/ gray_milne.pdf Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing Science: Literacy and discursive power. London: Falmer Press. Hargroves, K. C., & Smith, M. H. (Eds.). (2005). The natural advantage of nations: Business opportunities, innovation, and governance in the 21st century. London: Earthscan. Hawken, P., Lovins, A., & Lovins, L. H. (1999). Natural capitalism: Creating the next industrial revolution. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Henderson, D. (2001). The case against 'Corporate Social Responsibility'. Policy, 17(2), 2832. Holliday, C. O., Schmidheiny, S., & Watts, P. (2002). Walking the Talk: The business case for sustainable development. Sheffield: Greenleaf. Hooghiemstra, R. (2000). Corporate communication and impression management: New perspectives why companies engage in corporate social reporting. Journal of Business Ethics, 27, 55-68. Hopper, P. (2003). Rebuilding communities in an age of individualism. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Huitt, W. (1999). Conation as an important factor of mind. Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/conation.html Iedema, R., & Wodak, R. (1999). Introduction: Organizational discourses and practices. Discourse and Society, 10(1), 5-19. Jameson, D. A. (2000). Telling the investment story: A narrative analysis of shareholder reports. The Journal of Business Communication, 37(1), 7-38. Jenkins, H. (2004). Corporate social responsibility and the mining industry: Conflicts and constructs. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 11, 23-34. Jones, T. M. (1980). Corporate social responsibility revisited, redefined. California Management Review, 22(2), 59-67. Korhonen, J. (2002). The dominant economics paradigm and corporate social responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 9(1), 67-80. Little, A. (2002). The Politics of Community: Theory and practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Livesey, S. M. (2002). The discourse of the middle ground. Management Communication Quarterly, 15(3), 313-349. Lukács, G. (1971). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics (R. Livingstone, Trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Marsden, C., & Andriof, J. (1998). Towards an understanding of corporate citizenship and how to influence it. Citizenship Studies, 2(2), 329-352. Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2007). Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the clause (2nd ed.). London: Continuum. McKenna, B. J. (2005, 14-17 August). What is this thing called community? A communication perspective. Paper presented at the International Conference on Engaging Communities, Brisbane.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

200

Richard Parsons and Bernard J. McKenna

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

McKenna, B. J., & Graham, P. (2000). Technocratic discourse: A primer. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 30(3), 223-251. McWilliams, A., Siegel, D. S., & Wright, P. M. (2006). Corporate social responsibility: Strategic implications. Journal of Management Studies, 43(1), 1-18. Moir, L. (2001). What do we mean by corporate social responsibility? Corporate Governance, 1(2), 16-22. Myrick, D. (1941, September 1). Measuring industry's "Social Performance"; TNEC report outlines seven tests and recommends practical application. Barron's (1921-1942), p. 7. Putnam, L. L., Phillips, N., & Chapman, P. (1996). Metaphors of communication and organization. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy & W. R. Nord (Eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies (pp. 395-408). London: Sage. Reed, M. (1996). Organizational theorizing: A historically contested terrain. In S. R. Clegg & C. Hardy (Eds.), Handbook of Organization Studies (pp. 31-56). London: Sage. Smith, A. E., & Humphreys, M. S. (2006). Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping. Behavior Research Methods, 38(2), 262-279. The Economist. (2005, January 22). The good company: Capitalism and ethics. (A sceptical look at corporate social responsibility) (Industry Overview). The Economist, 374, 9. Tregidga, H., & Milne, M. J. (2006). From sustainable management to sustainable development: A longitudinal analysis of a leading New Zealand environmental reporter. Business Strategy and the Environment, 15, 219-241. Whiteman, G., & Mamen, K. (2002). Meaningful consultation and participation in the mining sector? A review of the consultation and participation of Indigenous peoples within the international mining sector. Ottawa: The North-South Institute. Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 63-94). London: Sage. World Commission for Environment and Development [WCED]. (1987). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Resources Institute [WRI], United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], & World Business Council for Sustainable Development [WBCSD]. (2002). Tomorrow's markets: Global trends and their implications for business: WRI, UNEP & WBCSD.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 17

MUSEUMS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: DISENTANGLING EXHIBITION NARRATIVES Sotiria Grek ABSTRACT

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This paper examines the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the field of museum and gallery education, and in particular in a comparative study of adult education policies and practices in four museums and galleries in Scotland. CDA was used in this research in order to examine documentation derived from the field of investigation, i.e., mission statements, educational policies, promotional leaflets, as well as museum and gallery exhibits themselves. This chapter examines an indicative example of such data, in order to make explicit how CDA can cast light on the ways different discourses (e.g., learning discourse and market discourse) interrelate and consequently often define policy and practice in museum education in the UK today. The chapter argues that museum and gallery contexts form a particularly interesting discursive genre that casts light on the explanatory connections between museum exhibitions, education and social relations of power.

Keywords: museum, interdiscursivity

discursive

genre,

museology,

enterprise

culture,

narrative,

INTRODUCTION This paper explores the process of conducting research in the field of museum and gallery education, utilizing aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) within the methodological framework of critical ethnography. It is constructed around the author’s doctoral research, a comparative study of adult education policies and practices in four museums and galleries in Dundee, a small city on the east coast of Scotland.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

202

Sotiria Grek

Building on critical theory and the work of Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas, this research uses CDA methods in order to examine documentation derived from the field of investigation. The paper discusses an indicative example of such data, in order to make explicit how CDA can cast light on the ways different discourses (e.g., learning discourse and market discourse) interrelate and, consequently, how this influences policy and practice in museum education in the UK today. However, the main focus of this paper is the application of aspects of CDA in the examination of exhibition narratives. It is argued that museum displays form a particularly interesting discursive genre, since, especially in most contemporary museums, they combine the visual (artifacts/ artworks) and the textual (text panels/ video shows/ guides). A specific aspect of an exhibition is examined, in order to look at the ways such exhibition narratives can be ‘disentangled’ through the application of CDA. The paper concludes by drawing on the experiences of applying aspects of CDA in the research of the museum field, to suggest some explanatory connections between museum exhibitions, education and social relations of power.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Critical research, according to Horkheimer (1972), is never satisfied with simply increasing knowledge. It is political, in the sense that it becomes a transformative endeavour. “Thus critical researchers enter into an investigation with their assumptions on the table, so no one is confused concerning the epistemological and political baggage they bring with them to the research site” (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994, p.140). A critical theory framework requires the utilisation of research methods that can offer a critique of the agents’ understandings, an explanation of the reasons those understandings keep on being employed, and possibly an alternative interpretation of the agents’ identities, their capacities and real interests (Fay, 1987). This study looks at museum adult education policies and practices. Despite the claim for a “new museology”1 (Vergo, 1989) that would displace the museum from its authoritative standing and the sincere efforts of many museum workers towards realising this, this ‘new museum’ faces difficult times, competing demands and cumulative pressures for scholarship, education, social inclusion, representation, participation, regeneration —the list can go on. Since the 1980s, UK museums have experienced a severe decline in funding. The 1979 to 1996 Conservative government’s emphasis on the economic role museums were to play became the impetus for a drive towards marketing and commercialisation of the museum experience. Financial constraints forced museums to adopt new business models in order to improve their management; museums began to see themselves as part of the tourist industry and the heritage experience. The concept of ‘enterprise culture’ was introduced to the arts and cultural organisations, whereas at the same time fierce competition for visitors in the wider leisure market led museums to improve the “visitor experience” (McLean, 1993). Therefore, museums re-oriented their emphasis from the elitist (and numerically low) public interest in research and scholarship, for the sake of attracting ‘multiple audiences’, increasing 1

For a critique of the ‘new museology’, see also Ross, 2004.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis

203

“participation” and “diversity”. By adopting the principles and methods of the market, museums experienced the evolution from product-centred to consumer-centred marketing: after improving the product —new displays, interactive exhibits, cafes, parking spaces and museum shops— they went on to analyse visitors’ needs, characteristics and perceptions —a marketing centred on demand (Kawashima,1998). Nevertheless, most museums have always been portraying a version of the world that belongs to the few. They show/ed what was considered precious and rejected the ordinary, the popular, the vulgar and the “low”. People from all walks of life, but primarily from higher educational and financial backgrounds (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1991) would visit them, knowing more or less what to expect —visitor demographics, according to recent research have not changed dramatically (Hooper-Greenhill and Moussouri, 2001). Thus, what has brought the discourses of learning, access, inclusion, participation and the like into core “performance indicators” for museums? Was this an internal, self-generated development in the museum world itself? Was it subject to the new postmodernist thinking of relativism and the celebration of the agent? Or, was it itself a consequence of transforming the public domain into the sphere of the entrepreneurial? Is it an opposition to the trend established in the 1980s or an extension of it?

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

MUSEUMS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Even though CDA deals principally with language, Fairclough has emphasized the need to incorporate visual images and sound, as other semiotic “texts” (1995); a similar synthesis of script and image is applied by museums and galleries in constructing their exhibition narratives. Regarding the mode of analysis used, there are three dimensions of every “discursive event”2: the textual level, where content and form are analysed; the level of discursive practice, i.e., the socio-cognitive aspects of text production and interpretation; and finally, the level of social practice, related to the different level of institutional or social context. In this research, aspects of CDA are utilised in examining the displays of the museums researched; how narratives are built, what types of messages are put together and across through the use of text panels, video shows, as well as specific choices of artefacts and artworks. Prior to the discussion of the ways museum narratives can be ‘disentangled’ through CDA, I would like to briefly argue for the possibility of using CDA methods in order to examine documentation derived from the museums under investigation. Again, this study adopts the three-level examination analysed above: looking at the specific form and content of the text in question, linking it to other, related discourses and their interpretation, and ultimately attempting to contextualise it in the wider social and historical circumstances in which it develops. 2

Meaning, ‘instance of language use’ (Titscher 2000, p.147). Ernesto Laclau has also commented: ‘By ‘the discursive’ I understand nothing which in a narrow sense relates to texts but the ensemble of phenomena of the social production of meaning on which society as such is based. It is not a question of regarding the discursive as a plane or dimension of the social but as having the same meaning as the social as such…Subsequently, the non discursive is not opposite to the discursive is if one were dealing with two different planes because there is nothing societal that is determined outside the discursive. History and society are, therefore, an unfinished text (1981).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

204

Sotiria Grek

Fairclough talks about interdiscursivity, examining how discourses and genres blend, forming bridges between texts and contexts: in rather stable and traditional societies, where social conventions are highly respected, texts are semantically more homogeneous than in less stable ones, where texts can be rather heterogeneous, linking different discourses together. Fairclough gives the example of documentary texts, where information and entertainment are combined (Titscher, 2000). One can find similar examples in the ways a market discourse has interdiscursively penetrated the language of education and culture: Dundee has long recognised that its cultural activities have the capacity to fulfil a crucial role in improving the quality of life of its citizens and tackling social exclusion. They promote a positive image of the city, contribute to economic regeneration, retain skills, attract jobs, provide opportunities for voluntary and community participation and stimulate lifelong learning….The benefits of a local cultural strategy are that it relates to the City’s corporate policies and objectives. It provides a clear cultural vision which focuses on people’s needs and aspirations, defines priorities and assists in reconciling competing demands (Dundee City Council Cultural Strategy 2002-2006, p.3, my emphasis).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Clearly, what is found here is a growing tendency to move from institutional identities to a stronger investment in the construction of an entrepreneurial identity (Fairclough, 1993). Increasingly, cultural policies, and especially museum education policies, are adopting more of a promotional genre of language, rather than one that requires critical thinking or is based on any form of dialogue with its readers/ citizens. This is in accordance with the more general emergence of the new managerialism in the cultural sector ⎯the necessity to respond to the economic imperatives of the new “enterprise culture” as discussed above. According to the document quoted earlier, the Dundee City Council Cultural Strategy “…is arranged under three Aims, seven Strategic Objectives, twenty one Key Areas and over one hundred Action Points” (Dundee City Council Cultural Strategy 2002-2006, p.5). Such a “listing” syntax of language is reader-friendly, but it is also reader-directive: any links explaining the argument behind the “objective” are lost in such a monologue, where no space is left for the counterargument. Instead, a clear divide is set between “those who are making all these assertions, and those who are addressed at — those who tell and those who are told, those who know and those who don’t” (Fairclough 2001, p.229). According to Bourdieu, Linguistic exchange … is also an economic exchange which is established within a particular symbolic relation of power between a producer, endowed with a certain linguistic capital, and a consumer (or a market), and which is capable of procuring a certain material or symbolic profit. In other words, utterances are not only (save in exceptional circumstances) signs to be understood and deciphered; they are also signs of wealth, intended to be evaluated and appreciated, and signs of authority, intended to be believed and obeyed (2002, p.129).

Likewise, exhibition narratives, which use not only language but also images and objects —and therefore might even require specific deciphering of aesthetic forms—are not purely informative. The poetics of exhibitionary language is a unique communicating style, laden with social value and symbolic efficacy. It is hoped that CDA can therefore unveil the hidden “text” involved in ‘meaning-making’ in museums; it deconstructs the different layers of meaning by imposing a critical questioning of the visual communication. Adapting

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis

205

Fairclough’s model of text and discourse analysis (1992), the following schema for exhibition interpretation appears:

Exhibition From Description (exhibition analysis)

Discourse Practice: Process of meaning-making To Interpretation (learning process analysis) Sociocultural practice (situational, institutional, societal): conditions of meaning making and interpretation To Explanation (social analysis)

Source: Adapted from Janks, 2002.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

By starting from the analysis of a specific display, the researcher can move to the interpretivist model of looking at how people actively produce meanings and make sense of them on the basis of shared ideas and pre-knowledge. Finally, the analysis widens to a macrosociology of education and culture, by examining the socio-historical conditions that govern meaning production and learning processes in museums (Fairclough, 1992). Every phase of analysis is embedded in the previous one, emphasising their interdependence and allowing the researcher to move back and forth between the three strata of examination. According to Fairclough, there are two types of interpretation: Interpretation-1 is an inherent part of ordinary language use: make meaning from/with spoken or written texts….Interpretation-2 is a matter of analysts seeking to show connections between both properties of texts and practices of interpretation-1 in a particular social space. Notice that interpretation-1 is part of the domain of interpretation-2; one concern of interpretation-2 is to investigate how different practices of interpretation-1 are socially, culturally and ideologically shaped (2002, p.149).

This research uses critical discourse analysis in order to go beyond looking at the “interpretive repertoires” (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999) people use during their museum encounters, to an interpretation-2 model of analysis; a focus on the explanatory connections between museum exhibitions, education and social relations of power, and therefore on questions of ideology. In what follows I will give an example of such analysis, by looking at one aspect of the exhibition display in Verdant Works, an industrial museum in Dundee. The museum opened in 1996 by Dundee Heritage Trust, which also runs Discovery Point, “Dundee’s flagship

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

206

Sotiria Grek

visitor attraction”3. “Discovery” was the first ship to travel to Antarctica in an exploration expedition in 1901; since its arrival back to Dundee in 1986, “it heralded a new identity for the city, that of tourist destination” (Eunson, 2002, p.6). Both museums are independent, which means, in UK museum terms, that they are not public but privately funded; hence the admission fees (almost £6 for an adult ticket, when most museums in the area do not charge admission at all) and the ‘branding’ of both museums as major ‘visitor attractions’ in Scotland. The central theme in Verdant Works, a former jute mill, is the history of jute, an industry that turned Dundee into one of the most important trading centres in 19th century Britain.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Juteopolis This is a thirteen-minute video show4 which forms the first part of the tour in Verdant Works. It introduces visitors to the story of jute and the reasons for Dundee becoming “Juteopolis”. It combines old footage, local songs and historical fact in a narrative which attempts to describe the history of jute in Dundee. The experience of a six-month fieldwork in the museum shows that the overwhelming majority of the visitors watch it with great interest. Juteopolis is quite a significant part of the visit, in the sense that it gives visitors the very first idea of what they are about to see in the exhibition. In addition, and more importantly, it sets visitors, and especially those that do not have personal experiences of jute, in a particular frame of mind. Arguably, the video presents a romanticised version of the history of jute in Dundee, one that agrees with the dominant ideology. It does attempt to relate to a wide range of visitors, both locals and tourists, especially older Dundonians —who by far outnumber all other visitor age groups5— and those homesick migrants in countries like Australia or Canada, who often come back to their homeland for their holidays. Nevertheless, no matter the visitor type, the point of departure for all is one —that of nostalgia. This is how an exhibition narrative can turn “a great industrial cul-de-sac”, a “grim monument to man’s (sic) inhumanity to man” (Hugh MacDiarmid cited in Whatley, 1993, p.160) into a golden history, one that legitimates the exploitation of thousands of workers. Nostalgia is a deliberate choice of mood, which dominates and defines the thematic structure of the script from the beginning to the very end. I would argue that this ideological construct is also used to support a specific profile of contemporary Dundee, that of an entrepreneurial centre. Here, I will try to analyse specific extracts of the video narrative6, even though a great deal of its impact through the animated picture and sound is lost in the transcription. However, critically analysing the ‘deconstructed’ script casts light on many hidden “texts” developing explicitly or implicitly in the video. The analysis follows Fairclough’s model of text analysis, starting from the vocabulary used, looking at the grammar, the cohesion of the sentences and ultimately, moving on to examine text structure (Fairclough, 1992). This form

3

http://www.rrsdiscovery.com/discoverypoint/archive/index.htm Produced in 1996 by the company A Slight Shift for Verdant Works, running time: 13 min, Edinburgh. 5 Interview with Susan Galloway, 14.1.2005. 6 Due to space limitations, the whole script can not be included in this paper. After request, a copy can be sent to the readers. 4

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis

207

of analysis moves from the specific word (lexicalisation7) to the rhetorical schemata used in order to build the “architecture” of the text. First of all, the visitor is struck by the male8 narrator’s broad Dundee accent; the person talking is not an outsider. He is ‘one of us’ – but who are ‘we’? How does history smoothes and unites deep gaps between the powerful and the weak, the masters and the servants? To begin with, a local sense of pride is constructed from the very first sentences in the narration: Edinburgh and Stirling9 both have high places from where the citizens have a broad view of life, but Dundee snuggles against the perfect tower of rock from where one can see the chimneys all around the city. This is the vision Dundee men carry to the ends of the earth, no wonder that they always go back there someday.

Such an introduction works in multiple levels. First of all, it sets the context (“chimneys”), but also “wins over” the two different audiences the video is addressed at; the locals, who are flattered by Dundee’s superiority upon the other Scottish cities; and the tourists, mainly economic migrants visiting their homeland “from the ends of the earth”. The description goes further, to a point where it actually misinforms: The setting of the city is stunningly beautiful, so beautiful that it was given the name Donum Dei, gift of God.

According to Scott, “the name Dundee derives from early Gaelic ‘dun’ meaning either hill or fort and ‘Daig’, presumably an early local chief” (1999, p.10). Interestingly, the narrative chooses a romantic etymological version, rather than the more mundane one. Briefly giving the background of the jute history in Dundee, the narrative starts from the city’s early years, from its founding in the 13th century and throughout the middle ages. Apparently, jute industry was preceded by ‘merchant dynasties’: The historian Hector Boys was proud of his later city ‘for money and virtues and labouring people are in making the clath (=cloth)’.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is interesting to examine how the history in the centuries before the booming of the jute industry is constructed. It is a world of dynasties, the successful ancestors of the later jute barons. This is not a legendary fable; it is quoted by a historian, carrying all the credentials of truth and historic accuracy: The town’s hand loom fever had grown with the intellectual fever of the age of revolution in America and France. But their independence did not appeal to a new breed of entrepreneurs, who began to organise themselves out of their cottages and into weaving shops and in order to impose discipline, a toll order for men used to being their own masters.

7

In linguistic terms, lexicalisation means the choice of words being used. Even though the jute history of Dundee is dominated by women’s labour –it was a ‘woman’s town’ after all (Whatley, 1993)— a male narrator was chosen for this documentary video. Further, at numerous times throughout the duration of the film, ‘men’ are the protagonists of this gendered history. The history of jute in Dundee is gendered indeed; it is a women’s history. 9 Italics are used in order to give emphasis to words or phrases of particular interest for the analysis. 8

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

208

Sotiria Grek

This is not a city of rebels or workers; this is a city of entrepreneurs. And when the whole world is shaken by massive popular movements, these men (sic) prefer hard labour and discipline. However, other historians have a completely different view about the ways revolutionary ideas influenced the society of Dundee, one that does not find a place in this narrative: New political ideas emanating from France and from America…put down firm roots in Dundee. The movement for radical reform and for a more egalitarian society, strong throughout Scotland, took a firm grip of Dundee, which came to be known as the ‘Radical Toun’. (Scott, 1999, p.33)

However, the video narrative continues in a similar tone: The power looms developed. It was obvious that a new order would prevail, based on child and female labour. When factory commissioners entered the mills in the 1830s undernourished and undersized children as young as nine were found working up to 16 hours a day; the bairns no doubt consoled themselves with the contributions they were making to Britain’s imperial glory.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

How is it obvious that the industry would be based on children’s and women’s work? “One of the reasons for the higher percentage of women in employment in Dundee was the fact that they were cheaper to employ” (Scott, 1999, p.53); this part of the story is silenced completely. History’s great injustices are naturalised, they become “obvious”, “necessary”, “natural”. Even children’s “blood money”10 is a legitimate cause in the service of the British imperialistic 19th century foreign affairs, a well-known populist ploy used for the legitimisation of domestic or colonial exploitation. The narrative goes on to describe the era of the establishment of Dundee as Juteopolis and both the problems and the benefits of industrialisation: As the city was industrialised, dozens of mills like the Verdant sprang. Some of the new works are most imposing structures, palatial in appearance, colossal in extent and endurability, magnificence and comfort unsurpassed by the mills in any other town in the kingdom or any country in the world. The jute barons also built fabulous mansions in Perth Road, Broughty Ferry and increasingly in country estates far from the communities in Dundee which generated their wealth….(song)…In Juteopolis people’s lives were determined by jute to an extent difficult to imagine today.

Notice the paratactic structure of the clause constructed and the deliberate use of ‘imposing’, ‘palatial’ and ‘colossal’ in order to give emphasis to the architectural elements of the mills. As for the ‘magnificence and comfort unsurpassed’ it is a shame that, according to Patrick Geddes, famous Scottish biologist and town planner, writing in 1909, it had to open its doors to “that misery of labour, and particularly of woman, which makes Dundee the very hades of the industrial world, and of which the consequences and aggravations, in bad housing, in disease and mortality bills both of adults and of infants, are in those terrible returns of insanity, vice and crime….as to demand an explanation and invite a corresponding 10

“Even as late as 1890s children were being beaten in Dundee jute mills to hurry them to earn a premium known as ‘blood money’” (Scott, 1999, p.57).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis

209

special inquiry” (1909, p.64). There is no such issue in the video narrative; instead of any sort of reasoning, more of a “that’s life” explanation is given. In one of the interviews that were taken in the museum, a similar viewpoint to that of Geddes’s emerged through the discussion: - But what they should have done, those barons, the wealthy ones, that were sleeping in great big houses, what they should have done is give proper houses to the people. But they didn’t think like that (Interviewee 30). - Yes, this was the one side of the story that was not told here today, the inequalities and the poverty. What was given was a more romantic side; they looked at the good points. (Interviewee 31) - They didn’t even have enough money to feed their children, yi ken? It wasn’t the good old days, these were the awful days! (Interviewee 30)

An account of another interviewee contrasts strongly to the video narrative: Verdant Works and all these places show you only the best, you follow what I mean? They show you only what the jute industry was supposed to be like but the reality was that if you saw the people…They were four and five feet tall, because they didn’t even have the food to grow, and then the air…What they call the stour and dust, you know, and the smell, the stuff…Oh, the air was absolutely polluted (Interviewee 21).

Here is how the video portrays the same picture to the visitors: The sweet smell of jute was the city’s perfume, a head and body smell as the city’s working and living environment became one.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

I am going to conclude by looking at the way the Dundee women and migrant workers are portrayed, along with the jute barons. Notice how women, even though, as later stated, “a matriarchal society developed”, still have the traditional role of up-keeping the city; no mention is given to women’s strikes or to the Dundee suffragette movement arising in those years. This is a negative image of the women of Dundee, coming in sharp contrast to the textile magnets’ gifts to them: On the streets and in the works the mill lassies were described as loud, disordered and hard girls, accused of indecent conduct; anarchy and lack of discipline were their characteristics. Yet, the sewing girls grew up to become the women of Dundee that kept the social fabric of the city intact. … Nevertheless the quality of living in Dundee was enhanced; the city’s art collection is superb, parks such as Lochee and Baxter Park were laid out, the Caird Hall, the Technical Institute and University College were all endowed by textile magnets.

The level of specificity here regarding the philanthropic donations to the city, shows how preferred information is given in over-complete, detailed ways. On the other hand, dispreferred information regarding popular discontent, class-based conflict and the Chartist movement (Whatley 1993, p.118), are all seen as irrelevant and thus silenced. On the contrary, the owners of the factories are mentioned again and again throughout the film. These are some of the descriptions used for them: ‘merchant dynasties’, ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘jute

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

210

Sotiria Grek

barons’ and ‘textile magnets’. This form of lexicalisation signals their power in multiple ways, their political, social and economic position against the, sometimes even patronising and very few, references to the mill workers: “mill lassies”, “bear weavers”, “snuffy spinners”. Even worse, the South Asian migrants who worked in the mills are totally ignored. This is the story an Indian lady shared in her interview in the museum: My husband used to work here and my son as well. I remember they had something like a small mattress and they folded it and put it wherever just for a sleep. It could be inside the factory, or on the pavement, wherever, so that they could wake up and start work again (Interviewee 44).

Another interviewee, from Dundee, suggested: A lot of the stories about the Indian people who were working in the mills are being neglected. If you asked a lot of the people that used to work here, and you have to catch them because this is an ageing population, a lot of them would remember Indians working at the highest levels. For example, Mr M. was a financial director. This is not part of Dundee’s history that it is put across. That would go against the grain, because what you have here is a paternalistic view. That’s a heritage thing, I guess… (Interviewee 40).

CONCLUSION CDA is a research method with an overt political standpoint; the fact that other methods do not recognise or acknowledge their equivalent commitments, does not in any way mean that they are more objective or that similar commitments do not exist (Fairclough, 2002b). This study looks at ideologies as those assumptions built into museum practices which sustain relations of domination. I would suggest that a type of research that only looks at the subjective ways adults make meaning in museums, without examining the socio-historical context of this learning, has its own ‘partiality’ and helps sustain hegemonic practices.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. (2002). Price formation and the anticipation of profits. In M. Toolan (Ed.), Critical discourse analysis: Critical concepts in linguistics (pp. 125-148). London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A. (1991). The love of art: European art, museums and their public. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dijk, T. van (2002). Principles of critical discourse analysis. In M. Toolan, Critical discourse analysis: Critical concepts in linguistics (pp. 104-141), vol. II. London: Routledge. Dundee City Council Cultural Strategy 2002-2006, Dundee City Council, 2002. Eunson, E. and Early, B, (2002). Old Dundee. UK: Stenlake Publishing. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Museums and Critical Discourse Analysis

211

Fairclough, N. (2001). The discourse of new Labour: Critical discourse analysis. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, and S. J. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analysis (pp. 229-266). London: Sage in association with the Open University. Fairclough, N. (2002). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity. Fairclough, N. (2002b). A reply to Henry Widdowson’s “Discourse analysis: a critical view”. In M. Toolan, (Ed.), Critical discourse analysis: critical concepts in linguistics Vol.III: Concurrent analyses and critiques (pp. 148-155). London: Routledge. Fay, B. (1987). Critical social science: Liberation and its limits. Cambridge: Polity. Geddes, P. (1909). City deterioration and the need of a city survey. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol.34, No.1, Race Improvement in the United States, 54-67. Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). The educational role of the museum. London: Routledge. Hooper-Greenhill, E., Moussouri, T. (2001). Making meaning in art museums 1: Visitors’ interpretive strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries. Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T. (1972). The dialectic of the enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder. Janks, H. (2002). Critical discourse analysis as a research tool. In M. Toolan (Ed.) Critical discourse analysis: Critical concepts in linguistics Vol: IV: Current debates and new directions (pp. 26-42). London: Routledge. Kawashima, N. (1998). Knowing the public. A review of museum marketing literature and research. Museum Management and Curatorship, Vol. 17, No. 1, 21-39. Kincheloe, J. L., McLaren, P. L. (1994). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin, Y. Lincoln, (Eds.) Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 125 – 154). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Laclau, E. (1981). Politik und ideologie im Marxismus. Kapitalismus- faschismuspopulismus. Berlin: Argument. Luke, A. (1996). Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis. Review of Research in Education, 21, 3-48. McLean, F. (1993). Marketing in museums: a contextual analysis. Museum Management and Curatorship, vol.12, 11-27. Ross, M. (2004). Interpreting the new museology. Museum and Society, 2(2), 84-103. Scott, A.M. (1999). Discovering Dundee: The story of a city. Edinburgh: Mercat Press. Titscher, S. et al. (2000). Methods of text and discourse analysis. London: Sage. Vergo, P. (Ed.) (1989). The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books Whatley, C.A., Swinfen, D.B., Smith, A.M. (1993). The Life and Times of Dundee. Edinburgh: John Roland Publishers Ltd.

Interviews Interview 21, 30.6.05, Verdant Works, Dundee Interview 30, 9.6.05, Verdant Works, Dundee Interview 31, 9.6.05, Verdant Works, Dundee Interview 40, 12.7.05, Verdant Works, Dundee Interview 44, 19.7.05, Verdant Works, Dundee

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 18

MEDICAL INTERVIEW: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE Peter James Gleeson

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the role of discourse in the determination of who is in control of a medical interview such as a standard consultation between a patient and a general practitioner. The doctor/patient relationship is considered both a construct of the social structure and a scaffold which reproduces that structure by reinforcing the ideological characteristics which are the foundations of society. A medical interview represents an example of a social interaction marked by asymmetry between the participants. This paper discusses the cultural basis of that asymmetry and how medical discourse sustains that asymmetry. Discourse styles can affect that asymmetry and strategies are suggested by which the patient can redress the balance and shift control of the interview. Who benefits from this shift and why, will also be addressed. The issues raised sit comfortably within the domain of intercultural communication because apart from the insights into Western medical practice and consequent implications applicable to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) it endeavours to provide non-native English speakers with an understanding of the dynamics of a Western medical consultation which they may encounter through role play in the class-room, through their reading of English texts and possibly through direct exposure if they need to experience medical attention whilst abroad. Although this chapter deals with quality of care in terms of health outcomes it is recognized that all social interactions are to a greater or lesser degree asymmetric and general principles of critical discourse analysis and adaptation can be applied across the spectrum of professional, business and personal communication to shift the balance to restore more equitable control.

Keywords: medical communication, patient doctor discourse

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

214

Peter James Gleeson

INTRODUCTION The discourse between individuals such a doctor and a patient is shaped by the participants’ understanding and acceptance of the structure of the society of which they are members. Every member of society is caught like a fly in an invisible web of conformity and compelled to function within predictable boundaries which society proclaims the limits of normalcy. How a person talks to another is largely determined by what some call institutional affiliations (Kress, 1993). Socially shaped groups are characterised by members with shared ideology, shared language, and specific interpersonal relationships among members and between members and those of the out-group. Society abounds with many and varied of these discourses, the most visible of which are wealth, age, gender, race, religion, but also, for example environmentalism and epicurism as well as medical and lay discourses and there will always be some potential for commonality through cross membership. How a patient reports to a doctor and how a doctor reacts to a patient is not based on isolated judgements but accordance with what is expected with reference to the discourses of the one, their commonality with the discourses of the other and with what both participants know of the world. Within this structure, communicative events occur which deal with micro-level problems that are raised between individuals in a medical interview. How power and control is reproduced within society is fundamental because it is these forces which create the web which entraps their citizenry in a culture which authenticates systematic dominance of one group or discourse over another.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

MACRO PERSPECTIVE OF THE DOCTOR’S CONTROL Ideology developed from the Marxist tradition describes an illusory form of thought which represents the collective beliefs and attitudes of a class or social group (Macey, 2000). The origin of the word is from the French term “ideologie”, the study of ideas and came into dialogue in 1796. By 1813 its meaning had evolved into signifying ideal or abstract speculation. Gramsci’s writings progressed the concept, indicating the mechanism of hegemony by which institutions such as schools, media and professions including medicine reinforce those beliefs and attitudes which support the ideological texture of society by the synthesis of spontaneous consent to the values of the ruling elite. Thus when doctors convey a sense of what they consider normal behaviour and this influences the patient, the doctor is exerting hegemonic control. Commodity fetishism was coined by Marx to explain what he considered a characteristic of capitalist society to be the estrangement of people from the products of their labour. Reification, a related concept, developed by Lukacs extends commodity fetishism to all fields of human activity including consciousness. Human activity merely provides an audience to the autonomous exchange of commodities which appear independent of the social structure in which they are produced. From this perspective the totality of the social structure and the totality of social relations is opaque and blocked from conscious thought. Consciousness instead focuses on everyday objects such as commodities and is blind to the integrated social interaction which has created them. In medical practice attention is not directed at the bigger picture, and is blinded to, the social interdependency which may be the basis of illness. By reification, attention focuses on the commodity which

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

215

in the medical setting is the patient’s patho-physiology. The symptom becomes the object of prime concern and is scrutinized in isolation from those social structures which may be adversely impacting on the patient such as a dysfunctional workplace, family distress, environmental pollution, promotion of unrealistic ideals of body image, the status of the motor vehicle. Medical practice deals with treatment of the symptom. The source, the normalized social structure, goes unchallenged. Whilst medicine’s impact on society is largely hegemonic, doctors can have a more direct coercive role in the control of power and wealth when they act such as in the certification of the insane, by involvement in the prison systems and in procedures of interrogation and capital punishment (Waitzkin, 1989). In these roles doctors are acting as agents of those aspects of social structure which Althusser has designated “repressed state apparatus” (R.S.A.). Althusser, a contemporary of Foucault, became more familiar with the R.S.A. than he may have wished as he murdered his wife in 1990 and spent most of the rest of his life in psychiatric institutions. Medical practice as well as hegemonically supporting society will also be shaped by it. In a self regulated consumer society consumer needs will be defined by the constructed needs of the society. Objective medical practice involves the treatment of disease and suffering but consumer needs legitimises medical practices which are subjectively determined by current social trends. Hence the evolution of the prestigious (and lucrative) sub-specialty of cosmetic surgery. Controversially it may be argued that in vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) treatment of women for whom lifestyle considerations have delayed pregnancy beyond their physiological reproductive capacity also falls within this category. Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was affiliated with The Frankfurt school of German philosophers and wrote extensively on “critical theory” which sought to demonstrate that although value judgements were non-cognitive, ideologically grounded beliefs, they were presented however as if they were cognitive structures (Macey, 2000). People acting on the premise “it must be true; everybody knows that” are unaware of the ideological control over their personal desires and behaviour, unaware of their exploitation and unaware that the structure of society which promotes the concept of social and personal freedom, in fact, precisely defines the boundaries of that freedom. In this contradiction lies the tension between perceived freedom and reality checks such as the multi-layered requirement to conform and the frustration of negotiating bureaucratic control which leads to stress and subsequently to many of the illnesses which present at the doctor’s surgery. “Critical theory” seeks to neutralize ideological control by self awareness and self reflection. The concept of “Lebenwelt” or lifeworld which encompasses a prescription of everyday action and belief was formulated by Habermas, a contemporary of the Frankfurt school, and has been adopted by analysts of medical practice. Habermas describes how consensus is reached when participants relate in the lifeworld and negotiate through “communicative action” akin to the “speech act” of Searle. The second component of Habermas’s two tiered model of society reflects what he labels “systems” of power and wealth include productive forces which have evolved through accumulated knowledge. Thus medical practice dwells within the “system”. These discourses are ideologically conjoined in a symbiotic relationship and subject to self regulation. Their communication is distorted by self interest and they function by strategic action free from moral constraint. Under this model the “purposive rationality of science” regards medical science as pure, devoid of context through the application of abstract self-serving rules. Communication is strategically oriented towards a specific goal and can be distorted by deception and manipulation and because science is

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

216

Peter James Gleeson

labelled pure, the goal is truth and the end therefore justifies the means. The interests of the “system” are not subject to critical scrutiny and proceeding unchecked encroach upon, or colonise, the lifeworld. Habermas calls this process “system rationalisation” and argues that the sciences (such as medicine) ostentatiously glorify their objectivity but in fact are fundamentally ideological. Whilst the end point of “purposive rationality” is success, the “value rationality” of the lifeworld proceeds towards its own end point which is understanding. It achieves this through communication which is undistorted and represents ideal speech interaction where negotiation occurs free of the coercive prescriptive elements which characterise the “system”. Elliott Mishler, a psychiatrist, incorporated the theory of communicative action of Habermas when he applied it to a study 1970 of the patterns of communication between doctors and their patients in clinics in the U.S. (Barry et al, 2001). The “system” of Habermas, Mishler called the “voice of medicine”; the lifeworld became the “voice of the lifeworld”. The latter concerned the everyday experiences, concerns and ailments of the patient. The doctor in control of the technologically focused system (voice of medicine) was dominant in an asymmetric relationship and maintained that control by applying strategic action articulated through distorted communication. The voice of the lifeworld was colonised or suppressed and the patients’ concerns were poorly considered. The health outcome was potentially ineffective and for Mishler also inhumane. A more detached view point may be to regard practitioners of the voice of medicine as ethically orientated toward a welfare based discourse which originated in the principals of utilitarianism formulated by Bentham and Mills in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its doctrine states that utility is the ultimate measure of right and wrong and from this it follows that actions are judged solely by virtue of their consequences (Rachels, 1999). The welfare of all parties is equally important and the sum of the welfare of all parties is the determining factor. The welfare based approach to ethics can be seen to be synonymous with the welfare of the “system” and authorises distorted communication as the right action simply because it is the one with the best outcome for society as a whole. Habermas however did indicate that these communicative actions are not necessarily conscious. The doctor may be unaware that he/she is using systematically distorted communication. Medical training, as with any apprenticeship, requires the candidate to learn a new code of practice, a new language before he/she may be admitted to their privileged discourse community. Traditional medical training demands an impersonal style (Clark & Fairclough, 1999) which would tend to leave the doctor at least partially deaf to the voice of the lifeworld. His/her bias toward the voice of medicine however may be an expression of good faith and considered to be conducted in the best interests of the patient. Until recently, medical training has orientated the doctor in this biomedical discourse model. This discourse which is Mishler’s “voice of medicine” and the “system” of Habermas, is goal driven. In its extreme form this model would regard the patient’s lifeworld concerns as contextual and largely irrelevant. Aspects of the patient’s story which are seen as pertinent within the specified framework of diagnostic possibilities are considered as the doctor lusts toward the end point which is the categorisation known in medical practice as diagnosis. Those aspects which do not fit are scorned and rejected. The patient may also be unaware that the use of the voice of medicine is colonizing. Studies by both Mishler and West have found that when a patient raises concerns which are contextual and inconsistent with the doctors approach, the doctor will frequently use the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

217

mechanism of questions and interruptions to return the discussion to technical issues (Waitzkin, 1989). Using this approach the doctor can set and maintain the agenda and retain control. The outcome may be satisfactory but by apparently trivializing the patient’s lifeworld concerns the patient may feel censored, put down and resentful. If the patient is discouraged and perceives the doctor to be insensitive to his/her personal problems, to avoid misunderstanding, embarrassment or further rebuke the patient may well remain silent about what is really of concern to them: in other words to the underlying motivation for their attendance. Crucial issues are left unsaid and the patient’s expectations unmet. Such communication lapses should be gravely regarded because within their apparent silence there are often found whispers of dissatisfaction and misdiagnosis which may grow frighteningly voluble with litiginous intent. Despite such risks it has been said that inattention to social issues, particularly where these predetermine a patient’s condition reflect an inadequacy which is a basic part of what medicine is in our society (Waitzkin, 1989). In the 18th century, the utilitarian/welfare based approach was a radical doctrine as it championed an alternative to the existent moral code which was substantially a blend of religion, tradition and superstition. About the same time, Kant was developing his theories which became incorporated into medicine as Rights-based ethics. A formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative states “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law” (O’Neill O, 1991). Moral rights provided under this formulation include the right not to be deceived, manipulated or coerced. This dictates that communication is “balanced”, and congruent with the voice of the lifeworld as the communicative process seeks open negotiation between doctor and patient. As an alternative to biomedical discourse a psycho-social medical discourse developed based on the philosophy of both Kant and Habermas. In this discourse the doctor listens effectively, asks open ended questions, informs and translates technical issues and negotiates sharing of power. Patients’ concerns are not suppressed and their histories are meaningful and not fragmented by interruptions and diversions. Medical care is seen as effective and for Mishler also humane. The practicing doctor is today cognisant that medical case law gives great weight to the voice of the lifeworld. Foucault considered the 19th century a time of significant change for medicine. In his treatise on discursive formations, he says of medical science it for the first time no longer consisted of a group of traditions, observations and heterogeneous practices but a corpus of knowledge that presupposed the same way of looking at things (Foucault, 1977). The practice of medicine changed from exclusively clinical history taking and clinical examination to a reliance on biological tests, from simple anatomical-clinical correlation to analysis of the intricacies of patho-physiology. As a result the lexicon of medicine along with the series descriptive statements have been reformulated and the doctor is no longer the only focus of interpretation because there has appeared masses of documentation, instruments of correlation and techniques of analysis which now qualify the doctor’s relationship to the patient. Beginning as a convolution of tradition and science in the 18th century, medicine changed according to Foucault from a model of sight, seeing and naming (Horrocks and Jevtic, 2002) to the classification of diseases separate from the body, to patho-physiology and the anatomical localization of diseases within the body. Medicine reorganises disease according to new relationships between medical practice and structural changes in society. Medicine acts in accordance with Foucault’s vision of science as a medium of social control. Medical discourse reinforces socially appropriate behaviour in part directly but mainly in its lack of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

218

Peter James Gleeson

criticism of the oppression of the social structures which may be the source of the patient’s malady. Consent is manufactured by rendering social change unthinkable. Medical discourse is hegemonic in that the ideological message is not explicit or surface communication but is found as Waitzkin (1989) points out that it is in the margins of the discourse where ideas and concerns are interrupted, de-emphasised, and discarded that values are denounced and left to whither. Hegemony hides in what is left unsaid. Foucault extended the concept to include a clandestine role in the surveillance of people who deviate from behaviour acceptable to society particularly as doctors, to Foucault’s chagrin, increasingly enact social control beyond the clinic to include everyday encounters in discourses ranging from adolescence to aging. Sexuality, family life, work issues, the environment, sport and fitness, immigration, detention and interrogation are included because the “system” encourages people to believe that most problems are so complex they require intervention from someone with specialised knowledge. This has been labeled “reflexivity” by Giddons who indicates that the dependency on “expert systems” for constructing social life and self identity is a defining feature of contemporary society (Fairclough, 1995). Problems are thereby contained within ideologically appropriate discourses and reification deflects examination of the core issues. Foucault and most theorists concede such control is in the main unintended by the doctor, but doctors are likely to come from, or aspire to the ranks of the wealthy and privileged and likely to serve to protect that society which favours them. Doctors are regularly confronted with a waiting room filled with individuals with a variety of social conditions including anger, anxiety, social isolation and loneliness which can have causal association with drug and alcohol abuse and eating disorders, which may in turn evolve into pathologies such as transmissible infections, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Although the doctor knows the root cause may well lie in the imbalances related to the distribution of wealth, power and opportunity within society, the doctor, as well as being ideologically hesitant to intervene, will also be cognisant of what can practically be achieved. The most pressing concern will be the alleviation of the morbidity of the individual who has presented in his/her practice. Although social criticism and social intervention may be a commendable endeavour the doctor is likely to consider this undertaking beyond his/her responsibility and qualification. If the doctor therefore feels impotent in dealing with the miasma of the patient’s social circumstances he/she is unlikely to pursue with any real interest how these contextual issues relate to the patients condition and will prefer to manoeuvre the patient toward patho-physiological discourse which the doctor can control. A study of discourse analysis of medical consultations marked each utterance according to whether it was conducted in the voice of medicine or the voice of the lifeworld (Barry et al, 2001). They perceived four different patterns of communication which they called “strictly medicine”, “lifeworld blocked”, “lifeworld ignored” and “mutual lifeworld”. Discourse in the “strictly medicine” pattern was predictably asymmetrical. The doctor exerted control and the patients themselves also spoke only in the voice of medicine. All the consultations where this pattern was used were for unbooked appointments dealing with single acute medical problems. The interviews were of short duration with the emphasis on dealing with the medical problem and moving on to the next patient who also was an unbooked appointment and possibly also in need of acute care. The majority of the outcomes were considered successful in terms of both patient and doctor satisfaction. Where the discourse was in the “lifeworld blocked” pattern the patient tried to use the voice of the lifeworld but was repeatedly blocked by the doctors controlling use of the question and answer sequence. Most

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

219

of the patients had a chronic physical problem and this group scored low in patient and also doctor satisfaction. In the “lifeworld ignored” discourse the patient talked predominantly in the voice of the life world but the doctor ignored this and communicated in the voice of medicine. The conversation appeared disjointed and the patient tried to express his needs but eventually was overcome and retreated into the voice of medicine. The doctor used interjections such as “right”, “sure” and “absolutely” which although could be seen as empathetic and encouraging but in this discourse the intonation indicated their usage to have a dismissive function and was applied as a strategy of control to return the discussion to the voice of medicine. Despite the rebuttal patients often persistently returned to the voice of the lifeworld until their issues were acknowledged. The application of the “mutual lifeworld” pattern occurred mostly when patients’ dominant problem was psychological. If there was a co-existent physical problem the voice of medicine was used as well. In this discourse the doctor asked open ended questions, employed active open listening without interruption and uttered empathetic statements validating the patient’s concerns. The consultations appeared more like natural conversations between friends. The same words “right”, “sure” and “absolutely” could be utilized as a strategy, not of control but a lexical choice to indicate active empathetic listening. Interestingly the patterns of discourse were not specific to an individual doctor but appeared situation specific and could be constructed according to the nature of the problem, the patient’s wishes and pressures of time. This validates the concept that we should not seek to discover our authentic voice but instead be cognisant that every time we speak “relations of knowledge, power and desire shape the discursive environments within which (our) voices are fashioned” (Waterstone, 2000, p.136). .

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

MICRO LEVELS MECHANISMS OF CONTROL The conclusion which can be drawn from the above is that a medical interview is not an objective narrative but is socially constructed discourse. To communicate effectively however, the patient needs to assemble and divulge his/her story as comprehensively as possible and the doctor needs to exchange his/her opinion openly. As well as difficulties due to the constructed asymmetry of power both parties need to cooperate to avoid the ambiguity of meaning which is inherent in any communication. This section attempts to examine what rhetorical strategies the participants could use to advance their positions. The lexical choice of the term “patient” has been retained in this section and whilst I acknowledge its medically hegemonic implication I feel consummerist sentiment which promotes its replacement with “client” and medicine as an interaction between a service provider and a client is devoid of the robustness of clinical medical practice. To help achieve control or restore the balance in an asymmetric relationship the participants can change their communicative style to compel the other towards a more open interview. The concept of face refers to a negotiated public image which each participant grants each other in any communicative event (Scollon & Scollon, 2000). It reflects a system of politeness and is influenced by factors which include the asymmetry of power which attends their relationship, the distance between the participants and the gravity of the issue. Usually, the doctor has the power substantiated by his/her hierarchical position in society and also by his/her professional knowledge. The doctor may feel obliged to maintain the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

220

Peter James Gleeson

asymmetry because of perceived expectations of society, of his/her professional body and of the patient. The doctor may feel there are therapeutic benefits akin to a placebo type response or may consider it prudent to appear detached during a physical examination. Alternatively he/she may consider too much involvement would threaten his/her independence face. With regard to the distance factor, in a medical setting the participants would not usually be close friends and there would be significant distance between them. However limited involvement outside of the medical setting would not preclude a feeling of mutual friendship between doctor and patient who have only communicated in the consulting room. The medical interview is an example of a hierarchical politeness system reflecting the dominant position of the doctor. He/she would be expected to use “strategies of involvement” both to mark his/her power and as a mechanism to bond with the patient. Linguistic strategies of involvement available to the doctor include the use of the first name when addressing the patient, showing interest in their affairs and indicating common points of view. When using this last strategy the doctor is claiming in-group membership of a discourse that both doctor and patient share. Beyond the conspicuous discourses such as wealth, age, gender, race, education that dissect society there are many and varied dimensions from gardening to physical strength which the doctor can use to show commonality with the patient. Being voluble and optimistic are also typical components of involvement. The “face of involvement” is hierarchical because the person who initiates it “talks down” or expects to dominate the other participant. The patient who is in a lower position would acknowledge the doctor’s right by “talking up”, that is by using “independence face” and referring to the doctor by his/her title, not given name and by appearing respectful. Because different face strategies indicate differences in power if a patient uses involvement face when deference is expected they will be in defiance of the traditional authority structure of the medical interview. They will have indicated that they expect the doctor to abrogate at least some of his/her dominance to affect a more symmetrical relationship with minimal power differences and achieve “solidarity politeness”. When patient and doctor both use independence face strategies the interaction is marked as “deference politeness” characterised by social symmetry between doctor and patient who do not know each other well and are cautious about forming close ties. The problem for the doctor is that the linguistic strategies of independence face will tend to dissociate doctor and patient from discourses of compatibility. Independence is less voluble and less talk is perceived as cold. The doctor may, despite intentions be seen as withdrawn, disinterested and too dominant even to demonstrate the involvement face which the patient expects. Therefore it would seem safest for the doctor to adopt involvement face. If the patient considers the asymmetry inappropriate they need simply to also adopt involvement strategies. This may achieve solidarity but by challenging the doctor’s status and power may achieve deference politeness and an ambivalent relationship with the doctor who, thus affected will not make assumptions or show interest in the patient’s needs above what is absolutely necessary. This of-course is an out-come that some patients want. Politeness strategies are at least to some extent culturally determined (Cline, 2003). For example positive politeness with its features of sincerity and encouragement is said to be more common in German society. Negative politeness characterised by modesty and respect is considered more common amongst the Vietnamese. Another discourse feature of an asymmetric or hierarchical face system is that the dominant participant using involvement strategies will often have shorter pauses between

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

221

utterances than the independence face participant. A pause may designate the end of a speaker’s turn, an important cue for the listener who wishes to take the floor, but is not always clearly marked and usually indicated by completion of a syntactic unit, a change in tempo or intonation contour and also by gestural clues. Pauses are vital in successful conversation and may be considered as having a cognitive function which allows time for the participants to think, an interactive function which refers to the intention to indicate the speaker’s end of turn, a backchannel function in which an end of turn is not intended but some form of feed back is anticipated from the listener. There is also a pause, designated as incidental which refers to incidental interruptions such as due to a cough (Scollon et al, 2002). When the doctor or patient speaks they constantly monitor the other participant for signs of response. The communication runs smoothly if both respond as expected. This will not be the case if, for example, the patient’s backchannel pause anticipates an empathetic response but instead the doctor takes the floor. The patient may feel affronted or at the least will not have delivered that part of the history which was interrupted. If they can not return to this they may feel an important part of what concerned them was left unsaid, they may consider their expectations unmet because “the doctor just didn’t listen to me”. Unmet expectations were rated in a recent study as less satisfying by both patient and doctor (Bell et al, 2002) and were predictive of litigation, poor compliance with treatment and also with increased incidence of doctor switching. On the other hand if the doctor intends an interactive pause and the patient does not respond the doctor needs to decide whether the utterance was understood and continue with the next point or to resort to literal repetition or paraphrasing. The danger inherent in continuing is that the patient has not understood or grasped the significance of the utterance but this needs to be weighed against the risk of engendering patient hostility by the doctor’s repetition of what the patient regards as obvious. The length of a pause is an important determinant in that cognitive pauses need to be long enough for the patient to digest what has been said. If is too long the patient may consider the pause interactive and prematurely interrupt. On the other hand if the patient wishing to interrupt uses a cognitive or backchannel pause to interject this could be seen as impolite and even hostile. If the doctor speaks quickly and allows only a short length of time for the pause by the time the patient has prepared a response the doctor will have moved on and introduced another point which will need attention thus diverting critical interest away from the initial utterance. Consistent with the involvement strategy the faster person dominates the conversation. The patient may feel bullied and may complain that the doctor did not give them time to respond. Once the patient gains the floor he/she however can, by speeding up and limiting the time of pauses wrest control from the doctor and keep the floor until they have said what they intended. He who controls the pauses controls the conversation. Thus timing is an important discourse strategy which the patient may use to restore the balance in an asymmetrical medical interview. Another discourse strategy which can influence the dynamics of doctor/patient communication involves rhetoric patterns which have been called “deductive” and “inductive” (Scollon et al, 2002). An example of the inductive pattern is seen when the doctor presents firstly the evidence and leads the patient to the conclusion the doctor would like the patient to accept. This recognizes the independence face of the patient and is helpful to demonstrate the doctor is being careful to avoid assuming the patient will automatically agree with the doctor’s opinion. It is considered the better strategy when it is unclear whether the patient will accept the doctor’s views and is mindful of the purpose of the utterance which is to exhort the patient to enlist in the treatment regimen of the doctor. In medical practice this

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

222

Peter James Gleeson

pattern is likely to be adopted for the delivery of bad news because the patient can be prepared by delaying the introduction of the diagnosis or other adverse findings until the moment is judged appropriate. The deductive rhetorical strategy applies for example when the doctor presents the findings first and the supporting arguments follow. The doctor may do this when the diagnosis is self evident and the patient will readily understand once the logic of the opinion is demonstrated. This pattern can be used where directness was considered warranted and appropriate; for example in a condition which it may be deemed helpful for the patient to acknowledge as in “Look you’re depressed. We know this because…” or therapeutic for the patient to confront as in “You’re an alcoholic. We can’t hide from the facts. You drink more than…”. A deductive strategy however can sound like a lecture where the speaker tends to hold the floor. Unless delivered with considerable empathy it may be received as an assertion of authority as it emphasises the asymmetry of the participants and creates negativity in the patient by limiting the options such that the patient is forced to accept or reject the opinion without the opportunity of face saving negotiation. The commonest reason for miscommunication relates to ambiguity across discourse boundaries and of these issues gender would be the most visible in the majority of medical practices in this country. Given this a few comments are appropriate. It is said men favour status, individuality, competition, like to display expertise and are enthusiastic problem solvers. For women, traditionally these qualities have less significance as women have higher regard for connection, problem sharing and the recognition of one’s weaknesses. An asymmetry of power still lingers as a legacy of society’s predominantly patriarchal past. Messages contain explicit information which it is said men will focus upon. As well the message contains layers of meaning, the meta-message of Gumperz, inferences, complexities based on the message and contextual features which can be more important for women reflecting a vigilant ear to those gender specific features which are intrinsically discriminatory and perpetuate the imbalance of power. Based on this stereotypical view of gender differences a male doctor would be more comfortable in his role of a problem solver but would need to tune his empathy skills. A woman doctor would be seen as more naturally empathetic. Problems can arise when a patient (male or female) issues an utterance which intended as a connectivity statement for which they require acknowledgement or sympathy. The doctor (stereotypically male) either ignores this or responds with a solution which the patient will not see as the desired outcome. The patient is likely to continue in an attempt to gain the desired acknowledgement. The doctor may become frustrated by the patient’s failure to accept (his) self evident solution. The doctor repeats the solution and it now sounds like a lecture when all the patient wanted was empathetic listening (sympathy returned). If unresolved both parties will consider the communicative event unsatisfactory. Doctors and patients both need to be aware of the divergent communicative styles that exist between genders and between any different cultural/ ethnic/discourse/groups. The relationships of power between genders (and other discourses) are still largely unresolved. Communicative doubt results as men and women are not certain how to talk to each other reflecting different levels of understanding or commitment to gender neutrality. Given this it is not possible to forecast what is appropriate and instead communication needs to constantly shaped or negotiated as participants struggle to achieve consensus. Gender remains an important determinant of language. Kress (1993) refers to two fundamental variables which are, class or institutionally mediated power and gender power. The doctor has the former. Gender will determine power where both speakers are of the same status; otherwise it is

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Medical Interview: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

223

subordinate. When there is a male doctor and a female patient class and gender power reinforce. Where there is a female doctor and male patient the power variables contradict. According to Kress women can not automatically rely on status derived power and thus a female doctor may find her superiority of power challenged. A male patient may find a female doctor less threatening because of this, or may prefer male/male conventional asymmetry. Many female patients prefer female doctors and this is probably not because of perceived personal modesty but because of accentuation of the asymmetry of the encounter by the reinforcement of the power variables. This hypothesis however, as far as I am aware, has not been tested but would make an interesting study. Given that the medical interview represents a professional consultation the responsibility rests with the doctor to ensure that it runs smoothly and reaches a solution satisfactory to all stakeholders which include both patient and society. This is a Herculean task. Within a time frame of usually between five and twenty minutes the doctor needs to greet the patient, establish rapport, listen actively, extract the salient points without unduly interrupting, apply short summary statements to confirm what has been said, explain the process of the examination, interpret patho-physiological jargon, ask the patient’s opinions, encourage discussions about feelings and promote patient participation in decision making at every stage. This needs to be done with empathy and with attention to non verbal communication such as eye contact and mirroring of posture (matching voice and vocabulary can also be helpful). Studies of interactional behaviour of doctors (Levinson & Roter, 1997) have shown that doctors who were not sued were more likely to ask patients’ opinions, perceived to have spent sufficient time and explained the process of the interview and examination. Eighty percent of complaints received by the Health Service Commissioner in Victoria related to poor communication (Cognitive Institute Seminar, 2005). A study by Bunting et al (1998) listed predisposing factors influencing patients’ decision to sue as rudeness, inattentiveness, miscommunication or no communication at all.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION Change is a fundamental part of social dynamics. In contemporary society people are more aware and therefore suspicious of ideological control. Rejection of the elite (but not of elitism) is part of a ground-up shift in which the voice of the lifeworld questions traditional values and the justification of power groups including medical practitioners. “Conversationalisation of public discourse” (Fairclough, 1995) appears to act as an antithesis to the “colonisation” of Habermas because in modern society the lifeworld appears to colonise the “system” where open dialogue leads to access to power and the negotiation of justice. However perhaps we should be mindful of Foucault who said “justice simply reconstitutes power” (Horrocks et al 2002). In an era in which selling colonises all discourses “the promotional culture” and “synthetic personalisation” leads one to wonder whether any apparent access to the “system” may just be another mechanism of acquiescence (Fairclough, 1995). The contemporary milieu of questioning of tradition, consumer society and promotional culture leads to a pervasive concern about the issue of trust. This impacts profoundly on medical practice. To allay such doubt the doctor needs highly developed

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

224

Peter James Gleeson

communicative skills which I would argue mandates the inclusion of critical language awareness as a formal component of the medical curriculum. In the practice of medicine the doctor repetitively crosses many discourse boundaries, negotiating the tensions of in-group out-group bias as well as vacillating between the voice of medicine and the voice of the life world. In doing so the doctor is often constantly adjusting his/her sense of identity. This creates much personal stress. As well as medical practice the doctor is simultaneously involved in discourses of management and marketing. This hybridisation of discourse as a causal agent of stress in medical practice would appear fertile grounds for further research.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Barry C., Stevenson F., Britten N., Barber N., & Bradley, C. (2001). Giving voice to the lifeworld. More Humane, more effective medical care? A qualitative study of doctorpatient communication in general practice. Social Science and Medicine, 53, 487-505. Bell R., Kravitz R., Thorn D., Krupat E., & Azari R. (2002). Unmet expectations for care and the patient-physician relationship. JGIM, 17, 817-824. Bunting, R. F., (1998). Practical risk management for physicians. Journal of Health Risk Management, 18 (4), 29-53. Clyne, M. (2003). Dynamics of language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Longman, Harlow. Foucault, M. (1977). Discursive formations. In The Archaeology of Knowledge (chap. 2). Retrieved August 02, 2005 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/ works/fr/foucault.htm. Horrocks, C., & Jevtic, Z., (2002). Introducing Foucault. Cambridge: Icon Books. Kress, G. (Ed). (1993). Communication and culture: An introduction. Sydney: N.S.W. University Press. Levinson, W., & Roter, D. (1997). Physician-Patient communication. JAMA, 277, 5533-5559. Macey, D. (2000). Critical Theory – The Penguin Dictionary. London: Penguin Books. O’Neill, O. (1991). Kanthian ethics. In Singer, P. (Ed), A Companion to ethics (pp. 175-185). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Rachels, J. (1999 ). Morality and moral philosophy: The right thing to do. New York: Random House. Scollon, R., & Scollon S. (2001). Intercultural communication. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Smart, B. (2002). Michael Foucault. London: Routledge. Waitzkin, H. (1989). A critical theory of medical discourse: Ideology, social control, and the processing of social context in medical encounters. Social Science and Medicine, 30, 220-239. Waterstone, B. (2000). Desiring ‘voice’: Complicity, consumption and critical literacy. Retrieved on February 27, 2005 from http://www.stthomasu.ca/inkshed/shed2000/ bonnie.htm.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

PART III CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ACROSS CULTURES

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 19

PRONOMINAL REFERENCE AS DISCURSIVE STRATEGY IN CONFLICT RHETORIC: INSIGHTS INTO THE SPEECHES OF POLITICAL FIGURES IN THE VANGUARD OF NIGERIA’S “JUNE 12” CRISIS Adeyemi Adegoju

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Taking language practices at face value in a way that obscures their political and ideological investments would strip political discourse of the power possessed by political speakers to manipulate linguistic forms to serve dominant interests. Focusing on the “June 12” political crisis in Nigeria, this study analyzed the speeches of political figures in the vanguard of the unprecedented power tussle between the military and civilians in Nigeria’s political history. It considered personal pronouns as a discursive strategy appropriated largely to the speakers’ advantage in the conflict rhetoric. Since language and discourse are not transparent means of understanding social actions, it applied Critical Discourse Analysis to lay bare the ways in which ‘dominance’ is (re)produced in the conflict rhetoric relative to the speakers’ bid to control the cognition and actions of their audiences.

Keywords: political speeches, person deixis, power, ideology, ‘June 12’ crisis

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

228

Adeyemi Adegoju

INTRODUCTION The intricate bond between language and politics is such that it becomes difficult to conceive of politics without its medium – language. O’Barr (1976, p.415) contends that “multifarious devices are employed by political actors to achieve their goals but it is hard to conceive of any political strategies which do not involve language in the sense that it is the essence of the communication system which underlies social interaction”. Schaffner (1996, p.201) argues that “any political action is prepared, accompanied, controlled and influenced by language”. Citing Chilton and Schaffner (1997, p.207) who describe political discourse as a “complex form of human activity”, Schaffner (2004, p.117) corroborates the fact that politics cannot be conducted without language. Summing up the intricate relationship between language and politics, Bretton (1976, p.440) writes:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

We know that language is a means used by man to conceal as well as to reveal. It is often a means of deception, partly to assure survival … . If we accept that survival – either physical, social or economic – is at the core of politics and that much of political behavior is verbal, then language must be accorded a high priority in political, especially behaviorally oriented research.

While political scientists are mainly concerned with the consequences of political decisions and actions for a society, and may be interested in the political realities which are constructed in and through discourse, linguists would rather be interested in the linguistic structures used to get politically relevant messages across to the addressees in order to fulfil a specific function (Schaffner, 1996). A linguistic analysis of political discourse in general and political speeches in particular, can be most successful when it relates the details of linguistic behaviour to political behaviour. According to Chilton and Schaffner (1997, p.211), political situations and processes can be linked to discourse types and levels of discourse organisation by way of four strategic functions as an intermediate level: (i) coercion; (ii) resistance, opposition and protest; (iii) dissimulation; (iv) legitimization and delegitimization. Chilton (2004) subsequently reduced the number of functions to three: (i) coercion; (ii) legitimization and delegitimization; and (iii) representation and misrepresentation. Aspects of linguistic behaviour which politicians deploy for the purposes of fulfilling any of the identified strategic functions in political contexts are: colloquialisms and slang expressions; pronominal choice; key symbols, slogans and stereotypes; imperatives; cohesive devices through the use of repetition or grammatical parallelism; and the structure of the lexicon. Others include phonological devices such as volume, pitch, variation and pauses; rhetorical figures such as metaphor, analogy, imagery, and anecdote; and above all emotive use of language to arouse the audience. The fact, however, remains that although there are a number of persuasive techniques that can be employed by the political speaker in order to win the support of their people they would consciously make certain linguistic choices in preference to some other possible ones in given political contexts to achieve political effect. This motivation brings to the fore the focus of this study: the deployment of personal pronouns as a persuasive technique in the speeches of some key actors in the “June 12” political crisis in Nigeria. Generally, pronouns function communicatively to reveal aspects of the speaker’s attitudes and social standing; for the speaker can make political statements as an individual,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

229

or as a representative of a class. Therefore, political speakers use personal pronouns for political gains whether this is to unite the speaker and the audience, or to distance the speaker and the audience from the opponent or to refer to a class that excludes the audience but includes the speaker and some others. Political discourse analysts have pointed out that personal pronouns are very much related to the relationships of power and solidarity. It is germane that we consider the foci of some studies that have analyzed political speeches in this regard. Allen’s (2007) study of campaign speeches in Australian political discourse investigates the pragmatics of pronominal choice and the way in which politicians construct and convey their identities and those of their parties and opponents within political speeches. Taking six speeches by John Howard and Mark Latham across the course of the 2004 federal election campaign, the researcher examines the ways in which pronominal choice indicates a shifting scope of reference to create pragmatic effects and serve political functions. Allen (2007, p.2) observes:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Politicians, when making speeches during an election campaign present positive aspects of themselves and negative aspects of their opponents. One way of doing this is by selectively using personal pronouns. The personal pronouns chosen can be used to refer to themselves and to others, and to evoke multiple identities of themselves and others, presented from a range of perspectives. The pronominal choices politicians make serve persuasive and strategic political functions.

Kuo’s (2002) study on the uses of second-person singular pronoun in Chinese political discourse is based on videotaped data from two televised Taipei mayoral debates that took place in 1998. The study which examines the communicative functions of the second-person singular pronoun ni (you) focuses on how three mayoral candidates’ use of ni reflects their attitudes and relations toward the other participants as well as their perceptions of the interactive goals of the speech activity. The analysis finds that the functions of ni in the two debates are very different. In the first debate, more than sixty per cent of the occurrences of ni are used by the three debaters either to address the audience/voters or to refer to an indefinite person, thereby establishing solidarity with the audience or voters. In contrast, more than 80% of the occurrences of ni in the second debate are used when debaters address their opponents directly to challenge or attack them. With regard to the use of personal pronouns in Nigerian political discourse, Adetunji’s (2006) study of the inclusion/exclusion dichotomy reflected in the use of deictic expressions in Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s speeches deserves attention. The study examines, among other deictic expressions, the use of personal deixis in political discourse, focusing on two thematically and contextually different speeches of Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The first speech which was delivered at Harvard University, USA in year 2000 titled “Nigeria, Africa and the World: A New Dawn” and the second speech which was on the declaration of a state of emergency in Plateau State of Nigeria in May 2004 are analyzed. The study finds that “we” as the commonest personal deictic form in the first speech was deliberately employed by the speaker to convince and manipulate the audience to reason like him and help him in sharing the load of responsibility. However, in the second speech where there is the preponderance of “I” the speaker speaks from a personal point of view, trying to verbalize a particular conviction.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

230

Adeyemi Adegoju

From the foregoing, we can establish that in political rhetoric the relationships among participants in the discourse situation are mediated by personal pronouns. Citing Chilton and Schaffner (1997, p.216), Awonuga (2005, p.111) explains that such pronouns “delineate a social ‘space’ in which people and groups have a ‘position’ ”. It is, therefore, germane at this point that we provide the background to the political circumstances that make it compelling to examine the pragmatic manipulation of personal pronouns in the present study.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

‘JUNE 12’ CRISIS Agitation for true democratization of governments of African states is tied to the ultimate gains of democracy not only for the polities but also for the people. Democracy rather than being an end in itself is a means to an end, for it is more likely to be settled by its import for meeting significant social needs – its utility for economic growth and the practice and consolidation of federalism (Ake, 1992). However, the democratization process in Africa has been fraught with challenges. Nigeria’s march to democracy is a case in point here. After long years of military rule and the general expression of people’s dissatisfaction with military regime and consequent crave for democratic governance, President Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria’s military ruler between 27th August 1985 and 26th August 1993, embarked upon a transition program that was to usher in a civilian government after his eightyear rule. The democratization process culminated in the conduct of general elections in 2003. The presidential election that was the climax was conducted on 12 June 1993 and was widely acclaimed to be Nigeria’s freest and fairest election not only by local assessment but also by international standards. To the disappointment of most people, the military government annulled the election that was presumably won by the business mogul Chief M.K.O. Abiola of the Social Democratic Party. This action was strongly condemned as a great setback to the entrenchment of democracy in Africa’s most populous Black Country. In the heat of the ensuing political imbroglio, President Ibrahim Babangida unconstitutionally instituted an Interim National Government (ING) and handed over the reins of power to Chief Ernest Shonekan. Chief Shonekan had barely spent three months in office when General Babangida’s close military aide General Sani Abacha overthrew the unconstitutional government on 17th November 1993. With the enthronement of another military regime while there were spirited efforts to validate the annulled presidential election, the hope of instituting the much-coveted democratic governance was dashed. Consequently, the presumed winner of the election Chief M.K.O. Abiola with the support of pro-democracy groups challenged the military government. Thus, the “June 12” political conflict is a watershed in Nigeria’s political history, as civilians had to challenge the military over the acquisition and retention of power. It is interesting that the three political figures caught in a web of conflict unprecedented in Africa’s political history in general and Nigeria’s in particular had ideological positions for which they deployed the instrumentality of language to establish and consolidate. On the part of the military figures, they tried to justify their actions and roles in the political situation. Ibrahim Babangida who annulled the election made spirited attempts to convince Nigerians and the international community that the action was taken in “national interests” and that the seemingly endless transition program of his administration was not a ploy after all to

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

231

perpetuate the military in power. Having taken over from an unconstitutional Interim National Government, Abacha saw his intervention as being in the interest of the country and strove to proffer other possible alternatives to resolving the political logjam apart from de-annulling the election as agitated for in some quarters. For M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the election, reclaiming his “stolen mandate” was the only solution to the political stalemate. He, therefore, sought the support of Nigerian people and that of the international community to fight the gargantuan military power of the state. Understanding the interplay of language, power and ideology in Nigeria’s “June 12” political crisis with close reference to some of the speeches made by these political figures will shed light on the ideological sensitivity of language in such a bizarre political situation. It is interesting that while June 12, 1993 was a day in which presidential election was held in Nigeria, it has since assumed a symbolic status as a signifier for the attendant struggle for the entrenchment of democratic governance in Nigeria, hence the tag “June 12”.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

DATA FOR THE STUDY The data for the study are drawn from the speeches of Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and M.K.O. Abiola who were the main actors in the “June 12” political conflict. The speeches they made at critical periods of the crisis reflect the problems attendant to the struggle for power between the military and civilians. The maiden speech of each of the actors in reaction to the “June 12” crisis is considered for this study: Babangida’s “Expediency and the Path of Honor” (An Address to the Nation on the occasion of the annulment of the presidential election of 12 June 1993), Abiola’s “A Deliberate Intention to Insult and Ridicule the Entire Nigerian People” (Being a text of Abiola’s press statement on the annulment of the election) and Abacha’s “Child of Necessity” (Maiden broadcast to the nation on 18 November 1993). Apart from the maiden speech, Babangida’s “Crisis and the Search for Peace I: Dialogue with State Governors” and “Stepping Aside for Peace and National Concord” (Address to the National Assembly on 17 August 1993) are considered. For M.K.O Abiola, his speeches “Salute to the People” and his momentous “Epetedo Declaration” are sampled. Finally, we sample Abacha’s speech of Wednesday 17 August 1994 in which he ruled out the possibility of actualising the June 12 mandate. The Speech is captioned “The Big-Stick Declaration” in Tell Magazine of August 29 1994. The data are sampled from books and magazines. These sources are, no doubt, secondhand material compared with first-hand material of the anthology/anthologies of the speeches of each of the speakers in form of memoir(s). We are constrained to rely on the former sources in view of the transient roles of the speakers in the conflict, especially the untimely deaths of Sani Abacha and M.K.O. Abiola. In Babangida’s case, however, anthologies of his speeches exist in volumes edited by Sam Oyovbaire and Tunji Olagunju. The first two volumes entitled For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today do not consist of speeches of the “June 12” crisis. Therefore, we use Volume III entitled Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria: Selected Speeches of IBB.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

232

Adeyemi Adegoju

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNING Kuo (2002, p.30) expresses the view that “studies of political language have explored how politicians from various parts of the world select and distribute pronouns for political and personal purposes”. In political speeches, personal pronouns are often used as a form of address, either to refer to the audience, the speaker or the opponent. Beyond the referential function, it has been found out that politicians tend to “manipulate pronouns to develop and indicate their ideological positions on specific issues” (Wilson, 1990, p.46). Thompson (1990) cited in Hart (2005, p.9) sees ideology as a study of “the ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds”. Thus, discourse is shaped by relations of power and invested with ideologies. Hoepfner (2006, p.4) argues that “Discursive practices establish, conceal or transform power relations between those involved in a specific discourse”. Since understanding and explaining “power-relevant” discourse structures involves reconstruction of the social and cognitive processes of their production, we apply the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). We take into cognizance van Dijk’s (2001, p.353) position that critical research on discourse needs to satisfy a number of requirements, among which are: (i) rather than merely describe discourse structures, it tries to explain them in terms of properties of social interaction and especially social structure; and (ii) more specifically, CDA focuses on the way discourse structures enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce, or challenge relations of power and dominance in society. Wodak (2002, p.11) argues:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Language provides a finely articulated vehicle for differences in power within hierarchical social structures. Very few linguistic forms have not at some stage been pressed into the service of the expression of power by a process of syntactic or textual metaphor. CDA takes interest in the ways in which linguistic forms are used in various expressions and manipulations of power.

CDA is an orientation towards language that highlights how language conventions and language practices are invested with power relations and ideological processes which people are often unaware of. Wodak (1999) cited in Hoepfner (2006, p.5) says: “The aim of Critical Discourse Analysis is to unmask ideologically permeated and often obscured structures of power, political control, and dominance, as well as strategies of discriminatory inclusion and exclusion in language in use”. Writing on language-power relations, Wodak (2002, p.11) posits: The constant unity of language and other social matters ensures that language is entwined in social power in a number of ways: language indexes power, expresses power, is involved where there is contention over power and where power is challenged.

Since power is a property of relations between social groups, institutions or organizations, social power is defined in terms of the control exercised by one group or organization (or its members) over the actions and/or the minds of (the members of) another group, thus limiting the freedom of action of the others, or influencing their knowledge, attitudes or ideologies (van Dijk, 1993a). Social power is defined in terms of “control”: groups that have power control not only the action but also the cognition of other groups. The

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

233

exercise of power usually presupposes mind management, involving the influence of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, understanding, ideologies, norms and values. The relevance of the cognitive dimension of control is central to the discussion of CDA. For it is argued that modern and more effective power is mostly cognitive and enacted by persuasion, dissimulation or manipulation, among other strategic ways to change the mind of others in one’s own interests (van Dijk, 1993b). Therefore, when powerful speakers enact or exhibit power based on privileged access to public discourse and communication as evidenced in the case of the “June 12” crisis, there is need to know how the speakers were able to persuade and influence their audiences, by the gentle stroke of subtle linguistic form(s). In view of the fact that “texts are often sites of struggle in that they show traces of differing discourses and ideologies all contending and struggling for dominance” (Wodak, 2002, p.10), we attempt to forge meaningful links between linguistic form, speaker intent and political goals within the context of the social action in which the discourse is embedded. In this regard, we hinge the analysis of the discourse on Locke’s (2004, p.38) view: “CDA’s concern is with the opacity of texts and utterances – the discursive constructions or stories that are embedded in texts as information that is readily available to consciousness. Analysis is a method of dealing with this opacity”. Wodak (2002, p.10) lends credence to this view when she says: “One of the aims of CDA is to ‘demystify’ discourses by deciphering ideologies”.

UNMASKING THE HIDDEN MEANING In this section of the study, we focus on four categories of pronouns that the speakers have manipulated for political effect in their speeches.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

First Person Plural Pronominal Forms The first category that the speakers tactically deployed in the discourse is that of the plural first-person plural subjective/objective, reflexive and possessive pronominals: “we/us”, “ourselves”, and “our” respectively. As forms of address system, such pronominals are deictic devices performing certain pragmatic functions. Brown and Gilman (1972, p.252), while pointing out the discursive practice of using such pronominals, write: The interesting thing about such pronouns is their close association with two dimensions fundamental to the analysis of all social life – the dimensions of power and solidarity. Semantic and stylistic analysis of these forms takes us well into psychology and sociology as well as into linguistics and the study of literature.

It is pertinent to note that the dimensions of power and solidarity hinted at by Brown and Gilman (1972) above are integral to the speakers’ use of such pronominals in the discourse. Consider the following excerpts: (i) We must not deviate from the issue before us as duly identified. We must not allow ourselves to be misguided into fratricidal conflict … . We must eschew undue selfish

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

234

Adeyemi Adegoju

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

motives, self-interest and sectional group interests and pursue with vigor national interest which is central to our country’s democratic aspirations (Babangida, ‘Crisis and the Search for Peace I’, Selected Speeches of IBB, Vol. III, 1996, p.144). (ii) Nigeria is the only country we have. We must solve our problems ourselves. We must lay very solid foundation for the growth of true democracy. We should avoid any ad hoc or temporary solutions. The problems must be addressed firmly, objectively and with all sincerity of purpose (Abacha, “Child of Neccesity”, Newswatch, November 29, 1993, p.18). (iii) People of Nigeria, these are challenging times in the history of our continent, Africa, and we in Nigeria must not allow ourselves to be left behind. Our struggle is the same as that waged by the people of South Africa … . We in Nigeria are also fighting to replace MINORITY rule, for we are ruled by only a tiny section of our armed forces. Like the South Africans, we want MAJORITY rule today … (Abiola, “Epetedo Declaration”, Tell, July 20, 1998, p.20). One striking tactic that cuts across the three excerpts cited above is the speakers’ use of the plural first-person pronominals (we, us, our, ourselves). This creates the impression of a symmetrical relation that holds among a people fighting the same (political) cause that is presented in such a way that the interest of the country matters most. Meanwhile, each of the speakers had a distinct ideological position for which he sought the support of Nigerians. Thus, Babangida, Abacha and Abiola adopted the tactic of solidarity engineering. The use of the plural first-person pronominals as a solidarity-engineering tactic especially by Babangida and Abacha in excerpts (i) and (ii) respectively brings to bear the inspirational function that language serves in the army. Amafah (1990, p.75) argues that the inspirational function of language in the army is “desired to boost the morale of soldiers, soldiers mobilized towards the achievement of a goal through an appeal to some corporate ideals (e.g., masculinity, espirit de corps, national survival, etc”. The speakers' transference of military ideals to national politics would give the audience the impression that they were committed to such ideals in the same manner in which they were duty-bound to uphold them in the military circle. In addition, the coalescence of voices in the plural first-person pronominal forms in relation to encoding of power deserves attention. In excerpts (i), (ii) and (iii) respectively, Babangida, Abacha and Abiola used the modal auxiliary ‘must’ with the plural first-person pronominal form (we) to encode power and control. Each of them presented his speech in such a way that he coalesced the voice of self, that is, the speaker’s voice with the voice of the audience (society), thereby giving the impression that he had the backing of the Nigerian people to speak on their behalf. This rhetorical style dates back to the ancient Roman Empire when the emperor’s consistent pronoun style gave away his class status and political views. Writing on the emperor’s use of the plural first-person pronominal forms, Brown and Gilman (1972, p.254) explain: An emperor … is the summation of his people and can speak as their representative. Royal persons sometimes say “we” when an ordinary man would say “I”… . The usage need not have been mediated by a prosaic association with actual plurality, for plurality is a very old and ubiquitous metaphor for power.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

235

This viewpoint corroborates that of Arendt (1970, p.44) who writes: Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.

From the views expressed above by Brown and Gilman (1972) and Arendt (1970), there appears to be an intrinsic link between the encoding of power and the expression of solidarity in the speakers’ use of the plural first-person pronominals geared towards the attainment of collective goals. To this end, Habermas (1977, p.4) argues: The fundamental phenomenon of power is not the instrumentalization of “another’s” will, but the formation of a “common” will in a communication directed to reaching agreement … . “Power” would then mean the consent of the governed that is mobilized for collective goals, that is, their readiness to support the political leadership… .

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is imperative to note that there are some limitations to Habermas’ view here. First, although the audiences (or the people) were given the impression of being mobilized towards the attainment of collective goals, we should not gloss over the possibility of the speakers’ attempt to satisfy their own (selfish) ends/personal goals that would run counter to the people’s will. This is because political intentions are often inscrutable. Second, pronominal forms have a way of alienating and assimilating the other. Although the speakers in excerpts (i), (ii) and (iii) employed the assimilatory function of the pronominals in consonance with the pluralism of identity in the country, there is no doubt that they could have as well threatened the face of those who might not want to identify with their causes. For instance, Babangida’s and Abacha’s use of the plural first-person pronominal forms as “inclusive devices”, (Oha 1997) argues, may be face-threatening to those groups who might not want to identify with Babangida and Abacha, on the one hand, and their respective regimes and political programs, on the other hand, especially the Yoruba ethnic group that appeared to be most aggrieved on account of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. In addition, Abiola’s coalescence of the voice of self with the voice of the people, using the plural first-person pronominals, could threaten the face of the ethnic groups that might not want to identify with the ‘June 12’ cause. Thus, Oha (1997, pp. 46-47) argues: To include one who does not want to be included, or to attribute responsibility to one who does not identify with a cause seems to agree with the design of military dictatorship. The plural first person pronominals are, therefore, tactical means of assimilating the other and making a single voice (of the dictatorship) appear to be plural.

Although it is only Babangida and Abacha that were military, we may not be able to exonerate Abiola (a civilian) from the use of this strategy because he too could have imbibed the military dictatorial tendency. Generally, the speakers’ dictatorial tendency seems to be predicated on the monologic nature of the speeches in which the speakers’ perspectives and convictions were forcefully presented to their respective audiences. Thus, the “one–sidedness of the flow of information seems to satisfy power demands” (Oha 1994, p.117), for political

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

236

Adeyemi Adegoju

speakers’ privileged access to and control of public discourse is a major resource for political manipulation. Now, it is pertinent that we pay attention to Babangida’s recourse to the use of “exclusive we” in the face of widespread condemnation of the annulment of the June 12 election. He explained:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(iv) We have had to turn around at the presidential election because we had to be wiser for the nation than for ourselves and the presidential candidates. There is no denying the fact that the nation matters more than individual ambitions and friendship (“Crisis and the Search for Peace I”, Selected Speeches of IBB Vol. III, 1996: 140- 141). The use of “we” in this excerpt gives the impression that the cancellation of the June 12 presidential election was the decision of a group and not that of an individual. This strategy of complete self-effacement and attempt to pass the buck to a collective group is a popular rhetorical strategy in political discourses, as it shields the leader from direct attacks at his/her person. Babangida’s appeal to group responsibility here is questionable if we recall that the orientation of the military is the supremacy of the view of the most senior officer. With regard to the decision to annul the election, one cannot be so sure that just a single person (the leader of the military government) did not take the decision, only for the ruling body (National Defense and Security Council) to rubberstamp it. After all, in military circles, the word of the superior officer is law; the subordinates have to “obey the last order”, as popularly expressed in military parlance. We also find out that while Babangida and Abacha were being criticized for having taken actions that threatened the entrenchment of democracy in Nigeria, they also tried to show that that had a stake in the development of the country like any other Nigerian. They constantly referred to Nigeria as “our country” and “our fatherland”, and the people, “our people” and the ethnic groups, “our various ethnic groups”. By using the determiner “our”, each of them tried to whip up patriotic sentiments to give the impression that they too had the interests of the country and the people at heart. Judging them, therefore, as having taken certain actions that would adversely affect the interests of their country and the people, for whom they supposedly had strong emotional attachments, is tantamount to hurting their sense of patriotism. However, we have to note that since these speakers controlled the discourse, such a linguistic form readily provided an escapist route for them to explain away their actions as having been taken in “national interests”. In fact, it is ritualistic in political discourses that no matter how desperately a leader is pursuing self or group interests, the moment they use “our” to show a collective sense of belonging, it takes the discerning audience to figure out traces of deceit in such a linguistic manipulation. In this sense, meaning becomes slippery, as it is difficult to differentiate personal interest or group interest from the much-touted “national interests”. At another level of signification, we could interpret the use of “our” as being exclusive of the audience. So long as the interests of the audiences were not considered or served in such situations where the impression was given that the entity belonged to all, it is unwarranted to see the people as sharing the sense of belonging that the leaders invited them to share or forced on them.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

237

First Person Singular Pronominal Forms Besides the speakers’ use of the plural first-person pronominal forms, the transmutation of identity signalled in the discourse through their shift from plural first-person pronominals to singular first-person pronominals is noteworthy. In this wise, Brown and Gilman (1972, p.253) contend that “a man may vary his pronoun style from time to time so as to express transient moods and attitudes”. Consider the following: (v) Let me confess that the many and varied attacks hurt me personally and expectedly my family … .My worry in the past few weeks has been that the attacks directed at my person and the innocent members of my family may deter other patriots who genuinely wish to offer themselves for service to the father land to parry a while (Babangida, “Stepping aside for Peace and National Concord”, Selected Speeches of IBB, Vol. III, 1996, p.166). In excerpt (v) above, Babangida used the first-person singular pronominals objective/possessive (me/my) to narrow down identity. This expresses a momentary shift of mood that reflects a particular attitude or emotion. Babangida wanted to personalise the problem occasioned by the annulment of the “June 12” election. This is a characteristic disposition assumed by him in the discourse of the conflict in an attempt to detract from the magnitude, and national dimension of the crisis. Elsewhere, he lamented:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(vi) The implication of the conception of politics in the first-person singular, and the problem it has created for current efforts at evolving an acceptable solution to the political impasse is to make me, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the issue and hence the focus of all possible ways to the resolution of present impasse (“Stepping Aside for Peace and National Concord”, Selected Speeches of IBB Vol. III, 1996, p.165). Here, Babangida still emphasized the personalization of the problem but he seemed to play to the gallery, trying to impress the audience with the “game” he plays in, and with, language with his linguistic analysis of pronominal forms, particularly his identification of the first-person singular, at the expense of addressing issues or facing facts. This hints at the fact that in some situations political speeches are not necessarily meant to inform or reveal to the audience hidden facts but to gloss over the issue at stake and project the image of the speaker as an intellectual. In this instance, although we do not doubt Babangida’s knowledge of and competence in linguistic analysis, the trappings of the erudition of (ghost) speech writers specially trained in such an art cannot be ruled out. As part of the use of the first-person singular pronominals to personalise the problem of the annulment of the election, Babangida frequently used the pronoun “I” with such verbs as “believe”, “wish” and “feel” in the discourse. According to Quirk et al (1985, p.202), such stative verbs “denote ‘private’ states of mind which can only be subjectively verified”. It is noteworthy that Babangida ruled for eight years and experimented with varied transition programs culminating in the conduct of June 12 presidential election. Thus, Nigerians would have appreciated a successful transition to a civilian government, thereby showing that

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Adeyemi Adegoju

238

Babangida’s expressions of wishes, feelings and beliefs were, in the nick of time, translated to tangible and realistic political results beneficial to the polity and the people. Barely two months to his avowed date of leaving office in the wake of the cancellation of the June 12 presidential election, he still committed himself: (vii) In annulling the presidential election, this administration was keenly aware of its promise in November, 1992 that it would disengage and institute a return to democracy on 27 August, 1993. We are determined to keep that promise. Since this transition and any transition must have an end, I believe that our transition program should and must come to an end, honestly and honorably (“Expediency and the Path of Honor”, Selected Speeches of IBB Vol. III, 1996, p.134). Elsewhere he boasted: (viii) I believe that at the exit of this administration from power, we would leave behind for posterity a country with an economy the structures of which have been turned around for good (“Expediency and the Path of Honor”, Selected Speeches of IBB Vol. III, 1996, p.133).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

While Babangida was pontificating about the economic base of the country, the audience would rather be interested in the political structure he was leaving behind that would sustain and consolidate the economic base. This is because no matter how economically viable the country was at the point of his leaving office, the political brouhaha that he left behind would mess it up in no time. Therefore, his expressions of personal views and opinions appear to be mere rantings. The construction of identity in Babangida’s use of the first person singular pronoun contrasts with that of Abiola. While Babangida tried to deflect individual responsibility in the annulment of the election and sought complete self-effacement, Abiola tried to project his own identity as a victim of injustice in order to draw people’s sympathy: (ix) As I speak today, I am by the infinite grace of God, and the wishes of the people of this country, the President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am the custodian of a sacred mandate, freely given, which I cannot surrender unless the people so demand… (Abiola, ‘A Deliberate Intention to Insult and Ridicule the Entire Nigerian People’, cf. Olanrewaju, 1999, p.72). Here, Abiola’s predilection for the first-person singular pronominal is expected, as he would like to parade himself as the proud (presumed) winner of the election that was cancelled by the military government. By assuming this posture, he brought to the fore his social role in the vanguard of the crusade against the annulment of the election. In spite of his preference for this pronominal form which is ego-boosting, his counting on the wishes, cooperation and support of the people to claim the mandate is worthy of note. For instance, he resolved not to betray the trust reposed in him by the Nigerian people. Thus, he gave the impression that he was not a “lone-ranger” in the struggle. Elsewhere, he assured the people:

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

239

(x) I am going to struggle with you for the materialization of the mandate of 12 June for the benefit of our nation and its people (“Salute to the People”, African Concord, October 1993, p. 64). Hence, the collapsibility of “I” and “you” in the excerpt above to produce “we” is suggestive of collective responsibility. As a victim of perceived injustice that needed the support of the people, Abiola just had to say this because people would like to hear such. Saying what will interest the people is a strategy of the political speaker who would construct a positive image of himself/herself to help to actualize his/her goals. For Sani Abacha, his use of the first person singular pronoun “I” in his maiden speech as Head of State deserves attention. For he constructed for himself the image of a concerned Nigerian citizen who would respond to the challenge of serving the country in the face of very serious threats to the polity. (xi) Sequel to the Resignation of the Former Head of the Interim National Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Ernest Shonekan, and my subsequent appointment as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, I have had extensive consultations within the Armed Forces hierarchy and other well-meaning Nigerians in a bid to find solutions to the various political, economic and social problems which have engulfed our beloved country and which have made life most difficult to the ordinary citizen of this nation (Abacha, “Child of Necessity”, Newswatch, November 29, 1993, p.18). His messianic posture in this extract was to give the audience the impression that his taking over the reins of power as Head of State from the Chairman of the Interim National Government, Chief Ernest Shonekan, was not to serve any self interest. However, we know that in political discourses, it is difficult to separate personal from national interests because of the slippery nature of the discourses.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Second Person Pronominal At this point, it germane that we pay attention to the speakers’ deployment of the secondperson pronominal (you) in such expressions as: “as you all know”; “you are all (living) witnesses”; “you may wish to recall”; “as you are aware”; “as you may be aware”; “permit me to remind you”; “as you are all now aware”; and “you will recall that … ” in the conflict rhetoric. All the three speakers have predilection for the use of this pronominal form couched in the above expressions. To all appearances, their use shed light on what is known in discourse analysis as the notion of “shared knowledge” or “assumed common ground” or “presupposition” “defined in terms of assumptions the speaker makes about what the hearer is likely to accept without challenge” (Givon, 1979a, p.50; cited in Brown and Yule, 1983, p.29). Further still, Stalnaker (1978, p.321), cited in Brown and Yule (1983, p.29), defines presuppositions thus: “presuppositions are what is taken by the speaker to be the common ground of the participants in the conversation”. Hence, the speakers tended to justify

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Adeyemi Adegoju

240

whatever claims they made with regard to the conflict, as they presupposed that the audience appreciated and shared such claims. Pragmatically, the use of “you” in such expressions underscores the crucial role discourse plays in the in eliciting the consent of others. Such a manipulation fits into Nader’s (1995) notion of “coerced harmony” explained in terms of “the ways in which the powerful force those with less power to agree to a consensus, or the appearance of it, although it may not be in the latter’s interests” (Lakoff, 2001, p.313). Allen (2007, p.4) wraps up the rhetorical function of “you” in political discourse, saying: “For politicians, one advantage of presenting their propositions as common sense is that it makes it more difficult to question what they are saying”. Thus, by appropriating the pronoun “you” in the conflict rhetoric, Babangida, Abacha and Abiola subjected their audiences to divergent ideological positions for which the people had to make either an informed or an uninformed choice depending on their ideological bent or their discerning spirit. Abusing the sensibilities of the people by positioning the discourse in such a way that the people were torn between opposing forces and “voices” scrambling for their minds resonates with the role of discourse in the (re)production of “dominance”. According to van Dijk (1993a, p.84), “Dominance is here understood as a form of social power abuse, that is, as a legally or morally illegitimate exercise of control over others in one’s own interests, often resulting in social inequality”.

Third Person Plural Pronoun The pronominal form “they” also serves some rhetorical functions in the discourse of the “June 12” crisis, as each of the speakers tried to portray a group of people in a particular light in order to further reinforce their messages to the audiences. Let us consider the following excerpts:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(xii) In recent times, our country has been inundated by the sporadic rise of unregistered groups seeking to play the role of political associations. Such groups have wantonly and recklessly paraded themselves as advocates of democracy. They create the erroneous impression of commanding national spread whereas they are local, sectional, economically motivated and ethnic in their composition and orientation (Abacha, “The Big-Stick Declaration”, Tell, August 29, 1994, p.18). We find out in the excerpt above that the major political propaganda employed by Abacha to run down the opposition groups is “name-calling” as those who were agitating for the de-annulment of the June 12 election were portrayed in negative lights. This is a rhetorical weapon of distancing that group from his audience while trying to endear himself to them. In particular, there is an allegation levelled against the opponents that touches on a very crucial but delicate issue that has become ritualistic in the political discourse of post-colonial Nigeria. Trying to engineer ethnocentric sentiment against those calling for the de-annulment of the election is rhetorically compelling. It is interesting to note that his recourse to the issue of ethnicity in a pluri-ethnic society such as Nigeria could be a potent scoring point for the speaker who wishes to alienate the opponents’ goals from the ever ethnic-conscious audience. However, as Oha (1997) observes, political public speaking involves subjecting the audiences

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

241

to the “weight” of words to influence their views and attitudes on certain political issues without the speakers’ bothering about how such groups weigh or carry the weight of their words. Thus, the “loaded weapon” of ethnicity has become a manipulative weapon of political deceit in the hands of political speakers to score cheap political goals in such a pluriethnic society such as Nigeria. In such a complex society, Oha (1997, pp. 45-46) argues that “if there is anything the ethnic groups in Nigeria, particularly the ‘minorities’ would like to hear said, it is that they must be protected within the nation, and that their rights as co-equals with other ethnic groups must not be denied”. In a similar vein, Babangida vilified the groups agitating for the de-annulment of the June 12 election:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(xiii) We have in the past few weeks witnessed the highly provocative, divisive and potentially destabilizing designs of the so-called ‘custodians of democracy, good governance and human rights associations or groups … they push for their private, parochial and self-serving agendas on our urban streets and pages of newspapers taking with them the innocent and the gullible. They threaten fire and brimstone. They tread the path of confrontation and sometimes treason. They are a small group, but they make the most noise like the proverbial empty barrel. Their patriotism is suspect especially in their reliance on external base for power (“Stepping Aside for Peace and National Concord”, Selected Speeches of IBB Vol. III, 1996, p.168). Babangida’s reference to the numerical strength of the opposition smacks of the diminutive portrayal of the “enemy” in political rhetoric where the impression is always given to the audience that the opposition is a negligible few whose views will invariably be unpopular. Besides, it is an attempt to conjure up the popular “us-them” dichotomy in political discourses where the speaker attempts to draw a battle line between his own group and that of the opposition. Usually, the “they” group is negatively labelled so that the audience can pitch their tent with the speaker. We must note here that such adjectives as “private”, “parochial”, and “self-serving” used to vilify the opponent have meanings in the construction of reality favourable only to the speaker’s dominant group. To the other group (the opposition) and their apologists, their agendas could be “public”, “broad-based” and “selfless”. Abiola’s use of “they” is interesting in two dimensions. First, he used the pronoun to refer to the military, as he also engaged in the political ritual of vilification of opponents: (xiv) We are tired of the military’s repetitive tendency to experiment with our economy. Today, they say: “No controls”. Tomorrow, they say: “Full controls”. The day after, they say: “Fine tuning”. The next day, they say: “Devaluation”. A few days later, they say: “Revalue the same naira upwards again”… . All we can see are the consequences of this permanent game of military “about-turns”: high inflation; a huge budget deficit; enormous foreign debt; repayment burden; dying industries; high unemployment and a demoralized populace (“Epetedo Declaration”, Tell, July 20, 1998, p. 20).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

242

Adeyemi Adegoju

Abiola’s portrayal of military’s role in governance as “military about-turns” deserves analysis. In the military parlance, “about-turn” is a command to soldiers on parade to turn round and face the opposite direction. This is the literal sense of the use of the lexical item. However, in the conflict rhetoric, “about-turn” is used as a parody that assumes a metaphorical significance. In this regard, military “about-turns” refers to the inconsistencies in the military’s system of governance. The implication of this is that the military abandoned their primary assignment for which they were duly trained and made incursions into governance whose challenges and intricacies they could not cope with, hence their “permanent game of military about-turns”. This is an attempt to picture the military as not being able to make steady progress in the economic sector, as they had to turn around (as they do on the parade ground) to take steps in the opposite direction. We may have to comment here that Abiola’s picture of the military appears to be an oversimplification of their role in governance. A good number of soldiers are intellectuals and they know a lot about governance, their incursion into politics and the mode of acquiring power notwithstanding. Are civilians necessarily experts or saints in politics? Have civilians not functioned as military apologists, sycophants and accomplices? These issues might never have crossed Abiola’s mind or he might have chosen to gloss over them just to serve his own interests. The other interesting dimension in which Abiola used the pronoun is with regard to the Nigerian people who voted for him in the June 12 presidential election:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(xv) The people of Nigeria have spoken. They have loudly and firmly proclaimed their preference for democracy. They have chosen me as their president for the next four years. They have determined that 27 August, 1993, shall be the terminal date of military dictatorship in Nigeria. On that date, the people of Nigeria, through their democratic decision of 12 June 1993, expect me to assume the reins of government. I fully intend to keep that date with history (“A Deliberate Intention to Insult and Ridicule the Entire Nigerian People”, cf. Olanrewaju, 1999, p.72). By using the pronoun “they” to refer generally to all Nigerians as opposed to only the Nigerians who were then still supporting him after the elections had been cancelled, Abiola tried to give the impression that he still had the full support of people nationwide. However, the truth of the matter is that it was only the Yoruba ethnic group that championed the cause to have their own “son” as the president of the country for the very first time. Although it was common knowledge that Nigerians voted across regional, religious and ethnic divide in the election, the moment it was annulled, the struggle for its validation became an ethnic issue championed by the Yoruba. No doubt, there were some activists from other ethnic groups that sympathized with the perceived “Yoruba agenda”.

CONCLUSION This study has attempted an analysis of the discursive practice of appropriating personal pronouns for political effect in the conflict rhetoric of Nigeria’s “June 12” crisis. Applying a critical approach to discourse, the study sought to discern the intricate connections between language and the variables of power and ideology which the unconscious reader would

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

243

consider ordinary and, therefore, innocuous in political relations and processes. In so doing, it tried to unmask varied political goals that the speakers strove to achieve with their control of the discourse and consequent management of the minds of the audiences in the manner that would serve the interests of each of them in the conflict situation. Thus, this study has provided insights into how the conflict rhetoric was positioned and how such positioning supposedly served the interests of the speakers and undermined those of their hearers. In all, the study has lent credence to McGregor’s viewpoint that: “our words are politicized, even if we are not aware of it, because they carry the power that reflects the interests of those who speak” (McGregor, 2003, p.2).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Abacha, S. (1993). A Child of Necessity. In Newswatch, November 29, 1993, 18. Abacha, S. (1994). The Big-Stick Declaration. In Tell, August 29, 1994, 18-20. Abiola, M.K.O. (1993). Salute to the People. In African Concord Special, October 1993, 64. Abiola, M.K.O. (1998). Epetedo Declaration. In Tell, July 20, 1998, 20-21. Abiola, M.K.O. (1999). A Deliberate Intention to Insult and Ridicule the Entire Nigerian People. In Olanrewaju, O. (1999) Generalissimo: The Life and legend of M.K.O. Abiola. pp. 69-72. Ibadan: Pelcas Prints and Publishers. Adetunji, A. (2006). Inclusion and exclusion in political discourse: Deixis in Olusegun Obasanjo’s speeches. Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5(2), 177-191. Ake, C. (1992). The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. Ibadan: CREDU. Allen, W. (2007). Australian political discourse: Pronominal choice in campaign speeches. In M. Laughren & I. Mushin (Eds.), Selected Papers from the 2006 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, pp. 1-13. Retrieved October 10, 2008 from http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:12794/ALLEN_W_ALS2006.pdf Amafah, J.E. (1990). The English language in the Nigerian army: A situational and linguistic analysis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Awonuga, C.O. (2005). A Stylistic Study of “Sustenance of Democracy” by Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo. Journal of Social Sciences 11(2), 111-119. Retrieved September 10, 2008 from http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-11-0-000000-2005-Web/JSS-11-2-097-172-2005-Abst-PDF/JSS-11-2-111-119-2005-234Awonuga-C-O/JSS-11-2-111-119-2005-234-Awonuga-C-O-Full-Text.pdf Babangida, I. (1996). Expediency and the Path of Honor. In Oyovbaire, S. & Olagunju, T. (eds.) (1996) Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria: Selected Speeches of IBB Volume III. pp. 132-139. Ikeja: Malthouse Press Limited. Babangida, I. (1996). Crisis and the Search for Peace I: Dialogue with State Governors. In Oyovbaire, S. & Olagunju, T. (eds.) (1996) Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria: Selected Speeches of IBB Volume III. pp. 140-144. Ikeja: Malthouse Press Limited. Babangida, I. (1996) Stepping Aside for Peace and National Concord. In Oyovbaire, S. & Olagunju, T. (eds.) (1996) Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria: Selected Speeches of IBB Volume III. pp. 156-170. Ikeja: Malthouse Press Limited.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

244

Adeyemi Adegoju

Bretton, H. L. (1976). Political science, language, and politics. In W.M. O’Barr & J.F. O’Barr (Eds.), Language and Politics pp. 431-448. The Hague: Mouton. Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language pp. 253-276. Cambridge: MIT Press. Reprinted in P. Giglioli (Ed.) (1972), Language and social context pp. 252-281. London: Penguin Books. Brown, G., & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chilton, P., & Schaffner, C. (1997). Discourse and politics. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction, Vol. 2: Discourse as social interaction pp. 206230. London: Sage. Chilton, P. (2004). Analyzing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge. Habermas, J. (1977). Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power. Social Research, 44(1), 3-24. Hart, C. (2005). Analyzing political discourse: Toward a cognitive approach. Critical Discourse Studies, 2(2), 1-9. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from https://uhra.herts. ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/1071/1/901161.pdf Hoepfner, Y. (2006). Analyzing the beauty advertisement discourse: Dove’s campaign for real beauty. Retrieved September 20, 2008 from http://www.discourseanalysis.de/media/pdfs/Hoepfner%202006%20Dove.pdf Kuo, S. (2002). From solidarity to antagonism: The uses of the second-person singular pronoun in Chinese political discourse. Text, 22(1), 29-55. Retrieved September 10, 2008 http://www.hss.nthu.edu.tw/~fl/faculty/shkuo/Second-person%20singular%20 from pronoun.pdf Lakoff, R. T. (2001). The rhetoric of the extraordinary moment: The concession and acceptance speeches of Al Gore and George W. Bush in the 2000 Presidential Election. Pragmatics, 11(3), 309-327. Locke, T. (2004). Critical Discourse Analysis. London, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. McGregor, S.L.T. (2003). Critical Discourse Analysis – A primer. Kappa Omicron Nu Forum, 15(1), 1-8. Retrieved November 10, 2008 from http://www.kon.org/archives/ forum/15-1/mcgregorcda.html O’Barr, W. (1976). Boundaries, strategies, and power relations: Political anthropology and language. In W.M. O’Barr & J.F. O’Barr (Eds.), Language and politics pp. 405-420. The Hague: Mouton. Oha, O. (1994). Language in war situation: A stylistic study of the war speeches of Yakubu Gowon and Emeka Ojukwu. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Oha, O. (1997). Federalizing the weight of words: Multilingualism, multiculturalism, and political public speaking in Nigeria. Context: Journal of Social and Cultural Studies, 1(1), 37-56. Quirk, R.; Greenbaum, S.; Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. New York: Longman. Schaffner, C. (1996). Editorial: Political speeches and discourse analysis. Current Issues in Language & Society, 3(3), 201-204. Retrieved September 2, 2008 from http://www.multilingual-matters.net/cils/003/0201/cils0030201.pdf

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Pronominal Reference as Discursive Strategy in Conflict Rhetoric

245

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Schaffner, C. (2004). Political discourse analysis from the point of view of translation studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), 117-150. Retrieved August 15, 2008 from http://www.benjamins.com/jbp/series/JLP/3-1/art/0006a.pdf Van Dijk, T. A. (1993a). Discourse, power and access. In C.R. Caldas (Ed.), Studies in Critical Discourse Analysis pp. 84-104. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, T. A. (1993b). Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), 249-283. Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis. In D. Schiffrin; D. Tannen & H.E. Hamilton (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis pp. 352-371. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilson, J. (1990). Politically speaking: The pragmatic analysis of political language. Oxford: Blackwell. Wodak, R. (2002). Aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis’. ZfAL, 36, 5-31. Retrieved September 11, 2008 from http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~diekmann/zfal/zfalarchiv/ zfal36_1.pdf

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 20

CULTURE AND GLOBALISATION: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the concepts of culture and globalisation as they are reflected in Africa and in the contemporary world. It opines that culture is an integral of every human society and globalisation can be harnessed for the promotion of African culture and ideologies. The study, through the Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (TFA) explores the use of proverbs as an aspect of culture and also identifies the form of the struggle for power that exists in the text. It contextualises the text, examines the themes in the novel, and explores the ideologies of the actors. It employs the linguistic approaches of Fairclough and Halliday for the analysis of the text. It explicates the meaning of the text with the thematic structure analysis, transitivity structure analysis, and the mood structure interpretation of the text. It explores the use of proverbs in African context. It discovers that elders to portray the logic of their arguments use the proverbs. The study concludes on the ground that African Literature as exemplified with TFA, are essential for the promoting of African heritage and culture; thus, there is need for the orientation and conscientisation of people about Africa through African literature.

Keywords: Africa, culture, globalisation, proverbs, ideologies

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

248

Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION Culture is to every people as water is to fish; hence the importance of culture to every human society cannot be over-emphasized. Culture according to Britannica Encyclopedia, (2005) can be perceived as the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behaviour, which consists of language, ideas, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components. This means that culture is an embodiment of the totality of human activities in a particular society, which its development greatly depends upon human capacity to learn and transmit knowledge to succeeding generations. The difference between the culture of humans and the behaviours exhibited by other species of living things is that humans cannot survive without culture. Everything they see, touch, interact with and think about is cultural. It is the major adaptive mechanism for humans. Thus, scientists describe culture as a set of ideas, attributes, and expectations that change as people react to changing circumstances. Language is an important element in human culture. It is the primary abstract artifact by which culture is transmitted extra genetically. Most transmissions of the knowledge, ideas, and values that make up a given culture are done through language. Again, language is an aspect from which humans differ from other animals in degree rather than kind (see Ayeomoni, 2004; Lopes, 2003; & Oyeshile, 2000). Every human society is bequeathed with its own culture, which overlaps to some extent with some other cultures. Thus, local culture remains a powerful influence in daily life and people are bound to places and those places continue to shape particular norms and values. The culture, which a person lives, can greatly influence the attitudes, values, ideas, and beliefs of the person; hence there is the need to understand every aspect of one’s culture for evaluative, preservative and globalisation purposes. Language is involved in the struggle to impose the new-liberal order, through the new ways of being and acting in winning acceptance for particular representations of change, which all bring all bring about a “global discourse”. Each society has its own order of discourse and its own dynamism. Globalisation as a current world trend is described as the process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas is becoming standardised around the world (see Connel, 1998). Fairclough (2000) describes globalisation as a process which is only partially complete and which those who benefit most are seeking to extend through a struggle to impose a new order. Globalisation entails “action at a distance”, that is, social processes and social relations are stretched out across huge distances both in terms of mileage and in terms of social and cultural differences. Globalisation has brought about the collapse of time and space as it has reduced the world to a global village with advancements in wireless and Internet communications and electronic business transactions, thereby creating a homogenized world, in which people everywhere have an unquenchable desire to partake of the fruits of globalisation while celebrating the inherent uniqueness of their own cultures. The uniqueness of African culture can be made manifest with the process of globalisation in several ways, one of which will be through the global domestication of African literature. African literature as a repository of culture of Africans can be manipulated with the forces of globalisation to serve as the beacon of knowledge in a constantly changing world, in order to foster peace and harmony in today’s world and to protect the future of our humanity with the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Culture and Globalisation

249

ideas and values that are entrenched in the literature. African writers have graved several African virtues, ethics, and ideas that are relevant to contemporary world now and in future. One of such African literature is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart published in 1958. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart marks its fiftieth anniversary this year and is significant as it is one of the earliest African novels that portray the rich cultural heritage, the philosophical orientations and ethics of Africans as a response to the earlier reports and writings on Africa by foreigners. The novel has set the pace for the development of African literature with its portrayal of Africa’s past by highlighting the indigenous cultures and traditions in Africa with the social visions and dynamism of the transitions occurring in Africa. Thus, this chapter explores African ideologies of social realism and social change as preserved and presented in African culture in the text with the challenges in future for readers of African literature in the next half of this century. As the novel comprises several aspects of African culture, with the limited space and time, this study is delimited to only an aspect of culture, which is proverb. A proverb as a succinct and witty saying, expresses commonly held ideas and beliefs; it also expresses a people’s wisdom and code of behaviour, imagination, and sense of humour. Proverbs are part of every spoken language; the Britannica Encyclopedia (2005) explains that they are related to such other oral forms of folk literature as riddles and fables that originated from oral tradition. The significance of proverbs in Africa cannot be over-emphasized as an Igbo proverb has it “proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten”. The art of conversation depends on the use of proverbs as it enables the speaker to not only show his learning, but to also attack an opponent obliquely without mentioning names or the subject of the dispute. It is thus essential for proverbs to be globalized as a tool of African identity. In this chapter, the study of proverbs as an aspect of African culture in Things Fall Apart becomes essential in exploring the values of African culture in relation to the trends of globalisation. The novel gives a representation of the use of proverbs by members of Umuofia and its surrounding villages as a microcosm of Africa, thus portraying the ideologies of Africa in our social-cultural contexts. The focus of this study is on the use of proverbs in conversations by Africans that perceive proverbs as the channel of communication of the unsaid, and, for the identification of the underlying ideologies of power in the proverbs.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY This chapter is descriptive in its approach and includes a contextualization of the text, an explication of the plot structure of the novel and a discussion of the significant themes raised in the text. Some proverbs are selected and analysed with the linguistic approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Norman Fairclough, which seeks to identify the ideologies in a given text through the language of the text from the ‘unsaid said’, which are the silences that give the implied relation of power between the users of language and ideology of the speaker in the given context of usage of language. CDA identifies the intertextual context, which views discourses and texts from a historical perspective; identifies the social order, determines the institutional setting; determines the situational setting; the situation, discourse type, contents, subjects, relations, and connections. Critical Discourse Analysis is appropriate for this chapter as it helps in the identification of the African ideologies in the proverbs that are used in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

250

Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

chapter also elucidates the findings with Halliday’s Functional Linguistic approach (see Haliday, 1985; Eggins, 1994). The study then identifies the ways of integrating the African ideologies that are inherent in the proverbs into the process of globalisation, and it further gives the implications of the globalisation of African ideologies on African literature in the next half century.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONTEXTUALIZATION OF ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART The story centers on the great man of Umuofia village, Okonkwo, who was known for his great valour in the pre- colonial days in the eastern part of Nigeria. The novel explicates the ways Africans lived and administered their affairs before the arrival of the colonial masters; it portrays the arrival of the colonial masters and missionaries in Africa, which terminated the old ways of African existence with its introduction of foreign religion, Christianity, and education. It portrays the unexpected changes that occurred during the period with the societal and psychological disorders that were experienced by Africans, particularly, Okonkwo, being one of the people at the period. The story begins with Okonkwo, who has said yes, and expected his children to say yes with him, as he has struggled against all odds to become prosperous and famous in the land contrary to his father, Unoka, who was very lazy, not courageous, and who lived in poverty and died wretched. Okonkwo’s weaknesses are fear and anger. He is afraid of poverty, which made him very hard working and he is afraid of being thought of as a weak person, coupled with these fears, he is easily given to anger, which eventually bring him to destruction. Okonkwo’s anger makes him violate the week of peace by beating one of his wives, and his fear of being thought weak makes him kill Ikemufuna, who calls him father, despite the warnings from various quarters. With the sudden explosion of Okonkwo’s gun at Ezendu’s burial killing Ezendu’s sixteen- year old son, a female crime has been committed, and Okonkwo and to family to flee to his motherland, Mbata in exile for seven years. While in exile, Okonkwo’s first son, Nwoye, becomes converted into a Christian and also flees to Umuofia for Christian training by the missionaries. After seven years, his return to Umuofia, his village, Okonkwo becomes greatly disappointed with the state of things and the rapid transformations that are occurring in the land, one of which is the unmasking of egwugwu, an ancestral masquerade by a Christian convert, Enoch. This leads to the demolition of the church by the other egwugwus as a form of revenge for the offence. Resultant of this is the arrest, imprisonment and humiliation of some village elders, of which Okonkwo is one, by the District Commissioner and his men. This strange and great atrocity saddens and breaks Okonkwo’s heart. In his bid to seek revenge, he kills the white man’s messenger, and instead of gaining the community’s support as it was the tradition, Okonkwo finds that the battle has been narrowed to that of his personal battle with the white missionaries. Realising that he is fighting a battle that is beyond his strength as an individual, which he cannot win, he decides to be courageous even in the face of death, that one should rather die than to be captured by one’s enemies, by committing suicide, which is a grievous offence to the land. Thus, Okonkwo ends his life with his own hands, which is a communal tragedy.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Culture and Globalisation

251

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

With the above plot, the novel raises the themes such as: the theme of human personal weakness. Okonkwo’s personal weaknesses manifest in form of his rash and uncontrollable anger and his fear of being thought weak. The anger makes him commit his first offence against the community, with the beating of Ojuigo, his last wife. Thus, Okonkwo violates and interrupts the week of peace in Umuofia. Likewise, because of his fear of being perceived as a weakling, Okonkwo to commit the second offence against the land, with the killing of Ikemufuna that calls him father. The third offence committed by Okonkwo against the village is the killing of Ezeudu’s sixteen-year old son. These offences are caused as a manifestation of Okonkwo’s hidden human weaknesses. The theme of reincarnation is portrayed in the novel as a presentation of Africans’ belief in the concept with the character of Ezinma, Okonkwo’s daughter, who is portrayed as a child that goes and comes back to the same parent from the spirit world, until her Iyi-uwa is dug from the earth, which saves her. The theme of revenge is also prominent in the text. This is portrayed with the revenge mission by the egwugwu (masquerades) to demolish the red-earth church because a Christian had killed the community’s python, which was a taboo. This act of revenge results in the redress of justice by the District Commissioner; which also provokes Okonkwo to seek revenge for his imprisonment with the killing of the messenger of the District Commissioner. Okonkwo’s actions reinforce the theme of the fruitlessness of revenge. The various acts of revenge in the text do not yield any positive consequences rather, each act of revenge results in temporary personal satisfaction with much hatred and tension among the parties involved. Consequently, it leads to the theme of tolerance, since revenge results in fruitlessness. The need for tolerance of one another is fore-grounded as it reveals that the indigenes need to tolerate the missionaries and their followers in the community. Thus, there is need for peaceful co-existence of people in various communities. The theme of societal transformation is also fore-grounded in the novel with the presentation of the various changes that transmit the evolution of consciousness of members of the community; such as: the arrival of missionaries with the introduction of Christian religion, which gradually erodes the indigenous religious practices of the land; the introduction of Western patterns of societal administration and justice by the District Commissioner among others. Finally, the author introduces the theme of understanding. in terms of understanding of one’s self; understanding of other people; understanding of the current trends with the changing trends in one’s society. As an archetypal character, Okonkwo’s lack of cultural and self understanding results in his undoing

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PROVERBS IN THINGS FALL APART Fairclough (2000,1995,1992) posits that the member resources which people draw upon to produce and interpret texts are cognitive in the sense that they are in people’s heads, but they are social in the sense that they are socially generated and socially transmitted (see vanDijk, 1996; vanLeeuwen, 1996). In identifying the social relations of proverbs in Things Fall Apart (TFA), there is the need for the understanding of the level of social organisation; the level of the social situation otherwise called the immediate environment in which the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

252

Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

discourse occurs; and the level of the social institution which constitutes a wider matrix for the discourse; and the level of the society as a whole (see Brown & Yule, 2003; Fowler, 1996; & McCarthy, 1991). In TFA, the social conditions for the production of proverbs are that elders in conversations use proverbs; proverbs are like the ‘salt’ that gives flavour to a soup and colour to conversations. One other social condition in the production of proverbs is that children are not expected to say proverbs to elders, as proverbs are employed amongst elders for politeness purposes. The instances of the use of proverbs in TFA demonstrate the level of social organisation in that elders of the community employ the use of proverbs on equal relations of power. In TFA, several immediate social environments or social situations reveal that proverbs are used in informal conversations and contexts of usage for buttressing the themes of the discussion. The level of the social institution in the context of use of proverbs is that of elders of a community in a society that is under-going religious and socio-cultural transformations in the early era of colonial administration in Nigeria. The transitions are brought about as a form of globalisation of Western ideologies and power through the exploration and colonisation of the Third-World countries, which Nigeria is one, and through the spread of Western trade and religion.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

DESCRIPTION OF PROVERBS FROM THINGS FALL APART AS TEXT The formal properties of proverbs as text for this Critical Discourse Analysis are examined with Halliday’s (1985) Systemic Functional Grammar, at the level of thematic structure with the text meaning analysis; the mood structure with the interpersonal meaning analysis; and the level of transitivity structure with the experiential meaning analysis thus: The textual analysis reveals that most of the clauses are hypotactic clauses made up of the logical component of independent with dependent clauses. There are a few paratactic clauses that comprised two or more independent clauses. The logical semantic process shows that the proverbs are verbal locution of facts or report. Thus, all the proverbs employ the verbal process of ‘saying’ through the use projecting clauses. The mood structure with the inter-personal meaning analysis demonstrates that the proverbs are propositions made in the form of statements or questions with simple past or simple present tense mainly in the active voice with the positive polarity. The modality of the proverbs portrays certainty with a few modality of possibility, which implies that the proverbs express instances of certainty out of tested and confirmed real life experiences (of the past). The modality in this context is often realised as finite modal operator; finite verbal operator; or verb in the simple present or simple past tense form. This implies that the proverbs are usually in simple tenses in order to facilitate understanding.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Culture and Globalisation

253

Table 5. Textual Meaning with Thematic Structure Analysis of Proverbs in TFA S/n

Proverbs

Clause type

Logical component

1

Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. P. 6. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings. P. 6. As our people say, a man who pays respect to the great paves way for his own greatness. P.14. Ogbuefi Idigo said, “a toad does not run in daytime for nothing”. P.15. Okonkwo said, “the lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one did”. P 15. “Looking at the kings mouth”, said the old man, “one would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast”. P. 19. The Igbo people have a proverb that “when a man says yes, his chi says yes also”. P. 19. “Where are the young suckers that will grow when the old banana tree dies?” P. 46. “A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam, which its mother puts into its palm”. P.47. As our people say, “when mother-cow is chewing grass, its young ones watch its mouth”. …But as the dog said, “if I fall down for you and you fall down for me, it is a play”. P.51. There was a saying in Umuofia that “as a man danced, so the drums were beaten for him”. P.130.

hypotactic

αββ

hypotactic

ββα

hypotactic

2 3

4 5

6

7

8

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

9

10

11

12

Logical semantic process Locution: fact

Theme

Function

unmarked

subject

Locution: report

marked

Circumstantial adjunct

βαβ

Locution: report

marked

Circumstantial adjunct

paratactic

1+2

Locution: report

unmarked

subject

hypotactic

α+α+β

Locution: report

unmarked

subject

hypotactic

α+β

Locution: report

marked

Comment adjunct

paratactic

α+β

Locution: fact

unmarked

subject

hypotactic

α+β

Locution: report

marked

Circumstantial adjunct

hypotactic

α+β

Locution: fact

unmarked

subject

hypotactic

α+β

Locution: report

marked

Circumstantial adjunct

hypotactic

ββα

Locution: report

marked

Conjunctive adjunct

hypotactic

αβv

Locution: report

unmarked

subject

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

254

Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

The transitivity with experiential meaning analysis reveals that the proverbs are made in the material process, behavioural process, verbal process, mental process, or in the relational process. The proverbs made in the material process portray the action of doing with the participants as the actors and (or) goals. The proverbs in the behavioural process portray the meaning of behaving with the participants as the behaver. The proverbs with the verbal process give the meaning of saying with the participants as the sayer or target. The proverbs with relational process in this context portray the meaning of being or identification with the participants as the token and value or as identified and identifier. The above explicates all that has come into the social conditions of production of the text. In the text, Things Fall Apart, the process of interpretation examines the relationship between the text and interaction, that is, as a resource in the process of interpretation. The interpretation of the proverbs as text for the Critical Discourse Analysis extenuates the discourse type, contents, subjects, relations and connections between language and discourse in the text thus: The situational setting in the use of the various proverbs shows that the proverbs are used amongst the elderly members of the community in the process of conversation for formal or informal discourse. The contents of the proverbs in the various context of usage reveal different activities and purposes of usage. For instance, proverb number one, ‘Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them’ (P.6). reveals the activity of saying by the elder, on the topic of the shining of the sun on people, for the purpose of creating logic and forming the ideology of right participation and positioning. Also, proverb number two, As the elders said, if a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings (P.6) reveals the activity of saying by elders on the topic of the child’s washing of hands, in order to eat with kings. This proverb serves the purpose of presenting logic with sincere conclusion borne out of experience. The proverbs thus demonstrate that the subject(s) in the conversations are usually made of common nouns that are generalised, and which cannot be personalised but are used to give inferences on lessons to be learnt from the analogy. For instance: the subject in proverb number two is ‘a child’; the subject in proverb three is ‘a man’; and the subject in proverb four is ‘a toad’, etc. This study also reveals that there is equality in the relations of power between the participants (who are elders in the same social group) in the discourse. This implies that the elders converse in proverbs without any intention of dominating the other participants in the discourse, rather to portray the logic of the argument. This indicates the lack of social distance between the participants in the discourse. The role of language is fore grounded in this context of use of prose genre to give information in the indicative as declarative or wh-interrogative form. In the context of the discourse, the struggle for power lies between the old, usual, traditional ways of social, political and religious life pattern with that of the modern colonial political and religious style of administration. In order to identify the ideological power, which is the power to project one’s practices as universal and ‘common’ sense, there is need to explore the inter-textual context that perceives the discourse from a historical perspective. The text reveals that whereas elders in various contexts of situation wrap the old ideologies of communalism and welfarism in the use of proverbs, the new ideologies of individualism and capitalism are introduced in form of coercion and manipulation through colonialism. This presupposes that the ideological transformations brought about by the colonial administrators were forceful yet subtle and gradual.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Culture and Globalisation

255

The colonial administration portrays the ideology of love for western religion, yet it portrays hatred for the traditional religious practices. The emergence of colonisation as portrayed in the text, Things Fall Apart, canvassed for tolerance and co-habitation of the Missionaries with its form of political administration through the District Commissioner; whereas, there is intolerance for the act of revenge by the natives who feel threatened and insulted by the various actions (such as the imprisonment of the elders of Umuofia by the District Commissioner with his subordinates). The inter-textual context thus explicates that the elders through the use of proverbs in the traditional African setting, held the ideologies that are as the result of constancy, regularity of actions and practices. However, the emergence of colonialism at that point in time, introduced a social change which was sudden and unexpected by the people, particularly the elders who also found it difficult to understand and adapt to the sweeping changes that were occurring in the society. Okonkwo thus forms an archetypal character that represents the elders that could not conform to the rapid changes in their society. These elders, like Okonkwo, are assumed to have been destroyed or captured by the modern ideologies of religious imperialism and capitalism, which could not be helped. Thus, the power struggle in the discourse and situational contexts in the text, TFA, reveals that the transformations that emerged through colonialism are only re-enforcing and emphasizing the Western ideology in the social-cultural hegemonism around the globe.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION In order not to be totally submerged in the struggle of socio-cultural hegemonism, Africans through the promotion of African literature in global forums such as the Internet, should promote African heritage and culture. African ideologies can be employed in the teaching of constant truths through the use of proverbs. The implications of the conscious process of globalisation of African socio-cultural practices through African literature include among others: the promotion of African ideologies at a global scale; the teaching of Africans in diasporas of African cultural heritage; the preservation of the African heritage through the conscientisation of Africans and non-Africans about African values and African ethics and code of conduct. There is need for urgent re-orientation of Africans in different parts of the world about the seemingly lost African identity and ideologies, which are necessary in order to make people have a better understanding of the constant transformations in the contemporary world; and in order to appreciate the dynamic differences in the ideological perspectives of people across cultures and geographical zones. Finally, African ideologies through literature should be encouraged in order to promote love and understanding among human beings and protect the future of our world and humanity.

REFERENCES Achebe, C. (1958). Things fall apart. Ibadan: Heinemann Publishers. Ayeomoni, M.O. (2004). A linguistic–stylistic of Nigerian political elite. In Oyeleye L. (Ed.) Language and Discourse in Society. (pp.199-213) Ibadan: Hope Publishers Limited.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

256

Barihi Adetunji and Aderonke Adetunji Adesida

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983) Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connell, R.W. (1998) Masculinities and globalization. Men and masculinities..1(1), (pp. 116). Cambridge: Routledge. Eggins,S. (1994 ). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics.. London: Pinter. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. London: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Fowler, R. (1996). On critical linguistics. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard and M. Coulthard (Eds.). Text and practices (pp.3-14). London: Routledge. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. McCarthy,M. (1991). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lopes, C. (2003) Does the new development agenda encapsulate real policy dialogue? In J. Olsson & L. Wohlgemuth (Eds.) Dialogue in pursuit of development. (pp.39-52). Sweden: EGDI. Oyeshile, O. A. (2000). Philosophy and languages the nature of philosopher’s interest in language. In Babajide, A. O. (Ed) Studies in English Language (pp.168-187). Ibadan: Enicrownfit Publishers. Safra, J. E. (2005) (Ed.). The new encyclopedia Britannica (15th Ed.) (Vol.3: p.784; Vol.9: p.749; Vol.20: p.133). London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. van Dijk, T.A. (1996). Discourse, power and access. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.) Text and practices (pp.84-106). London: Routledge. van Leeuwen,T. (1996). The Representation of social actors. In C.R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.) Text and practices (pp.32-70). London: Routledge.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 21

‘IN THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE’: THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA AS GLOBAL POLICEMAN IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT This chapter is concerned with America’s articulation of the pursuit of justice in securing the ‘New World Order’. The New World Order has been a discourse-(in)formation in the post-Cold War years, from G.H.W. Bush’s inaugural statement in 1990 to President George W. Bush’s administration (Lazar & Lazar 2004). In a world no longer divided along strategic bipolar lines with the demise of the ‘Soviet threat’, the New World Order discourse refers to America’s articulation of its unipolar global hegemony. The study of the discourse involves a critical intertextual analysis of the speeches of the three post-Cold War American leaders across time and specific historical events, and their respective administrations: G.W. Bush’s speeches in the aftermath of 9/11 including the attack and occupation of Iraq since 2003; Bill Clinton’s speeches in the context of American military action in Afghanistan and Sudan, and Iraq in 1998; and G.H.W. Bush’s statements in the context of the1990-1991 Gulf War. This chapter1 deals with America’s justification for the use of force in the New World Order, based upon its ‘pursuit of justice and peace’. The critical analysis shows how a ‘law and order’ frame is fundamentally set up in the discourse, and how within it Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are similarly positioned as criminals/outlaws, while America self-elects to be the global policeman and protector of the new international order. Although policing in the modern world is conventionally tied to the enforcement of ‘law and order’, the analysis also shows that the two are not always collocational. Indeed, they unravel in places in the discourse, revealing that ‘keeping

1

A version of this chapter appeared as part of our chapter in A. Hodges and C. Nilep’s (Eds.). Discourse, war and terrorism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

258

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar order’ out of moral outrage is sometimes prioritised over the principles and practice of law – suggesting, interestingly, that America itself is above the law.

Keywords: New World Order, America, out-casting, policing, criminal, justice, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein

INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Out of these troubled times … a new world order can emerge: a new era – freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace’. George H.W. Bush, 11 September 1990.

This chapter is concerned with America’s articulation of the pursuit of justice in securing the New World Order. The New World Order, we contend, is a “discourse formation” (Foucault 1972) that comprises a socio-historically contingent field of related statements, which produces and structures normatively knowledge of contemporary international relations and America’s role within it. It has been a discourse-in-formation in the post-Cold War period, notably from President George H.W. Bush’s inaugural statement in 1990 to President George W. Bush’s administration. In a world no longer divided along strategic bipolar lines with the demise of the “Soviet threat”, the New World Order discourse refers to America’s articulation of its unipolar global hegemony in the face of a world otherwise gravitating towards multipolar centres of power. Even though America possessed unrivalled military power, at the time of the Soviet debacle, Europe and Japan posed industrial and economic competition. A foundational element of the New World Order discourse, which we have earlier identified, is the establishment of an American-led moral order (Lazar & Lazar, 2004). It is an order that is built-up vis-à-vis the enunciation of the aberrant “Other” or “threat” which, at the same time justifies the identification, division and excision of that threat (Foucault 1967). In the post-Cold War era, the “threat of terror” has been identified as the new enemy, comprising Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and his associates2 (with the list expanding in G.W. Bush administration to include still others). Our analysis of the “twin terrors” has shown that based upon the dual principles that “They are all the same”, and “They are different from Us”, Osama bin Laden, a religiously motivated non-state actor, and Saddam Hussein, a secular state actor, have been conflated as a related class of threat, and similarly condemned as outcasts of the new international order. There are several ways outcasting is discursively accomplished (Lazar & Lazar 2004) – through enemisation (i.e., as political enemies of freedom and liberal democracy), orientalisation (i.e., as culturally bellicose), and evilification (i.e., as evil). Yet another strategy of out-casting is criminalisation, by which the Others’ actions are construed as deviant and unlawful. In what follows, we provide an analysis of America’s justifications for the use of force in policing the New World Order and punishing the criminal Others. Although criminalisation is 2

During the administration of G.H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was the named threat, whereas in the Clinton administration Osama bin Laden gradually filled the major role. Since 11 September 2001, Osama bin Laden has continued to be a leading threat, subsequently extended to also re-include Saddam Hussein.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’

259

the main frame drawn upon, orientalisation which presents the other as aggressive savages, and evilification in which the Other is the personification of evil battling the good combine with criminalisation to reify the menace and the moral justification for America’s use of counter violence. (The strategy of enemisation leads to use of another form of violence namely, the execution of war discussed in Lazar & Lazar, 2007.) As a discourse-in-formation, this involves analysis of an intertextual archive of speeches and written statements of the three post-Cold War American leaders across time and specific historical events, and their respective administrations. The archive for the present study comprises President George W. Bush’s speeches in the aftermath of 9/11 including the attack and occupation of Iraq since 2003; President Bill Clinton’s speeches in the context of American military action in Afghanistan and Sudan, and Iraq in 1998; and President G.H.W. Bush’s statements in the context of the 1990-91 Gulf War. The intertextual analysis of the discourse is based on identification of particular themes with regards to policing action that emerged from the data. We will organise our discussion based on these discursive themes below, and show how these themes are manifested through clusters of lexico-grammatical (Halliday 1985) and rhetorical strategies including the use of metaphors, frames, speech acts and argument structures (Fairclough, 1989; Lakoff, 1991; van Dijk, 1995).

POLICING THE NEW WORLD ORDER Policing is a means of securing the New World Order.3 In this chapter, we observe the following discursive themes constitutive of policing: reference to the law; construction of the ‘criminal’ as transgressor of the law; and America’s role as global policeman. There is also textual evidence to suggest that in spite of the fact that America’s justifications for actions against the enemies is based on the rule of law, America itself, at times, appears not to be bound by legal conduct, and is above the law.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Rule of Law Central to policing in the New World Order discourse, is the disciplining of the international polity through the maintenance of “law and order”. The invocation of law is foundational in the new world order as originally espoused in G.H.W. Bush’s vision (see below) as well as subsequently continued in the discourse formation. 1. Today, that new world is struggling to be born … a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle (GHW Bush 1990a). 2. Iraq’s brutality, aggression and violation of international law cannot be allowed to succeed… (GHW Bush 1991b). 3. The long arm of American law has reached out around the world and brought to trial those guilty of attacks in New York, in Virginia and in the Pacific (Clinton, 1998a).

3

Another means of securing the New World Order is by defending it through war (see Lazar & Lazar, 2007).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

260

4. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible… (GW Bush, 2001a). The appeal of the field of law – both domestic and international -- rests on the assumption of clear and objective rules, principles and procedures. In the examples, references to the law in the topic or subject positions (plus their embeddedness in the noun phrases as postmodifiers instead of as ‘heads’, which makes scrutiny harder) show how the basis of this appeal is presupposed as self-evident, and thus not requiring elaboration. Reference to the law alone is sufficient grounds for the legitimation of action. The invocation of the rule of law, however, is based upon relations of power, dominance and control. Foucault (1977) has argued that the penal system, although a seemingly more humane system than war, is nonetheless a form of domination, albeit via a different mode, practised as a ‘discourse of right’. It is exercised through processes of normalisation, whereby subjects are bound to one another in a social contract of prescribed behavioural norms. The social contract we can say exists for various levels of actors – at the sub-state, state, and trans-state/global levels. In the New World Order discourse, the prescribed behavioural norms connote civilisational superiority. Note particularly the contrast between the “rule of the jungle” and the “rule of law” (see example (1)). Hayward (1994, p.237) comments that for Americans, the expression the ‘rule of the jungle’, with associations of the primitive, alludes particularly to Africa and Asia. If this is so, then the implication is that a world order based upon ‘the rule of the law’ refers to ‘our’ province; that of the “civilised’. The relation between the two, moreover, is not merely one of dissimilarity but, as the verb supplants suggests, one of ascendancy.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Constructing the Criminal Other The ‘criminal’ is a transgressor of the behavioural norms laid down by law. The labelling as ‘criminal’, however, is not straightforward in matters of political violence, for the latter is not necessarily always illegitimate. Rather, political violence becomes unlawful through a “web of signification” that it enters into in historically specific discourses and relations of power (Dillon 1998), which construes as criminal the political actions of the enemy. What criminalisation of social and political violence internationally does is that it powerfully invokes a moral and political order, and an ideal of answerability (Dillon, 1998), against which the actions of the perpetrator are read as deeply transgressive and punishable. The “web of signification” within the New World Order discourse, which produces Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as criminals is discussed in Lazar & Lazar (2004). To summarise, criminalisation is accomplished through the following rhetorical strategies, which portray the transgressive acts as well as the transgressor’s perverse state of mind: •

Overlexicalisation and listing of criminal acts 5. Saddam Hussein systematically raped, pillaged and plundered […] maimed and murdered (GHW Bush, 1991a).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’

• •

• •

•

261

6. terrorists would unleash blackmail and genocide and chaos (GW Bush 2002b). Characterisation of victims as vulnerable 7. a small and helpless neighbour [Kuwait] (GHW Bush, 1991c), as ordinary 8. the victims were in airplanes or in their offices. Secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbours (GW Bush 2001c). as innocent 9. the murder of innocents (GW Bush, 2002b; Clinton, 1998a). Concretisation of the acts in graphic, horrific terms 10. Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait has been a nightmare … homes, buildings and factories have been looted. Babies have been torn from incubators: children shot in front of their parents (GHW Bush 1990b). 11. Iraq … a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children (GW Bush, 2002a). Highlighting the intentionality and perverseness of their actions 12. their mission is murder (Clinton, 1998a). 13. our enemies send other people’s children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed (GW Bush, 2002a).

Criminalisation, furthermore, is accentuated by elements of orientalisation and evilification:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

14. Iraq’s brutality, aggression and violation of international law cannot be allowed to succeed… (GHW Bush, 1991b). 15. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible… (GW Bush, 2001a). 16. We’re going to find those evildoers, those barbaric people who attacked our country (GW Bush, 2001b). 17. We fight to protect the innocent so that the lawless and merciless will not inherit the Earth (GW Bush, 2001d). In these examples, religious and orientalist classificatory schemes are in operation: in (15) and (16) via premodifiers or ‘classifiers’ “evil”, “barbaric” and in (14) and (17) through co-ordination that links the field of law with orientalist and religious tropes, respectively. In the case of (14), the co-ordinate structure produces a list whereby “brutality” and “aggression”, which suggest lapses of civility or morality, are linked with illegality (“violation of international law”). In the case of (17), the field of law is incorporated and thereby recontextualised, within Christian religious discourse, i.e., the “lawless” in conjunction with the “merciless” constitutes the (grammatical) subject that “will not inherit the Earth”. Interestingly, though, the religious discourse referenced here is not an authentic quotation from the bible, but spliced together from two different beatitude verses –“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5) and “Blessed are the merciful, for

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

262

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7) (American Standard Version) – and negated, for prescriptive effect. On the one hand, it could be argued that the double-articulation (the inflection of criminality with elements of the supernatural and/or the uncivilised) in these examples potentially places the Other outside the remit of ‘our’ modern and secular penal system. Yet, on the other hand, the orientalist and religious descriptors contribute directly to the construction of the criminal as they categorise the indefensible nature of the criminal acts, thus adding moral gravity to the offences. Indeed, given the hypersignification of the other as a multi-dimensional outcast (as earlier noted), the double-articulation of criminal in the discourse is hardly surprising nor unexpected. Although in the New World Order discourse on the whole, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are cast as the main criminals, particularly in President George W. Bush’s administration several other actors have been included as potential criminals because of their association with these outlaws. In the examples given below, the wider circle of potential criminals refers to Actors – ranging from the less specific “those” and “the people” to the more specific “the government” – whose actions benefit the offenders (Goals) i.e., harbouring, hiding, housing and feeding them. In pragmatics terms, these utterances all express the speech act of warning, which is felicitous based on knowledge of Anglo-Saxon law that treats perpetrators and abetters of crime as equally culpable and deserving of punishment. 18. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them, (GW Bush 2001a). 19. We’re going to hold the people who house them accountable. The people who think they can provide safe havens will be held accountable. The people who feed them will be held accountable, (GW Bush 2001b). 20. I gave fair warning to the government that harbours them in Afghanistan. The Taliban made a choice to continue hiding terrorists, and now they are paying a price (GW Bush, 2001f)

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

America as Global Policeman Just as the discourse of right is premised upon the legitimate requirement of obedience and conformity to the social order, it invests authority structures with the legitimate right to pursue and punish offenders. America assumes the role of global policeman or marshal tasked with seeking out the offenders. “Search”, “find”, and “hunt” in (21) to (23) below constitute the semantic field of a massive manhunt for elusive perpetrators. 21. The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible [...] (GW Bush, 2001a). 22. We’re going to find those evildoers (GW Bush 2001b). 23. We hunt an enemy that hides in shadows and caves (GW Bush, 2001e).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’

263

The search is undertaken in the pursuit of “justice” – a notion that once again (like ‘the law’) is presented as if its meaning was self-evident and singular. The invocation of the concept of justice, because of its strong sense of righteousness, enables America to garner support both domestically and internationally for its police (and military) action. 24. whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done (GW Bush, 2001c). 25. we will […] bring terrorists to justice (GW Bush, 2002a). 26. you will not escape the justice of this nation (GW Bush 2002a). However, references to liability and punishment, as seen below in the emergent semantic field, points to only one kind of justice in the New World Order discourse, namely, retributive justice, and not also distributive and restorative forms of justice.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

27. Iraq’s brutality, aggression and violation of international law cannot be allowed to succeed (GHW Bush, 1991b). 28. the world can therefore seize this opportunity to fulfil the long-held promise of a new world order – where brutality will go unrewarded and aggression will meet collective resistance (GHW Bush, 1991a). 29. The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible [...] (GW, Bush 2001a). 30. We’re going to find those evildoers, those barbaric people who attacked our country, and we’re going to hold them accountable (GW Bush, 2001b). Horwitz (1990, p.24) has argued that penal systems are moralistic forms of social control. Not only are offenders punished for their moral wrong-doing, but the justification for punishment also lies in its moral correctness. Hence, in (27) and (28) the use of the negative – “cannot be allowed to succeed” and “will go unrewarded” – suggests that the actions are morally unacceptable and must be denied any equivocation of meaning. Indeed, retribution for the moral violation is the only solution. Note below the metaphor of retribution ‘to pay a price’ which operates on a payback principle needed to right a wrong in the restoration of the moral balance. The payback is the consequence in the cause-consequence argument structure set out in (31) and (32) i.e., because x, the consequence y.4 By authorising and legitimating the commission of violence (upon violence) then, law enforcement, like war, is a coercive system that institutionalises violence (Foucault 1977). 31. …we’re delivering a powerful message to Saddam. If you act recklessly, you will pay a heavy price (Clinton, 1998b). 32. I gave warning to the government that harbours them in Afghanistan. The Taliban made a choice to continue hiding terrorists, and now they are paying a price (GW Bush, 2001f).

4

As we have witnessed in the historical events concerning Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the nature of the payback has been punishment by force.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

264

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

The exercise of power in “bringing to justice” the criminals are both intensive and extensive. While the goal of punishment is foremost, the tenacity in policing arguably also acts as deterrence. Such tenacity at the same time bolsters America’s self-presentation as a committed, thorough and effective global law enforcer. The intensity of power is evident from the formulation of lists of adjectives denoting constant policing: 33. Our military action is also designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice (GW Bush, 2001d). 34. Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans and bring terrorists to justice. Second […] (GW Bush, 2002a). The exercise and effects of disciplinary power are also far-reaching. Drawing on Bentham’s “panoptican” (see Foucault 1977) – a potentially wide-reaching and all-seeing surveillance system – we could argue that a similar mechanism is at work in examples (35) and (36) below. Here, the spatial circumstantials of extent (around the world; 7000 miles away; across oceans and continents) and location (on mountain tops and in caves) show the reach of power to be “everywhere”, signalling too that America quite literally is a ‘global’ policeman. Furthermore, the efficacy of such power relations rests on the curious mix of generalisability of reach (most of the spatial circumstantials denote indefiniteness) as well as specificity (the definite measurement of extent: 7000 miles away as opposed to “thousands of miles away”) and concreteness (the metaphor of the long arm of American law makes the reach almost palpable). 35. The long arm of American law has reached out around the world and brought to trial those guilty of attacks in New York, in Virginia and in the Pacific (Clinton, 1998a). 36. The men and women of our armed forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States: even 7000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountain tops and in caves, you will not escape the justice of this nation (GW Bush, 2002a).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

America as above the Law Although modern policing is about the enforcement of law and order, it appears that in the New World Order discourse the twin notions ‘law and order’ cannot be assumed always to be collocates. Indeed, they sometimes come apart in the discourse, revealing that keeping order out of moral outrage may supersede principles of legality. Conventionally, while retribution underlies the disciplinary technology of punishment, within the frame of the legal system, retribution is to be accomplished without prejudice and in observance of due process. Yet in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on America, President G.W. Bush’s speeches and actions betrayed traces of outright vengeance and lack of impartiality in the pursuit of justice, and in some instances also suggestive that America is above the law. Consider the following examples:

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’

265

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

37. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done (GW Bush, 2001c). 38. I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people (GW Bush, 2001c). 39. America will not forget the lives that were taken and the justice their death requires (GW Bush, 2002). In (37) to (39), motivations of revenge surface in several ways. First, through the language of emotion: the expressive modality of the words “grief” and “anger”, and the transmutation from “grief” to “anger” to “resolution”, which entails that America’s “resolution” is based upon passion rather than reason. Note too the metaphors of pain and injury (“wound” and “inflicted”) that connote an emotional response. Second, explicit statements of personal resolve suggest the lack of impartiality. The personal is evident in the choice of the grammatical subjects below: “our grief’, “I” and “America” (where in the latter case, the state-as-person metaphor, as suggested by Lakoff (1991), is at work). The “inflicted”/”wound” metaphor also is suggestive of personal physical injury on one’s body (in this case, the body politic of America). The personal is tied to America’s doggedness, expressed explicitly in the word “resolution” and in speech acts of resolution: “America will not forget”, “I will not forget” and “I will not relent”. Given the specific circumstances of the 9/11 attacks on America, expressions of emotion and personal resolve are understandable, even expected. However, this has significant implications for America’s role as disinterested global law enforcer. If we consider the conventional police script or narrative as comprising an innocent victim, a treacherous villain and a police hero (Lakoff, 1991), in this case America is both the victim and the police hero, which begs the question of America’s impartiality. The resolve uttered in these instances, therefore, is not simply a reflection of dedicated police duty, but signifies personal score-keeping. This comes across more clearly in the third way revenge is made manifest in the discourse, namely, through the reason-result argument structure employed, where the pursuit of justice (“result”) is tied to personal grievances (“reason”). Present in the discourse are also resonances of the notion of “frontier justice”, which sets America above the law, particularly in regard to the observance of due process. It is justice at all cost; an assassination order. The clearest allusion to “frontier justice” or ‘western’ justice is President Bush’s statement in the days following the 9/11 attacks: “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West […] I recall, that said ‘Wanted. Dead or Alive.” (GW Bush, 2001b). This is a historical reference to a form of policing practiced during the settling of the “wild west”, when solitary sheriffs or in some cases individual ranchers took justice into their own hands and executed outlaws, without a fair trial. Hayward (1994) notes that the criminal usually not brought to court, was gunned down publicly in the streets (as happens in the “western” movie genre) or hunted and killed in his hideout. The reiteration of the verbal phrase ‘to hunt down” (below) in Bush’s speeches resonates with this idea. 40. the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts (GW Bush, 2001a). 41. I have called our military into action to hunt down the members of the al-Qaeda organisation who murdered innocent Americans (GW Bush, 2001f).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

266

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar 42. our government has a responsibility to hunt down our enemies, and we will (GW Bush, 2001f). 43. We are deliberately and systematically hunting down these murderers (GW Bush, 2001f).

With one man acting as judge, jury and executioner, “wild west justice”, as noted by McCarthy (2002, p.129), was “inherently and undeniably cruel” in terms of the “brutality with which those ‘judged’ guilty were treated”.5 The hunting metaphor, for instance, suggests the de-humanisation of the criminal as an animal, to be thus treated as such. In the context of the New World Order discourse, animalisation of the criminal is doubly layered with orientalist significations for, as discussed elsewhere (see Lazar & Lazar 2004), the dehumanisation of the Other is a common orientalist trope. America’s punitive action against Afghanistan in 2001 is a case in point of frontier justice exercised on another sovereign nation. Bypassing the legal requirement for credible evidence, America started bombing Afghanistan within a month of the 9/11 attacks, when there was no hard proof at the time of al-Qaeda’s and Afghanistan’s culpability. Jack Bussell, a board member of the Maine Veterans for Peace, in fact noted: “If you remember, the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to us if we furnished proof, and this has been reissued and both times it has been rejected. The first thing we do is reach for our guns. This is frontier justice” (200, p.18).

CONCLUSION

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This chapter has aimed to show America’s justifications in policing the New World Order. Police work is an important technology of power in securing the American-led New World Order – a technology that is exercised as much through actions as it is through language. In sum, what emerges then from this chapter is that the viability of the New World Order requires not only in (out-)casting the threats as savage and evil criminals, but also in disciplining and punishing the enemy for the challenge they pose to the norms and values of that order.

REFERENCES Bruce, N. (2001). Should we give peace a chance?. The Portland Phoenix. Bush, G. H. W. (1990a). Transcript of president’s address to joint session of congress, The New York Times. September 11. Bush, G. H. W. (1990b). Why are we in the Gulf, Newsweek. November, 26. Bush, G. H. W. (1991a). State of the Union speech, United States Information Service (USIS). January, 29.

5

It is ironic that “cruel[ty]” and “brutality”, which are orientalist traits of the Other, here describe America’s own actions.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

‘In the Pursuit of Justice’

267

Bush, G. H. W. (1991b). President Bush’s news conference at the White House. In M.L. Sifry & C. Cerf (Eds.). The gulf war reader: History, documents and opinions (pp. 228-229). New York: Random House. Bush, G. H. W. (1991c). Liberation of Kuwait has begun. In M.L. Sifry & C. Cerf (Eds.). The gulf war reader: History, documents and opinions (pp. 311-314). New York: Random House. Bush, G. W. (2001a). Transcript of President Bush’s Remarks to the Nation, Washington: Associated Press. September, 11. Bush, G. W. (2001b). Transcript of President Bush’s speech from the Islamic Center, washingtonpost.com. September, 17. Bush, G. W. (2001c). Text of George Bush’s Speech, [Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress and the American people], Guardian Unlimited. September, 21. Bush, G. W. (2001d). Announcement that US and British forces have begun attacking Afghanistan. Retrieved October 8, 2008 from http://www.news.com.au. Bush, G. W. (2001e). Remarks by the President to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Press Secretary. November, 6. Bush, G. W. (2001f). Transcript of Bush Speech in Atlanta, CNN.com. November, 8. Bush, G. W. (2002a). Full Text: State of the Union Address, BBC News Online. January, 29. Bush, G. W. (2002b). Bush: ‘America Will Not Forget’. CNN.com. March, 11. Clinton, B. (1998a). Clinton’s Statement in Full, BBC News Online. August, 26. Clinton, B. (1998b). Clinton Announces Iraq’s Strikes: Full Text, BBC News Online. December, 16. Dillon, M. (1998). Criminalising social and political violence internationally. Millennium, 24(3), 543-567. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman. Foucault, M. (1967). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Allen Lane. Halliday, M. A.K. (1985). Introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Hayward, M. (1994). The Making of the New World Order: The Role of the Media. In T. Ismael & J. Ismael (Eds.), The gulf war and the new world order (pp. 224-241). Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Horwitz, A.V. (1990). The logic of social control. New York: Plenum Press. Lakoff, G. (1991). Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf. Viet Nam Generation Journal and Newsletter 3(3). Online, retrieved on 20 December 2008 from http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Lakoff_Gulf_Metaphor_1 .html Lazar, A. & Lazar, M. M. (2004). The discourse of the new world order: ‘out-casting’ the double face of threat, Discourse & Society 15(2-3), 223-242. Lazar, A. & Lazar, M. M. (2007). Enforcing justice, Justifying force: America’s justification of violence in the new world order. In A. Hodges & C. Nilep (Eds.). Discourse, war and terrorism (pp. 45-65). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lazar, A. & Lazar, M. M. (2008). Discourse of global governance: American hegemony in the Post-Cold War era. Journal of Language and Politics 7(2), 228-246.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

268

Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

McCarthy, E. (2002). Justice. In J. Collins & R. Glover (Eds.). Collateral language: A user’s guide to America’s new war (pp. 125-137). New York: New York University Press. The Bible (American Standard Version). Retrieved December 8, 2008 from http://asvbible.com Van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Ideological discourse analysis. New Courant. 4, 135-136.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 22

CHARISMATICALLY (RE)CONSTRUCTING NEW ZEALAND IDENTITY Philippa K. Smith

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Broadcast documentary in New Zealand has a history of focusing on nation-building which derives from British film producer and writer John Grierson’s belief in the 1930s that documentary should be functional, instrumental and have “an optimistic exposition of faith in the ability of the nation to surmount its problems” (Goldson, 2004, p. 241). This paper examines the role of a charismatic documentary presenter Gary McCormick who fronted Heartland - a popular television series in New Zealand that screened in the 1990s. In a format, structure and style reflecting a Griersonian tone, this programme sought to address insecurities about New Zealand’s national identity in response to social, cultural and political changes the country was undergoing between 1960 and 1999 in the form of “decolonisation” (Belich, 2001). McCormick’s personality, charisma and charm along with his presupposed image as a poet, comedian and entertainer are used in Heartland to effectively persuade viewers to more readily accept the programmes’ positive reconstruction of the country’s national identity which was undergoing change. Fairclough’s three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to analyse McCormick’s role through the relationship between the text (including language, image and sound), discourse practice (the processes of text production and consumption), and finally socio-cultural practice – taking a wider look at society and culture and their effect on the communicative event (that is, Heartland), as well as the way the discourses of the programme influence social, cultural and political reality (Fairclough, 1995).

Keywords: national identity, documentary, critical discourse analysis

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

270

Philippa K. Smith

INTRODUCTION The nation-building tendencies of New Zealand documentary date back to the influences of British filmmaker John Grierson when he visited New Zealand and Australia in the late 1930s. Finding New Zealand film had an over emphasis on tourism aspects of the country, Grierson’s influence led to a focus on maintaining the spirit of the Empire (pre-war) and a post-war spirit of nation-building (Goldson, 2004). While New Zealand’s representation of nationhood has continued to evolve moving beyond the Empire, the theme of national identity remains today as a constant and popular thread in locally-produced mainstream documentary, though somewhat more reflexive in style. This chapter explores a popular television documentary series Heartland from the 1990s and in particular focuses on its presenter whose charismatic personality drove the programme to instil a sense of national pride in its New Zealand audience.

NEW ZEALAND - AN INSECURE NATION Heartland was a television documentary series through which its producers Bruce Morrison and William Grieve aimed to show that a unique New Zealand culture existed that united the nation:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is our contention that it helps for a resident of Huntly or Whangarei to be able to see the life and concerns of the people of Haast, Fendalton, or Bluff. To see the gulf of customs which separates him from them, but to also realise that there are shared attitudes, references and certainties, the mixture of intangibles that let you know your culture, and your part in it. (Morrison and Grieve in McCormick, 1994, p. 7).

The programme, first broadcast in 1993, was produced at a time when a national identity crisis was becoming evident. The late 1980s and early 1990s is a period identified when insecurities were surfacing within the New Zealand population about who they were and what made them a nation (Belich, 2001). The period of ‘decolonisation’ was the third in a series of processes which historian James Belich believes affected the nation’s identity. New Zealand had already undergone ‘colonisation’ by the British by the early 1880s, but the country “reshuffled and tightened links with Britain between the 1880s and 1900s” (mainly for reasons of trade and economy) in a process of ‘recolonisation’. The country’s identity became ‘dominionist’ – “… a New Zealand identity fitting neatly within a British one” and Maori lived under Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) control (Belich, 2001, pp. 29-30). However a third process of ‘decolonisation’, emerging in the late 1960s and early 1970s, resulted from several changes. This included Britain’s move away from supporting New Zealand trade by joining the European Economic Community, a rise in Maori nationalism whereby identifying themselves as the first settlers to live in New Zealand Maori looked to rectify the injustices that befell them as a result of British colonisation, and a modern-day immigration policy which encouraged a greater diversity of immigrants, particularly Asian. This affected the country economically, socially, politically and culturally, but also challenged how the population defined itself as a nation (Belich, 2001, p. 425).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Charismatically (Re)Constructing New Zealand Identity

271

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

New Zealand’s sense of place had been fractured by the impact of immigration and the resurgence of Maori identities and histories according to Pawson (1996) who suggests that as a consequence, a multiple of identities surfaced within the country as well as ambiguities associated with New Zealand’s place in the world. Throughout its history this country has moved through a series of labels of being a European country, a Pacific nation and more recently an Asian nation. Belich (2001) too relates the confusion amongst white New Zealanders in understanding their identity. This instability which spilled over from decolonisation into the 1990s left a void for New Zealanders seeking to establish who they really were. Programmes such as the television series Heartland provided a convenient and entertaining resource for suggesting an answer to “what is our national identity?” and seeking to show that diversity within a population could lead to unity. Screened by the state owned broadcaster Television New Zealand, Heartland was considered one of the success stories of locally produced television and rated regularly in the top five programmes for the week, attracting between 550,000 and 650,000 viewers (Cunliffe, 1994) – approximately 14-16 percent of the New Zealand population. It developed into a 24part series winning a bronze medal at the 1994 Film and Television Awards in New York as well as the best factual series award at the 1994 New Zealand Film and Television Awards. Its popularity resulted in the production of a further series which screened in 1995 and a video compiling highlights from the series titled Journeys in the New Zealand Heartland (Anson Grieve Ltd., 1995). The main focus of the Heartland series was the contact with ordinary New Zealanders whose stories brought to life an easily ‘imagined’ community. It focused on what it saw as the ‘real’ heart of New Zealand, namely the rural and provincial spaces (Longhurst & Wilson, 2002). The programme’s tone was “determinedly celebratory” and provided “something of a showcase for a way of life that has achieved mythical status in New Zealand” (Bell, 1996, p. 141). This paper suggests that the role of the charismatic presenter Gary McCormick had a significant influence in the promotion of New Zealand’s national identity in Heartland. Drawing on Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) which focuses on textual analysis, discursive practice and socio-cultural practice, the relationship between McCormick’s role and the social and cultural processes and structures at work are examined. The objectives are to firstly investigate the strategies McCormick used to persuade the audience to a particular way of thinking, and secondly to gain a wider picture of the social and political contexts against which the programme as a communicative event is set.

THE REAL MCCORMICK To New Zealanders in the 1990s, Gary McCormick was already a known identity because of his celebrity status originating through his wit and humour in his standing as a writer, travelling poet and comedian in the 1970s, through to his television career in the 1980s and 1990s as a host/presenter of documentaries and a travel programme, a debater, talk and game show host, and featuring in humorous commercials for the hardware chain store Mitre 10. McCormick had a specific ‘Kiwi-bloke’ persona consistent across his television roles (Longhurst & Wilson, 2002) which promoted him as a seemingly hard working, down-to-

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

272

Philippa K. Smith

earth macho male, with a few rough edges, a heart of gold, a sense of humour and a love for the New Zealand way of life. (Note: ‘Kiwi’ – a flightless bird unique to New Zealand is a commonly used term to denote New Zealander.) Heartland’s narrative followed its presenter McCormick as he travelled the length and breadth of New Zealand, visiting a particular city or region in each episode, interviewing the ‘locals’ along the way, and marvelling at the magnificent scenery. In a light hearted manner McCormick would explore the past, the present and sometimes contemplate the future of a region. In Heartland McCormick treats all people equally regardless of their social status or ethnicity. His informal interview style, along with a structured and coherent narrative through voice-over and direct address to the camera, allowed McCormick to draw together the various social actors in Heartland in a seemingly collective identity as New Zealanders.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

DECONSTRUCTING MCCORMICK The positioning of McCormick in Heartland is most significant in response to encouraging a sense of national unity through the programme series. Rather than using a voice-of-god or public authoritative figure narration supporting a rhetorical ‘voice’ structure which was used in many of the ‘quality’ television series in the early 1980s and 1990s (Goldson, 2004), McCormick’s presupposed image is utilised so that he becomes part of the Heartland story. While he often maintains a tone of authority to convey factual information, he easily switches to becoming part of the story in an entertaining and convincing way. For example, on visiting Haast on the West Coast of the South Island during the world famous whitebait season, he relates in voice-over historical information about the tradition for New Zealanders to gather at the mouth of the river, armed with large nets and buckets to catch the swarming masses of whitebait fish. He then appears on-camera and chats with people about what they are doing, enjoys the taste of home cooked whitebait fritters, and at the end of the day - having gained full acceptance from the community - joins in the dancing and merrymaking at the infamous Whitebaiters’ Ball held at a local hall. McCormick’s use of multiple identities of being a friend, a critic, an observer, a participant, an educator, a storyteller, a guide, an enquiring visitor, a comedian and a philosopher, contributes to the development of a special relationship with the audience where viewers feel included in his journey around New Zealand. Scannell (2000, p. 5) suggests that broadcast programmes and daily newspapers have developed a peculiar communicative structure whereby they seem to speak to ‘listeners, viewers or readers personally, as individuals’ which he terms a ‘for-anyone-as-someone’ structure. Although the viewer experiences being addressed as an individual, he or she is also aware that they are only one of countless others experiencing the same. This feeling of ‘we-ness’ or collective identity corresponds with Anderson’s theory of ‘imagined political communities’ whereby people are incapable of knowing everyone and therefore must “think the nation” (Anderson, 1991, p. 22). ‘For-anyone-as-someone’ structures “create the possibilities of, and in practice express, a public, shared and sociable world-in-common between human beings” (Scannell, 2000, p. 12). This experience is mostly conveyed by the mode of address used and, in the case of television, how the programme is constructed and its presenters portrayed. McCormick’s acknowledgement of the audience by directly addressing the camera, his ‘acting up’ and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Charismatically (Re)Constructing New Zealand Identity

273

making confidential asides to viewers, reinforces a feeling of inclusion. He often acts as a gobetween the viewer and the social actors seeking to unify people who live in the same country. For example, when attending the annual horse races in a local field in the South Island township of Glenorchy (a parody of England’s Ascot) McCormick purchases a cowboy hat to blend in more authentically with the rest of the men in that setting. He confides in a direct address to the audience:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

GM: “Well looks like the weather is going to clear for us and I’ve got a new hat. In fact it’s a tad too new, looking at some of these blokes… they’re pretty tough looking. Give it a bit of a working over …” (He screws up his hat, throws it on the ground and stamps on it to make it look older and rougher, then puts it back on.) “There we are… and the first race is about to get underway!”

Kozloff highlights the charm, credibility and humanness of on-camera hosts in ‘personalising the impersonal’ who tell us ‘what we are seeing or what to think about what we are seeing, [and] providing the commentary or exposition we are accustomed to from narrators in novels’ (1992, p. 79). McCormick's charm is mostly evident in his style of language. His informal and conversational interview style is polite and respectful and he uses open questioning to get the social actors to disclose information about their lives. For example, often he will ask ‘What is happening here?’, ‘What's going on at the moment?’ or ‘What's this ritual here?’. In balancing the serious side of the programmes that tackle issues such as unemployment and erosion, with an entertainment aspect that emphasises the positive aspects of New Zealand, the programme makers selected suitable social actors for McCormick to interview. They ranged from eccentric senior citizens, unconventional but likable farm workers and mountain men, to intimidating tattooed Rastafarian gang members, Department of Conservation workers and a friendly local policeman. McCormick is the messenger promoting a national identity that brings New Zealanders together in their mutual recognition of him and in their belief in what they are watching confirms a shared culture. This also ties in with Anderson’s theory which highlights the community aspect of nations as having “deep horizontal comradeship” regardless of inequalities amongst its members (Anderson, 1991, p. 7). Although there is hybridity in the New Zealand population Bell (1996) says a strong awareness still exists of being distinctive as “New Zealanders”, of wishing to belong to this country because we do not belong anywhere else and that, through a process of selfvalidation, both the national and personal identities are protected. McCormick achieves this for the audience. He aims to be seen as an ordinary person sharing the same culture and environment as the audience. But his position as narrator/presenter and his pre-supposed popularity allows him the credibility and authority to persuade and lead the audience to particular understandings. McCormick is a character constructed over the years through his work and many appearances in broadcasting. This, in addition to his participation in activities on Heartland and his apparent genuineness in caring about and being interested in other New Zealanders, has allowed the audience to develop a fondness and trust in him. McCormick uses his personality to express a more personal humour and further develop his familiarity with the audience which paves the way for opportunities when he wishes to be more critical and persuade viewers to adopt a certain viewpoint. The following example is from an episode based on the East Coast of New Zealand which, at the time, had a worrisome

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

274

Philippa K. Smith

reputation for high unemployment and racial tension. While driving in his car McCormick speaks directly to the camera: GM: “Well I’m halfway through my trip up the Coast – in fact I’m just entering Tokomaru Bay and I’m starting to wonder whether the myth of the East Coast as a sort of depressed area is exactly that – a myth. I’m wondering whether if I’ve been sold a line for example in Gisborne where I come from, the expression “up the Coast” is sort of synonymous with backwards or in decline… In point of fact people seem to be remarkably cheerful about their predicament. I’m starting to wonder whether or not the judgements made about the Coast aren’t sort of European ones.”

The programme goes on to suggest that a greater understanding of the problems of the East Coast is needed and in a more philosophical context after interviewing a range of contrasting characters – McCormick promotes the idea that New Zealanders are capable of working together to sort out their problems:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

GM: “I’ve always tended to think of the East Coast as being the last frontier but that may be because I live in Gisborne and have a romantic notion about these things. None-the-less it will be the first in the world to see the New Year light in the year 2000 to welcome in the new millennium which is appropriate in a sense because it’s also the area in the country which is dealing with one of the great issues surfacing in New Zealand today. The relationship between Maori and Pakeha and for that matter between Maori and Maori. But it is an area which contains amongst the people a sense of warmth or hospitality and an overwhelming sense of spirituality and for these reasons it will be resolved.”

In McCormick’s final four words in the above example – ‘it will be resolved’ the definitive use of the word ‘will’ in relation to the community coming to terms and resolving racial issues is authoritative. He intimates a sense of national pride and confidence in New Zealanders’ ability to get along. His confident attitude with the suggestion that the approach of the sunlight as the new millennium dawns, signifies a turning point in the relationship between the different groups of people who live in the area. The warmth, hospitality and spirituality of the local people are identified as providing the foundation for change and leaves McCormick and the audience with little doubt as to a positive outcome in the future for the people of the East Coast. Persuasion is defined as “the co-production of meaning that results when an individual or a group of individuals uses language strategies and/or visual images to make audiences identify with that individual or group” (Borchers, 2002, p. 444). McCormick’s style and tone as described above contributes largely to his ability to persuade the audience to see the evolution of a positive national identity. But there are also other creative processes at work in the programmes construction that have aided this.

DISCURSIVE PRACTICE – CREATIVE PROCESSES AT WORK The creative processes and how they are interpreted are part of the discursive practice – the second layer in Fairclough’s three-dimensional model some of which have overlapped in the textual analysis. In the case of television - visual images, sound and sound effects - should be considered part of the text and deserve mention (Fairclough, 1995). Visual images and

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Charismatically (Re)Constructing New Zealand Identity

275

sound serve to reinforce McCormick’s role as a persuasive presenter because his dialogue and presentation are entwined in the promotion of a positive national identity and reinforced through the programme makers’ decision to emphasise images of the beautiful New Zealand scenery. The country’s clean, green image is elevated both literally and figuratively through the use of aerial photography and upbeat music, rather akin to the discourse of a promotional travel video. Whether it is the wild beaches of the East Coast, the rivers and mountains in Glenorchy or the peaceful Avon River running through Fendalton, the diversity and beauty of the country provide the perfect backdrop for McCormick’s journey around New Zealand instilling a national pride in the landscape. Background music has been carefully selected to tie in with the mood of the programmes - modern Maori songs to emphasise the strength and confidence of the rise in Maori nationalism being exerted on the East Coast, exciting instrumental travel log music coinciding with aerial shots following jet boats racing up the Dart River near Glenorchy – a boost for adventure tourism, and in contrast the sound of the church choir used in the Fendalton, Christchurch episode highlighting that community’s upper class socio-economic status and English traditionalism.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

SOCIO-CULTURAL PRACTICE – WHO’S PULLING MCCORMICK’S STRINGS? Socio-cultural practice is the third layer of CDA and examines the features that have shaped the Heartland episodes and the way they have been presented. These influences have been identified as being social, cultural, economic and political, brought about through insecurities involving changing diversity within the population, the rise in Maori nationalism and a move away from economic dependency on the United Kingdom. But at the same time the discourses within the text of Heartland itself serve to shape society. CDA requires an examination of socio-cultural practice to look for a deeper understanding of the texts to show the multiplicity of levels in what it attempts to do and what it conveys. Fairclough (1995) points to the element of the media artists entertaining the viewer as consumer and it is important to realise the underlying motives at work in the construction of a programme which is produced in a commercial environment, where ratings play a major role in whether a programme continues to receive funding. McCormick’s role as the narrator/presenter has been to not only provide factual information about New Zealand in an entertaining way, but to use his personality and charisma to persuade and reassure the audience that there are many aspects to New Zealand’s changing national identity which can be dealt with positively. Charismatic self-presentation with its elaborated qualities of informal speech modes, expressive manners, and extensive conversationalisation is central to today’s broadcasting whether entertainment, popular fiction or journalism (Ytreberg, 2002). However McCormick cannot necessarily be seen to be solely responsible for his own presentation and the question needs to be asked, what other influences were involved in having him present the programme in the way he did? Heartland was produced at a time when insecurities about national identity within New Zealand existed and both New Zealanders and the Government desired a greater sense of unity in the interests of stability. Broadcasting too had also undergone change which affected the way television documentaries were made. Debrett (2004) details the relevant history

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

276

Philippa K. Smith

behind New Zealand’s broadcasting industry citing the Government’s introduction in 1989 of the Broadcasting Commission (later renamed New Zealand on Air/NZOA) which was “to administer a minimalist system of public subsidy for specific genres of local content under a competitive grants scheme” and ensure “the provision of programmes reflecting New Zealand identity in prime time” (Debrett, 2004, p. 6). Bell (1993, 1995) refers to it as political manipulation, but none-the-less it resulted in criteria for programme funding which meant that “applicants had to meet both the national/cultural requirements of NZOA and the presale, prime-time requirements of a commercial broadcaster, either (the state owned) Television New Zealand or its foreign owned competitor, TV3” (Debrett, 2004, p. 6). Therefore the pressure to gain funding for the production of programmes was dependent on developing an idea which would be approved by NZOA, but which would also attract a prime time audience to fuel advertising funds for the broadcasters. McCormick was instrumental in persuading the viewer to think a certain way through use of his charismatic personality as presenter of Heartland. He was socially-shaping the audience, but equally he was at the end of a chain of influences trickling down from the Government, through NZOA, to TVNZ and to the programme makers. Equally the support of the audience cannot be underestimated. Horrocks (2004, p. 277) highlights Heartland as one of New Zealand’s local programmes that “clicked” with the audience because of its “special sense of relevance and loyalty”. In essence this suggests that influences were at work from many sources in socially shaping both Heartland and McCormick’s persona.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION Nation-building as a theme throughout New Zealand documentary might seem curious. But with New Zealand’s history of change suggested through Belich’s ‘colonialisation, recolonisation and decolonisation’ paradigm it is not surprising that the population continues to seek out who they are as a nation. Goldson (2004) points out that the documentary genre (originally through film) was introduced in New Zealand to deliberately represent the nation as dictated by Grierson. Such a theme has not abated and even the Television New Zealand Charter, introduced by the Government in 2003, stated the need for local programmes to “provide shared experiences that contribute to a sense of citizenship and national identity” (TVNZ, 2003). Using a high profile, personality-driven presenter (such as McCormick) seeking out New Zealanders around the country was a successful strategy that has been adopted by other local documentary makers. Debrett (2004) relates that in 1998 there were 10 documentaries fronted by well-known personalities, seven of whom were comedians driving around New Zealand chatting to the camera and to local characters, using witty repartee, entertaining through their own styles of humour and subsequently trivialising the subject matter. Other programmes have used celebrity presenters from a range of backgrounds including a television weatherman, sporting heroes, a news reporter and even the ‘importation’ of well known Scottish comedian Billy Connolly to host Billy Connolly’s World Tour of New Zealand. In 2007 TV1 expanded the celebrity line up in the series Here to Stay, each episode presented by one of six different local personalities tracing their immigrant roots in New Zealand whether Chinese, English, Scottish, Irish, German or Dalmation. In 2008 it was back to using one

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Charismatically (Re)Constructing New Zealand Identity

277

celebrity comedian called Te Radar but, interestingly, he presented two different documentaries with a New Zealand flavour on the same channel (TV1), scheduled in the same timeslot within the same week. (Off the Radar looked at living a sustainable lifestyle in New Zealand while Homegrown explored different national foods and beverages such as sheep, kiwifruit and beer.) Compared with Heartland however, the inundation of such programmes with celebrity presenters appears to have a greater focus on entertainment rather than on more serious issues that face the nation. Never-the-less exposure to programmes which use charismatic personalities to reinforce aspects of national identity constantly enable individuals to ‘imagine’ their community without leaving the comfort of their living room. This chapter has suggested that the power of a programme’s presenter can greatly influence the way a nation might see itself. Heartland’s McCormick sought to entertain, inform, guide and educate the audience as the humorous, witty 'Gary' New Zealanders were familiar with. But the key to his popularity was his representation as the ordinary 'Kiwi' genuinely and intently seeking out other ordinary New Zealanders, combining nostalgia with a reassurance about New Zealand’s future to reconstruct the nation. McCormick personified the Heartland series and his image was sustained and reinforced by the length that the series ran, by the interest in the programme and the publicity it attracted. As a charismatic presenter he directed the New Zealand audience in the mid-1990s to regain a sense of belonging to the nation – a sense which, at the time, was very much sought after.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Anson Grieve Ltd. (1995). Journeys through the Heartland (video). TVNZ. Belich, J. (2001). Paradise reforged: A history of New Zealanders. Auckland: Penguin Books. Bell, A. (1993). A mark of distinction: 'New Zealand' as signifier in the television market. Sites, 27(Summer), 30-44. Bell, A. (1995). An endangered species: Local programming in the New Zealand television market. Media, Culture and Society, 17, 181-200. Bell, C. (1996). Inventing New Zealand: Everyday myths of Pakeha identity. Auckland.: Penguin Books. Borchers, T. A. (2002). Persuasion in the media age. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Cunliffe, S. (1994, December 24). They're a wary lot after 'Wainuiomata'. The Christchurch Press. Debrett, M. (2004). Branding documentary: New Zealand's minimalist solution to cultural subsidy. Media, Culture and Society, 26(1), 5-23. Fairclough, N. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Hodder. Goldson, A. (2004). A look in: Documentary on New Zealand television. In R. Horrocks & N. Perry (Eds.), Television in New Zealand: Programming the nation. (pp. 240-254). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

278

Philippa K. Smith

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Horrocks, R. (2004). Construction site: Local content on television. In R. Horrocks & N. Perry (Eds.), Television in New Zealand: Programming the nation. (pp. 272-285). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Kozloff, S. (1992). Narrative theory and television. In A. R. C. (Ed.), Channels of discourse, reassembled. London: The University of North Carolina Press. Longhurst, R., & Wilson, C. (2002). Heartland Wainuiomata: Rurality to suburbs, black singlets to naughty lingerie. In J. Farnsworth & I. Hutchinson (Eds.), New Zealand television: A reader. (pp. 50-61). Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. McCormick, G. (1994). Heartland. Auckland: Moa Beckett. Pawson, E. (1996). Sense of place: Introduction. In R. L. Heron & E. Pawson (Eds.), Changing places: New Zealand in the nineties. (pp. 348-349). Auckland: Longman Paul. Scannell, P. (2000). For-anyone-as-someone structures. Media, Culture and Society, 22(1), 524. TVNZ. (2003). TVNZ Charter. Retrieved June 30, 2005, from www.tvnz.co.nz/ view/page/506420/111535/ Ytreberg, E. (2002). Ideal types in public service television: paternalists and bureaucrats, charismatics and avant-guardists. Media, Culture and Society, 24(6), 759-774.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 23

INDONESIAN ISLAMIST MEDIA: A STRUGGLE AGAINST OR A LEGITIMACY * OF THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY? Rianne K. Subijanto

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Ever since the 9-11 tragedy, the media coverage of Islam has been emerging, most of which represent Islam with the established violent images rooted in the Orientalist way of thinking (Said, 1997). Islamist media are among those that report Islam from a different perspective trying to make counter-propaganda. To what extent these media represent Islam and the Muslims are a question that underlies this research. From the discourse and discursive practice, this paper explores the ways Islamist media represent Islam. This paper will undertake a critical discourse analysis on a major Indonesian Islamist magazine, Sabili. My primary objective will be to argue that this magazine works ambiguously in two ways, i.e., as a way to struggle against the dominant ideology and at the same time to legitimate certain elements of this dominant ideology. The chapter will be presented in three parts. I shall first discuss the historical, cultural and social backgrounds of this magazine. Next, I continue with the critical discourse analysis of the text. I then discuss the result of the analysis relating it with the sociocultural situation.

Keywords: Islamist magazine, representation, Critical Discourse Analysis, media coverage, Indonesia

*

This paper was presented in Critical Discourse Analysis conference at University of Tasmania in November 2005. It has undergone some changes for this publication.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

280

Rianne K. Subijanto

INTRODUCTION

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Iranian revolution in 1979 is the starting point of the emergence of the Western media coverage of Islam and the Muslims. This coverage, however, has mostly misrepresented Islam through its simplified stereotypes and misconceptions rooted in the Orientalist way of thinking. Islam is presented as a barbaric and backward religion, seen as oppressive and unjust and, most importantly, is looked upon as an “extremist”, “terrorist”, or “fundamentalist” religion (Said, 1997). The trend of the media coverage that ignore the multifaceted nature of Islam including its complex nature of culture and customs is very significant even though there are some media that give a more careful reporting after the atrocious 9-11 tragedy when an attack to the twin WTC buildings occurred at the beginning of the 21st century. Ever since then, Islam has become one of the important topics of discussions -among them are in scholarships, news reports, and inter-governmental dialoguesespecially under the rubric of geopolitical, sociocultural and economic topics. However, though widely discussed and talked about, Islam was still continuously misrepresented. It is covered one-sidedly and simplistically with bias and is shown as a religion that is full of violence (Abu-Lughod, 2006). In a global context, the world’s attitude toward Muslims thus changes; the number of discriminations toward Muslims increases. Meanwhile, the media with the Islam(ic/ist)1 voices are also burgeoning. This media, whose medium is the Western invention, is indigenized to be counter-propaganda to purify the “local/authentic” ideology and protect it from the western media’s corrupt “contamination.” Television (Salamandra, 1998), small media (like posters, cassettes and fax machines) (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1994), Internet (Alavi, 2005) and print media become the tools used for this cause. Amidst the critics of many scholars in the world to the Western media’s negative coverage of Islam and the Muslims, it is then also crucial to criticize from within how Islamist media represents Islam and the Muslim people. Does it struggle against the negative coverage of Islam that has long been represented in the Western media and scientific journals and books or is the representation a mere legitimacy of this dominant ideology that the Western media rooted in? To what extent does their representation of Islam independent of the Western media domination of Islam? In what ways do they represent the ‘true’ voice of Islam? Whose Muslim groups do they represent?

SABILI AS A CASE STUDY In this chapter, I will use Sabili magazine as my case study for several reasons. First, ideologically, this magazine has a clear political position in Indonesia. Sabili, which means “my way”, was first established on September 12, 1984, a year after the Priok tragedy - the atrocious massacre of hundreds of Muslims who were against the implementation of 1

Here, the word ‘Islamic’ and ‘Islamist’ are used to refer to two different things. ‘Islamic’ means things that are generally in line with Islamic teachings do not provoke debates. Meanwhile, the word ‘Islamist’ is used, for lack of a better term, to refer to political activism that uses the name of Islam to legitimate their causes. I do not necessarily agree with the word ‘Islam-ist’ that has been circulating in the scholarships of this field that, in

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Indonesian Islamist Media

281

Pancasila, the ideology set up to be the only uniting national foundation by the Suharto’s new regime in Indonesia. Since the (very oftencoercive) implementation of the principles of this Pancasila ideology was against the Islamic values, the existence of this magazine was aimed to show the “true” face of Islam and to give thorough insights of Islamic values. After it was closed in the beginning of 1993 because of an indictment on humiliating another religion, it started to publish again in 1998 shortly after the reformation era was begun. It began to develop significantly afterward. The second reason is because of the high number of the audience that has continuously increased since it was re-published in 1998. Sabili’s development can be seen from its circulation. The trend of Sabili’s total printing has been increasing considerably from 17,000 copies in 1998 to about 100,000 copies in 2005. The ACNielsen’s Readership Survey in 2005 shows that, of the 10 most popular magazines in Indonesia, Sabili is in the second rank. It is distributed to both major cities in Indonesia as well as other countries, such as Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Hong Kong. Sabili readers come from various levels of socio-economic classes aged 20-35 years old. They are range from a high school gradute or a college graduate. In other words, most Sabili readers are young educated Muslims. In addition, Sabili is also a regular consumption of Indonesian workers abroad, especially in Hongkong, Malaysia and Arab Saudi. Therefore, in general, Sabili readers are young Muslims with a productive age. Another reason is that, in comparison to other magazines or Islam(ic/ist) media, Sabili has a clear purpose and motivation in its cause to do a political movement. Among several magazines with Islam(ic/ist) ideology in Indonesia, Sabili is the only one that claims as an Islamist magazine, while the rest state its commitment to it implicitly through the use of Arabic names that sound “Islamic.” This might be one of the reasons why many people perceive Sabili as representing the hardliners’ and radical people’s point of view besides its use of language and the style of reporting that is straight forward and to-the-point. Budiman mentions that Sabili is an example of “openly extreme Islamic publications [in Indonesia]…which never stop fuelling antagonism between Islam and anything considered un-Islamic” (2002). On the other hand, Haryono perceives it as a new power to uphold the true Islamic values in the society as well as a struggle over its true meanings (2005). This research is done in two phases. First, I conducted a field study by observing the production process of one edition in September 2005. I involved in the internal meetings and also the writing processes in Sabili office in Polonia, East Jakarta. This field study is important to see who the people behind Sabili are. It asks: politically and ideologically, what Islam(ic/ist) organisations are they aligned to and what kinds of principles do they uphold? The second phase is the discourse analysis of the text. In this analysis, I explore the ideological structure of Sabili through its language use and its discursive structure and use the data from my field work to tailor it to the contexts.

my opinion, has worsened the name of Islam itself; however, I use it in my paper so that readers do not have difficulties in understanding (and classify) the group I am working on in this analysis.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

282

Rianne K. Subijanto

THE PRODUCTION OF SABILI AT A GLANCE

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

At the beginning, I felt reluctant to conduct a field research. I was afraid I would not be given the permission by Sabili to conduct a research in the field; I was hessitant to meet the so-called “hardliners”; and, I assumed they would not be transparent in sharing the information with me. However, when I called Herry Nurdi, the editor-in-chief of Sabili at that time, I was surprised that he directly agreed with my proposal to be involved in the production process. I then started to join the whole set of the production processes. During the internal meetings, Sabili team did not show any problems at all to have me, a researcher and the only woman, in the room. They treated me with respect and gave me all accesses to the information I needed. My assumption that they were a ‘hardliner’ could not be proven. They did not act like a ‘thug’ as I previously imagined. Instead, in my perception they are a group of people with a broad horizon and knowledge. They hold on the Qur’an and Hadith as the only true reference of Islamic teachings. In this case, the direct interpretation of the Qur’an that is different from what is traditionally taught is unfavorable for them. Their sole motivation in regard with Islam is to conduct the da’wa movement (piety movement)2. They do Da’wa by spreading and purifying the Islamic teachings by explicitly differentiating and judging what is “un-Islamic” and Islamic. They usually counter the reports that are, according to them, “Americanised” and “westernized”. So, although they were not officially affiliated to any political movements, they support the political groups and institutions that share the same agenda, like Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (the Just and Welfare Party)3 and Majelis Ulama Indonesia (The Ulema Council)4. Like Sabili, these two groups are concerned with the protection of the “purity/authenticity/truth” of Islam. In the production practices, however, Sabili team is also faced with several different interests, i.e., politics, economy, market, and socioculture. In their choices of words, colours and pictures to be included in the magazine, their choosing is usually done on the basis of its controversy and attractiveness. The more controversial and emotion-provoking, the more attractive they are. For example, the red colour and the picture full of bloodshed will be used by Sabili to attract and provoke the readers’ emotion. Sabili is not reluctant to use violent words to attack their enemies. When I asked them the reason why they used such a harsh language, they said that is because they wanted to struggle against the domination of the circulating reports that were biased and uncompromising. This is done with the full 2

Da’wa usually refers to several meanings. It is usually translated into ‘to proselytize’. While the first interpretation means to convert non-Muslim to be a Muslim, the second one means to ‘convert’ Muslims from a wrong interpretation of Islam to the right and truthful guidance. However, there is another meaning which is ‘to spread the right and avoid evils’. The meaning of the very word itself is actually ‘to communicate.’ So, the term Da’wa that is intended by this production house should not be defined as a process of proselytizing because their target is the Indonesian Muslims. Da’wa is perceived as a form of prayer and an act of devotion to God. 3 This party was established after the downfall of the Suharto’s regime in 1998. But, after its establishment, its number of followers increases very significantly. It has many supports from most Muslim groups especially those that seek to purify Islam from any forms of things ‘un-Islamic’ including those that are only cultural and thus quasi-Islamic. In 2004, its president was appointed to be the chair of the house of representative (MPR). 4 The Ulema Council was formed during Suharto’s era in the aim to give the Muslim community the access to the government, which resulted into a very dogmatic and controlling institution. Though their decisions are now usually debated and challenged for its normative approaches, their existence is still highly supported by the more purifying-seeking Muslim community in Indonesia. The liberal Islamist group is one of those that are against its existence and its too powerful legitimacy and control in the community.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Indonesian Islamist Media

283

awareness of Sabili’s image that is usually considered ‘hardliner.’ For them, using a soft language and an indirect approach will no longer work.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

SABILI: DEFENDING ISLAM THROUGH TEXTS After conducting the study on the field, I shift my focus into Sabili as a text. In analysing this text, I explore how Islam(ist)-related discourses are represented in the magazine. My analysis focuses on the articles and reports of the first part of Sabili’s third edition published on August 25, 2005. The first part becomes my focus because this part contains the main coverage of topics on socio-culture, politics and economy. In this case, I will be able to delve into Sabili’s position politically and how it is influential in constructing the representation of Islam in general. This third edition is chosen because this edition was published not long after my field study. Its topic on Liberal Islam in Indonesia is the topic that was being highly debated in the country at that time. The analysis is based on its original text in Bahasa Indonesian. The English version provided in this paper will, therefore, only be of help to understand the context without necessarily showing the exact structures, the choice of words etc. In this analysis of ideologies and representation, I use the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach. CDA as an approach and a method was developed in the late 1970s. Since then, CDA has not only been developed in the field of linguistics but also in other social science fields, like sociology and psychology. Besides being multidisciplinary, CDA does not see language as a mere tool of communication independent of its context. Instead, it is seen as a social practice that is influential and also dependent on the context and situation of its discursive act. Therefore, CDA has also been used to explore issues related on power, discrimination, race, gender, class etc. CDA, as a critical theory, contributes to see the ways knowledge is constructed in the society and how language use is an integral part of it. In this case, this discipline specifically explores language use to show how and which power influences a certain group in a particular socio-political space and site (Anthonissen, 2003, p. 297-300). With the various available approaches of CDA (among them are van Dijk, 1998 and Fairclough, 1995) I shall be using the framework of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Fairclough who comes from the field of linguistics offers an analytical method to explore a text from its linguistic features. By looking at the language features at the level of word, sentence and discourse, this analysis enables us to explore the implicit meaning and thus the ideology of the text. There are two phases of this analysis: communicative events and the analysis of the order of discourse. The analysis of communicative event will look at the normative linguistic features mentioned above. The analysis of the order of discourses sees how one discourse is related to another and how the organisation (order) of discourses constructs a certain narrative. Generally, the analysis will be on the interplay of the linguistic features in the text and how they work together in anchoring the preferred meaning.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

284

Rianne K. Subijanto

Analysis of the order of discourse The articles and reports of this edition’s first part are about liberal Islam, U.S.’s economic imperialism, Sharm El-Sheikh bombing in Egypt and the fall of Taya’s regime in Mauritania. I classify the articles based on these topics: Liberal Islam (topic 1), U.S.’s economic imperialism (topic 2), Sharm El-Sheikh bombing (topic 3), and the fall of Taya’s regime in Mauritania (topic 4). Let us now start with the discussion of the analysis of the order of discourse. 1. Actually, it is scheduled that Gus Dus will come, but it seems that this public figure that is closed with Israel will be absent... (topic 1). Sharm El-Sheikh bombing perpetrator is being searched. There are many possibilities and motives. Israel Zionist’s roles could be one of them (topic 2). Taya regime, which is repressive and closed to Israel, is brought down in a military coup d’etat (topic 3). Taya’s regime has so far been closed to Israel. Since 6 years ago, Nouakchott opens a diplomatic relationship with Israel (topic 4).

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

As may be expected, the participants in the four abstracts that are represented negatively i.e., Gus Dur5 related with Liberal Islam, perpetrator of the Sharm El-Sheikh bombing, and Taya as being repressive and authoritarian - invite comparison with another demon of Islam: Israel. All of them are expressed through the use of presupposition like “…a public figure that is closed with Israel…” and “Taya regime, which is repressive and closed to Israel…” This takes for granted the similar characteristics of these participants as the Israel’s. The demonisation of Israel is, then, further emphasised by not providing an explicit explanation of the Israel’s relationship with the above participants. This leads to the evaluative belief that Israel has a latent threat and is mysterious. The inclusion of Israel discourse in the reports of something found un-Islamic and violent shows the reordering of discourse, namely technologisation of discourse (Fairclough, 1995a). If in the Western media, Islam is represented as a demon and threat and related with a violent act, in this text Israel is the one, which is represented as a demon and is related with violence. This magazine struggles over its representation of Israel by ordering the discourse of Israel with the discourses of violence and things against Islam and express it through the use of presupposition inviting a taken-for-granted agreement from its readers. 2. Today, with various statements and discussions, they [liberal Islam] humiliate Ulama and insult Islamic values. May be, it will change its form and face again in another five to ten years. But actually, they, the gang of liberal Islam, are doing an old job, fighting against the truth. And satans support them, convincing them that what they do is right and beautiful (topic 1).

5

Gusdur or Abdurrahman Wahid is the fourth president of Indonesia. During his period, he made many controversial yet profound changes in Indonesia’s political system. For example, he ratified the law that makes that the Chinese new year as a national holiday as a way to decrease the high discrimination against the Chinese community and give them recognition as a part of Indonesian community. He was about to open a diplomatic relation with Israel, but it was suspended due to the protest nation-wide.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Indonesian Islamist Media

285

The next analysis is this edition’s main target, the liberal Islamist group. What is important to notice is the discursive practice in representing the group. Positioning it in the agent slot in the sentence, for example, emphasizes its agency and responsibility for the verb “humiliate”, “insult” and “fight against.” Mixing this liberal Islam discourse with the discourse of satan is another example. In the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, satan is always represented as a demon that will always influence and persuade human beings to do something against the values of religion. Thus, the mixing of both discourses implies that what the group does is something against Islam and is supported by the satans. This emphasises the negative properties of the group inviting the readers to agree with the proposition. What is actually lack of in this text is the explicit explanation and attack to this group’s view of Islam. It only depicts what the liberal Islamist group does, to “humiliate” and to “insult”, instead of mentioning their Islamist values and how they contradict the Islamic values.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

3. However, the gang of the terrorist from Badui denies its cooperation with Al-Qaedah, a network led by Usamah bin Laden and other foreign groups (topic 3). Similar assumption comes from Ahmad Maniez, a political analyst from AlAhram Center, the center of the studi of politics and strategies. “Al-Qaedah network is the most possible perpetrator that did the bombing. In its practice, it is not impossible that there is Zionist participation in it,” said Maniez surely (topic 3). Another point important to notice is the Al-Qaedah representation in Sabili. The two extracts above related to this are taken from the article about Sharm El-Sheikh bombing. In the first extract, it is presupposed that Al-Qaedah is a network led by Osama bin Laden and other foreign groups. This shows that Sabili agrees with the common and worldly acceptable knowledge about Al-Qaedah that it is led by bin Laden. Nevertheless, what is interesting here is that it also presupposes the involvement of “other foreign groups”, which, of course, is positioned and identified as Them in the text. Later on, we then find out that this foreign group is Zionist (extract 3). The implied proposition presented in the first extract evaluates the existence of this foreign group, which then is highlighted by mentioning the name of the group. This again is related with our discussion about the mixture of violence discourse and Israel (in this regard Zionist) discourse. Sabili relates the bombing with Zionist, Israel’s political movement. Furthermore, the Al-Qaedah representation in Sabili is in contrast with the Al-Qaedah’s representation in the Western media, which usually relates the group with Islamist fundamentalism, radicalism or extremism. In presenting it as a presupposition in the text, again Sabili struggles over its technologisation of discourse. It tries to reorder the common order of discourse about Islam related with terrorism by relating it with the discourse of Zionist. 4. The government, according to Fadli Zon, is supposed to be reflecting other countries, like Iraq. Due to his firmness, Saddam Hussein cannot be affected by the economic hit men who obviously work under the foreign side. That is why; they found a lot of difficulties in killing Saddam Hussein.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Rianne K. Subijanto

286

“Nevertheless, in the end they did an intervention to Iraq with a cruel way. This case signals the death of democracy and human rights. In this Iraq case, we can see how democracy and human rights are dead,” he said firmly (topic 2). But if this is not successful, then there comes what is called the jackals, which in this case is CIA to do things up to assassination or destabilizing the government, like what happen in Equador. If this fails, like in Saddam Hussein case who cannot be killed by the jackals, then what comes next is a military invasion (topic 2). Indonesia has to make changes in the policies to be closer to the people and not to submit to any foreign interests. For example, Iraq will not submit to the foreign side. People like Saddam Hussein cannot be affected by the EHM. Indonesia is a very easy target. There aren’t almost any efforts to fight. So according to the West, Indonesia is an easy target to be intervened, both in economy and also ideology (topic 2). The selection of discourses to include and to exclude is also an important point to notice here. While many analysis conducted by many scholars have proven that Saddam Hussein is almost always represented negatively by the media and is depicted as a “menace”, “tyrant”, and “mad man” (see van Dijk, 1998; Fairclough, 1995b; Hodge, 1979), in Sabili, Saddam Hussein is seen as a hero and even as a role model in struggling against the U.S. hegemony. The discourse about Saddam in the first extract is mixed with the discourse of condemning the intervention of U.S. to Iraq and the death of democracy and human rights. This is to uncover the U.S.’s filthy strategies as well as to give an explanation why Saddam Hussein deserves to be a hero and a role model. Saddam’s representation in the text excludes the discourse related to his malicious deeds of exterminating thousands of people and his authoritarian regime (Burns, 2003). It is just the positive and virtuous properties of Saddam Hussein’s characteristics that are included in the text. Moreover, the discourse of condemning the intervention includes the use of direct quotation of an expert’s voice, Fadli Zon, an Indonesian political critic, giving authoritativeness to the ideas delivered. Thus, it will most likely legitimate the ideas that the U.S. military invasion to Iraq is the result of a failure in doing the economic imperialist tricks to the country.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Genre analysis Let us now continue with the analysis of the genres in the text. Most of the articles are inter-discursively complex, articulating together a variety of genres and discourses, including the elements of narratives, the conversational genre and the genre of counseling. An obvious reporting element, in fact, is the presence of the features of narrative. It is realized in the text, for example, in the first five paragraphs of the article entitled U.S. Think-tank confession, Indonesia is the atrocity target. It begins the article by telling a ‘story’ on how it was very difficult to get the source book, Confession of an Economic Hit Man. Notice also that the imperative structures in the text (forbid Ahmadiyah as soon as possible, Exterminate liberal gangs, we (let’s) beat liberal ideas) evokes a conversational style which gives a touch of informality to the personalized relationship between Sabili and its implied readers. The use of

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Indonesian Islamist Media

287

conversationalisation is expressed in the use of informal and every day language as well as the use of narrative that have the function to implement equal positioning of the magazine and its implied readers. This use of conversationalisation appears to minimize the status difference and foregrounds solidarity, yet a closer examination reveals it as merely another tool by which power is exercised. Thus, it can legitimate its assumption and gets support from its readers. These examples of analysis demonstrate both accommodation and resistance, i.e., resisting the dominant discourse and giving accommodation by being a tool of subversion (Talbot et al., 2003, p. 82). It tries to accommodate the general assumption of the implied readers and resist the established dominant discourse by describing it as a discourse does not belong to the US side.

Communicative events analysis The next analysis will be the analysis of the communicative events. Let us begin the analysis with the headline.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

FORBID AHMADIYAH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THINK TANK CONFESSION FROM AMERICA: INDONESIA AS AN ANNIHILATION TARGET ULAMA (RELIGIOUS LEADERS) ARE INSULTED, EXTERMINATE THE LIBERAL GANGS

In this headline, as well as in the rest of the text, the main target for Sabili’s attack is the Liberal Islamist group notwithstanding its attack to U.S.’s think tank. Structurally, the importance of the Liberal Islam (the name of the group) is first emphasised by its appearance in the headline. Secondly, fronting its name in the title highlighted with red colour further emphasises his agency and responsibility for the passivised verb of the sentence that precedes it. The use of passive structure here implies that Ulama is the important topic and most importantly it emphasises that it becomes the patient of the verb ‘humiliate’ with the actor, “Islam Liberal.” The rhyme of the sentence, Ulama are insulted, is obviously intended in the political sense, and hence express not only Sabili’s personal opinion but also the evaluative assumption of the implied readers. Note also what they have done is not topicalised in the headline, but only the result of the action. So, it is the evaluation itself that is thus emphasised. Then, Sabili’s negative opinions toward the liberal Islam are also explicitly expressed in the choice of words, gangs; this name for collective group is being associated to something that is not favourable. Moreover, the use of the imperative structure in the headline also has a provocative effect. This is realized in “EXTERMINATE LIBERAL GANGS” and “FORBID AHMADIYAH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.” Its use of the action verb to construct the U.S.’s Economic Hit Men (EHM)’s representation is also important to notice. The representation of U.S.’s EHM is constructed through the action verb choices: “to annihilate,” “to suppress,” “to manipulate,” “to deceive,” “to blackmail,” “to imperialize,” “to exploit,” “to eliminate,” “to seize,” and “to control.” All of the choices of words represent the U.S. negatively and at the same time as an active agent that do all of these bad actions. This use of the action type of sentence, i.e., actor + verb + patient, first emphasizes the actor, the U.S. This then shows the ideological phenomena in the

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

288

Rianne K. Subijanto

text that Sabili actually perceives the U.S. as a dominant country that does the action to other victimized countries. It then can also be assumed that Sabili positions itself as the dominated group (passive, patient of the action). This way of using action verb for constructing the U.S.’s EHM representation emphasizes the negative representation of the U.S.’s EHM and at the same time agrees with Chomsky’s statement that the U.S. is a ‘leading terrorist state’ (2002, p.43-45) that has the willingness to imperialize other countries for its own benefits (in this regard, economy and politics). To conclude, the articulation of various discourses and their ordering demonstrate the polarized grouping of participants in the text and establishes their characteristics, Us group (Ulama, Saddam Husein, implied readers and Sabili) and Them group (Israel, Liberal Islam, and the U.S.’s EHM). The harsh and straight-forward choices of words, the provocative structure of sentences as well as the use of presupposition emphasize and throw light on the negative representation of Israel, the liberal Islam, the U.S.’s EHM as well as the positive representation of Saddam Hussein. Through the mixture of genres, Sabili both invites the readers’ agreement as well as legitimates its construction of discourse and identity. Moreover, the mixture of discourses and genres is also utilized by Sabili as a means of struggling over its contrast report amidst the dominant ideological framework of reporting.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A STRUGGLE OR A LEGITIMACY? After discussing the order of discourse and the communicative events of the text, we shall now proceed to a more thorough discussion of the socio-cultural context in which these events situated. I would like to argue that Sabili works ambiguously in two ways. It struggles against, and, at the same time, legitimates the dominant ideology. The way Sabili struggles against the dominant ideology can be seen in several ways. First, Sabili intends to deliver the message explicitly to avoid the distortion of meaning they try to struggle over. It, for example, attacks directly the group and the ideologies that go against the true values of Islam according to Al-Quran and Hadith, the Muslims’ holy book and their guide of life. It criticizes them through the use of straight-forward language that sometimes sounds provocative, such as the imperative structure and the harsh choice of words. This use of the provocative language is actually a part of the struggling discursive practice (henceforth called “the language of struggle”). In its discursive practice, Sabili intends to give a clear understanding of the right path and the attitude that the implied readers should take. It tries to clarify every thing that sounds un-Islamic and purify the religion’s values by stating what is wrong and what is right according to the religion’s basic principle, i.e., Al-Quran and Hadith. For sabili, amidst the dominant ideology that seems to be too tolerant to Islamic values and, thus, distorts the actual values of Islam, there should be a media of advocacy for the readers to distinguish what is Islamic and what is not. Therefore, discourses like the wrong teachings of Islam, Americanisation, westernization, and even Zionism will most likely be attacked in the magazine. Next, the technologisation of discourses that Sabili tries to fight for, such as connecting Israel and violence, is also another way of its resistance toward the dominant ideology that usually relates violence with Islam. Finally, Sabili also presents its opinion by organising it following an ideological pattern that polarises the ingroups and outgroups, Us vs. Them. In this case, the basic dual ideologies used are the contrast ones from the dominant ideology that usually associate We (West) with

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Indonesian Islamist Media

289

positive values such as democracy, rationality and non-violence, and They (East and Islam) with dictatorship, violence and irrationality (van Dijk, 1998). Sabili formulates its own ideology that associate We (Islam) with positive values such as a victim of the dominant power and a group that holds the “right” (Islamic) path of life and Them (West) with violence, imperialism and hegemony. On the other hand, the way Sabili presents the news, at the same time, legitimates the dominant ideology. First, its use of the provocative language sounds very emotive from the dominant ideology perspective. This also shows how the language use and the order of discourses can raise people’s hatred toward a group being represented negatively. Furthermore, in reordering the discourses, Sabili tends to blame a group, i.e., Israel, without giving explicit explanation why it is the group to blame. With this, the non-targeted readers will probably come up with the idea that the magazine works irrationally. Moreover, since the choices of words have a significant influence in the text production and thus the magazine’s representation (Hall, 1995), its uses of harsh language, red and black colours used stereotypically to represent the bad group, as well as the violent and full-of-bloodshed pictures can lead into the violent representation of Sabili and, thus, Islam that it represents. Therefore, Sabili strengthens the view of, what Esposito called, the ‘secular fundamentalism’ that presents every thing related to religion as abnormal, irrational and backward (Esposito, 2005).

CONCLUSION In conclusion, Sabili in its discursive practices is aimed to resist the dominant ideology that distorts the true values of Islam. It tries to achieve this through the use of the “language of struggle”. However, this actually works ambiguously, legitimating the dominant ideology that perceives the language use of struggle as a part of being “violent”. For that reason, what Sabili does in representing Islam is only to invert rather than to subvert the dualist relation of the “West” and “Islam.” By only inverting the stereotypes, Sabili only reproduces the dominant images of Islam in a different way. Therefore, Sabili is an example of paradoxical position of an Islamist group to the “West.”

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to express my gratitude to Junaidi, Muhammad Fuad, and Manneke Budiman for their helpful comments on this paper.

REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, L. (2006). Local contexts of Islamism in popular media. Leiden: Amsterdam University Press. Alavi, N. (2005). We are Iran: The Persian blogs. Brooklyn, New York: Soft Skull Press. Anthonissen, Christine. (2003). Interaction between visual and verbal communication: changing patterns in the printed media. In G. Weiss & R. Wodak (eds.), Critical

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

290

Rianne K. Subijanto

discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity, pp.297–311. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Artawijaya. (2005, August 25). Indonesia Sudah Terjajah (Indonesia has already been imperialized). Sabili, 25–27. Bell, A. & Garrett, P. (Eds.). (1998). Approaches to media discourse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Budiman, Manneke. (2002). Growing Closure?. Retrieved on October 12, 2005, from http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/518/518%20manneke%20budiman.htm. Burhanudin, Yusuf. (2005, August 25). Di balik teror Sharm El-Sheikh (Behind Sharm ElSheikh’s terror). Sabili, 34-36. Burns, John F. (2003, January 27). How Many People Has Saddam Hussein Killed? Taken from http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/ajan/27_saddam.html. Chomsky, N. (2002). 9-11. New York: Seven Stories Press. Esposito, J. L. (2005). “Benturan Peradaban”?: Citra Kontemporer Islam di Barat (“Clash of Civilization”?: Islam Contemporary Image in the West). In Idi Subandy Ibrahim (Ed.), Media dan citra Muslim: Dari spiritualitas untuk berperang menuju spiritualitas untuk berdialog (Media and Moslem image: From spirituality to war toward spirituality to dialog). Yogyakarta: Jalasutra. Fairclough, N. (1995a). Critical discourse analysis. New York: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995a). (1995b). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. Hall, S. (1995) The rediscovery of ‘ideology’: Return of the repressed in media studies. In O. Boyd-Barrett & C. Newbold (Eds.), Approaches to media: A reader, pp.354–364. London: Oxford University Press Inc. Haryono, M. Y. (2005). Melawan dengan teks (Resisting through text). Yogyakarta: Resist Book. Hodge, R. & Kress, G. (1979). Language as ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hutapea, R. (2005, August 25). Pengakuan think-tank AS, Indonesia Target Penghancuran (U.S.’s think-tank confession, Indonesia as annihilation target). Sabili, 16-21. Hutapea, R. (2005, August 25). Singkirkan komparador asing (Eliminate the foreign imperialists). Sabili, 22-24. Ibrahim, I S. (Ed.). (2005). Media dan citra Muslim: dari spiritualitas untuk berperang menuju spiritualitas untuk berdialog (Media and Moslem image: From spirituality to war toward spirituality to dialog). Yogyakarta: Jalasutra. Nurdi, H. (2005, August 25). Ulama dihina, tumpas gerombolan liberal (The ulemas is humiliated, exterminate liberal gangs). Sabili, 48-53. Ridwan, N. (2005, August 25). Tumbangnya rezim satelit Israel (The fall of Israel’s satellite regime). Sabili, 32-33. Said, E W. (1997). Covering Islam. New York: Vintage Books. Salamandra, C. (1998). Moustache hairs lost: Ramadan television serials and the construction of identity in Damascus, Syria. Visual Anthropology, 10, 227-246. Sreberny-Mohammadi. (1994). Small media, big revolution. London: University of Minnesota Press. Talbot, Mary, Karen Atkinson & David Atkinson. (2003). Language and power in the modern world. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Opinions and ideologies in the press. In A. Bell, & P. Garrett (Eds.) Approaches to media discourse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

In: Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective ISBN 978-1-60741-320-2 Editors: T. Lê, Q. Lê and M. Short © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 24

POWER, LANGUAGE, AND LITERACY EDUCATION: THE CASE OF EARLY READING AND WRITING IN CHINA Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT Children’s early reading materials appear in paper or virtual forms, in look-and-say pictures or scripts in simple languages, as parts of phonics- or meaning-driven, “balanced/eclectic” instructional programs, and as pictures, words, or combinations. But one thing they have in common is that they generally lay claim to depict a version of an everyday life to which children can relate. Young readers of these books are shown a “relevant” world but also a distinct multi-purposed textual world, through which they see displays of how appropriately school-literate youngsters talk and act. A popular, prevalent and enduring belief, especially evident in western official and public discourses, is that reading is about language acquisition, the development of technical perceptual and cognitive skills such as letter- and word-recognition and comprehension, engaged in for purposes of school learning, entertainment and personal development. This chapter uses illustrations of texts and images used in first school children’s reading books in China to develop the argument that claims about neutrality and technicality in reading acquisition have inappropriately drawn attention away from a critical analysis of the content of the materials used, and have thereby hidden, from teachers and researchers alike, the multiplicity of ideological and political functions embodied in early reading materials.

Keywords: Literacy, yuwen, school literacy, symbolic violence, early school reading materials, China

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

292

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

INTRODUCTION In this chapter we discuss issues to do with language, literacy, and power via the use of a corpus of books used to teach young students in China to read and write. This corpus is the main element of a program called yuwen. We use illustrations from this corpus to show how literacy education is necessarily a profoundly political project, having as its deep and abiding goal the acculturation of youngsters into particular ways of viewing themselves in their everyday world. To do this we draw on Zhang (2006), Freebody and Zhang (2008), and Zhang and Freebody (in press). In the latter two pieces we have focussed on the interplay between words and images in these books, and on how the books “combine language and images to acculturate the student-reader both into a particular relationship with authoritative book knowledge” and “within an authoritative idea of nationhood and national culture” (Freebody & Zhang 2008, p.24). This chapter supplements that emphasis with a focus on the textual features that display apparent relevance to the beginning reader, and the consequences of those processes for the acculturation of youngsters and their understandings of their public and private lives. One starting point is a conclusion drawn by Baker and Freebody (1989) from their studies of early school reading materials used in Australian schools. They argued that these materials

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

locate the child-reader in a particular relationship with book knowledge and, more broadly, with school learning... [They] propound a version of childhood – in effect, a theory of how children think, act and talk, and of their position in the social world. This invites and possibly requires, children to revise their own identities at least for purposes of successfully engaging in school reading instruction and in using the discourse of the books to (indirectly) talk about themselves (Baker & Freebody, 1989, pp. xvii and 152, insert added).

In this chapter, we use Yuwen to elaborate on Baker and Freebody’s point. We first examine historical constructs of early reading education in China, demonstrating acculturation of literate person through the practices of early language education, being yuwen, literacy or reading. We then turn to the examples of the first yuwen texts currently used in schools nationally. In the People’s Republic of China, yuwen is the term used to describe reading, literacy, language, literature teaching, and learning in school. Yuwen does not just refer to the concepts and practices of reading and language arts that are prevalent in north American education, nor is it equivalent to the conventional meaning of literacy in English language more broadly. So we begin our discussion of language, literacy, and power with an account of the nature and history of the idea of yuwen.

YUWEN (语文), LITERACY, READING AND THE ACCULTURATION OF THE LITERATE SUBJECT Various terms are used for early literacy education in China. Among them, enlightenment, eradicating illiteracy, and yuwen are salient. They are socially constructed and historically contingent, and they provide a context for understanding yuwen education. There is no equivalent translation of reading and literacy in Chinese language. Often contextual

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

293

information is needed to give a listener some general idea, so that reading is not reduced to word-recognition. A colloquial translation of “reading’ in Chinese is yuedu (阅读), a term usually associated with the act of reading. To make sense for a lay person, the object of the reading needs to accompany the idea, the type of book or document. A recent translation responding to reading research in North American [International Reading Association] is yuedong xue, equivalent to reading-ology. “Literacy” can be translated in various ways in Chinese, such as “qimeng jiaoyu” (启蒙 教育), wenmang (文盲), saomang (扫盲) or shizi (识字). To translate these Chinese terms back into English, literally, they refer to “enlightenment education” (qimeng jiaoyu), “literate blindness” (wenmang), “eradicating blindness” (saomang) and “word-recognition” (shizi). Officially, rates of word-recognition and grade-entrance are taken to be an index of China’s literacy. It is difficult to provide a ready English version of the term yuwen. Yuwen is used for the Chinese subject in school in People’s Republic of China (PRC). Traditionally, the teaching of beginning reading was called “interpreting and reading the classics” (Jianjin Dujin). In the 1920s, along with the establishment of a formal set of school curriculum subjects, the teaching of modern Chinese language came under two headings: National Literature (Guowen) and National Language (Guoyu). In 1950 the term yuwen was introduced into the school curriculum, but until 2001 it was used to indicate two related but distinct aspects of teaching Chinese – language (yu) and literature (wen). The teaching of Chinese language and literature are referred to differently depending on age level and the learner in question. The teaching of Chinese at tertiary level is called Hanyu, literally meaning “Han language”. Han is the name of the largest ethnic group in China. To refer to the teaching of Chinese as Huayu is usually to refer to its relation to other languages, such as English. The word Mandarin has no precise Chinese translation; it may be translated as putonghua, guoyu, hanyu or huayu, depending on the language community in which it is used or to which it refers. Putonghua (common language) is a term used in PRC, guoyu (national language) in Taiwan, and Hanyu (Han language) and huayu (Chinese language) in Chinese communities overseas. To give a sense of the complexity of these terms, we trace their discursive formation.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL RESIDUES “Enlightenment education” (启蒙 教育) and “eradicating illiteracy” (扫盲) are respectively linked to the Enlightenment Movement in the early 20th century, and to the eradicating illiterate campaigns in the middle of the century. The former, with its iconoclastic association, is significant in terms of the rise of modern China; the latter, with its sense of aspiration toward mass education, is seen as having paved the way toward China’s socialist revolution and development. Traditionally, Confucianism and Confucian texts were authorised by the Chinese monarchic system, and reinforced through the official examination system, keju. Keju is assessment based on the reading of the classics and a use of their related written style wenyan. In the beginning of 20th century, with the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic, the old classics were seen as impediments to the process of China’s modernity.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

294

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

In an early stage, a series of decrees were promulgated to adopt modern schooling (see Cleverley, 1991; Ding, 2001; Hayhoe, 1992; Rawsky, 1979; Yuan, 2001; Zhu, 1992). One of them, the “Imperially Approved School Regulation” (Zouding Xuetang Zhangcheng), released in 1903, explicated for the first time in China’s history a wide range of nontraditional subjects for educational institutes, together with the length of study, levels of qualifications, entry ages, the establishment of teacher’s training institutions, and so on. This introduction to a new range of school subjects meant that Confucian classics were no longer the sole source of knowledge. In 1905, the Keju Civil Examination System, which started from the Sui dynasty (A.D. 581-618), was abolished. Examinations no longer held a monopoly position in streaming gentry, literati, scholars, intellectuals, officials, and so on. When traditional teaching was thus converted into modern schools, however, the Confucian classics were retained, and Confucian values, such as the “Three Bonds and the Five Constant Virtues” were considered to be fundamental. The 1903 decree explicated that “there are principles of morality that are immutable throughout the ages, but no methods of governance that are unchangeable. What are immutable are the Three Bonds and the Five Constant Virtues, which are like the sun and the stars shining steadfastly upon the earth. What can be changed is regulation A or regulation B, which is adjustable as strings on a musical instrument” (Yuan, 2001, p.195). Until 1917, although new subjects were added, teaching of Confucian texts was required, and almost all school subjects were still written in old classic Chinese language (wenyan). Radical change in the public and school use of language teaching and learning in modern China was brought about by the May Fourth Enlightenment movement (1917-1927). Influenced by Western thought, the May Fourth intelligentsia believed in the power of new knowledge to enlighten and awaken the nation from a blind complacency, and coined qimeng in light of the European Enlightenment. The modern European historical process after the eighteenth century has been set as the norm and target of Chinese modernity. Agenda set by the May Fourth intelligentsia in the beginning of the movement included having a language and literary revolution, specified in three ways: to change the contents of literary writing to suit a “national people” (guoming); to overthrow “tainted” Confucian classic writings; and to adopt vernacular language and write in the manner of realism (Schwarcz, 1986; Zhou, 1960). Consequently, a new language style, baihua vernacular Chinese (literally “unadorned speech”), was substituted for the traditional using of classic Chinese (wenyan) in education and public communications (Chen, 1999; DeFrancis, 1984). In 1920, the Republic government in Beijing promulgated that Chinese textbooks in primary Year One and Year Two should be written in baihua (Cheng, 1998). Further demands were made that the writings of other school subjects be substituted by baihua. Until 1950, the teaching of Chinese in schools had been called guoyu (national language) and guowen (national literature). Public debates over whether and how schools should teach students vernacular Chinese (baihua) or classic Chinese (wenyan), and what constituted baihua and, hence, accountable reading materials, were recurrent in China at that time (Zhang, 2006). A precursor of the May Fourth enlightenment movement, Lu Xun, campaigned and provided prototypical baihua texts for its literary and language revolution. His works have been selected as modern canonical literary texts for all levels of students, unique in PRC’s educational history, and banned in Taiwan for years. Legacies of the May Fourth Enlightenment are enduring in spite of political changes over the century. Nevertheless, the themes of Chinese enlightenment have

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

295

also related directly to particular social and political tides. For instance, the May Fourth enlightenment theme was seen a revolt against tradition, a belief in science, and selfconsciousness. When the Nationalist government was in power (1937-1945), enlightenment agenda became a synthesis of patriotism, liberalism, and rationalism (Wang, 1995). It was during this time that Chinese as a school subject alternated between national language (guoyu) and national literature (guowen) in urban areas. In the 1980s, when China opened its doors to the outside world and went into a new phase of political, economic, and social order, there was a revival of enlightenment, or what is called New Culture Fever. Issues surrounding Marxism, science, and humanity were raised with renewed enthusiasm (Zhang, 1997, Zhang, 2006). Chinese curriculum at the time went through a significant reconstruction (Zhang & Zhong, 2003). In terms of Chinese education in general, the early enlightenment movement and its aims to subvert Confucian values and the teaching of Confucian texts, and to substitute with vernacular language baihua, changed the trajectory of language and literature teaching in the modern history in China. Reacting to the May Fourth enlightenment practices, individuals such as Tao Xinzhi and James Yen undertook a different route to practice mass education and to eradicate illiteracy. From the 1920s they visited villages and created literacy programmes (Cleverley, 1991, Hayford, 1990, 1987). Inspired but unsatisfied with approaches to literacy, Mao Zedong, who became the leader of PRC, also conducted literacy programmes. He pushed for radical changes in national language and literary writing. When Mao and his comrades settled down in a desolate town, Yan’an in 1935, they promoted Latinized New Writing (Ladinghua Xinwenzi) (Chen, 1999, Zhou, 2001). Also at this time, Mao made a well-known speech on creating a literary genre for the masses, which became a tenet for literary writing in revolutionary China (see Zhang, 2006). In the 1950s, when the Communists established their power over the entire country, language and literacy reform were promulgated through formal policies (Chen, 1999, Guo, 2004, Su, 2001, Zhou, 2001). In 1955, interim documents were released and the principal goals of a language reform were outlined: putonghua, simplified Chinese characters, and pinyin. Implementations of the new language sets were gradually put into practice over following years. Putonghua was defined as: “to have Beijing speech as its standard pronunciation, the northern Chinese dialects as its base dialects, and modern Chinese literary classics written in vernacular Chinese as its grammatical norm” (Guo, 2004, p. 46). For the standardized simplified Chinese characters, after initial approval in 1956, a list of 2,236 characters was published in 1964 and was finalised in an amended version with minor corrections in 1986. A romanized alphabet system, pinyin, was endorsed in 1958, aiming to annotate and teach the pronunciation of putonghua (Su, 2001). The display of yuwen texts described below embodies this language set. Language standardization is nothing new in China’s history. A standardization of written scripts was undertaken in the first dynasty, Qin Dynasty, 221 BC. The recent promotion of putonghua was a further step, not only regulating written scripts (standardized simplified characters), but oral communication (putonghua). The standardization of language was, and still is believed to a means of efficient governance from a distance, as was achieved in China’s first Kingdom. The recent standardization in the form of putonghua is supposed to accelerate China’s modernization, with practical implications of spreading literacy, and facilitating socialising (Guo, 2004, Su, 2001). A question we ask here is how these reforms are textualised through and reified in young students’ school reading materials, and what they accomplish in terms of structuring their

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

296

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

everyday lives. As indicated above, yu refers to language, and the other part of this term is wen. Literally, wen means configuration, seeking to capture some essential form or pattern. According to YiChing (Zhouyi, Huipu), the search to capture the cosmetic forms (tiang wen) is for an understanding of the changes of time. The seeking to capture human forms (ren wen) is for the settlement of the world. Wen, as a template, a structured prefigurement, provides guidelines for the life of culture as a continual dynamic patterning. The exact nature and implementation of this pattern was thought to be an empty structure which needs to be filled; so the word wen forms compounds such as wenhua (culture), wenyi (arts) and wenxue (literature), all modern terms, with embodied and embedded translingual practices (see Liu, 1995). When used in relation to the affiliated discipline renwen (humanity), the meaning carries a sense of a saga that describes human culture, such as poetry, history, rites, and music, and the use of these to educate people in the world (Wang, 1995). When wen combines with xue, it forms the compound wenxue, literature. Xue indicates emulating and imitating, the crafts of learning and studying. Teaching and learning of Chinese is hence a study of interpretations of human beings and culture in the form of textual materials. In the Chinese situation, what counts as adequate language, text, and the transmission of knowledge have all been buffeted by China’s continuing interactions with the outside world, a world perceived to be more advanced, more civilized, and better equipped with modern technologies, including forms of literacy. This is evident in an examination of current yuwen curricular and research studies.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CURRENT YUWEN DISCIPLINE As described in Freebody and Zhang (2008), the Yuwen Curricular Standard of 2001, for the first time referred to a singular concept, something like language-and-literature-studies. These elements are seen as inextricably connected. Yuwen also established putonghua as the language of schooling. It served to introduce simplified characters and new formats and genres for official, public writing. A series of new Chinese textbooks was designed, published, and trialled (Ministry of Education, P.R.C, 2001), and in 2003 a new textbook series was mandated for beginning Chinese students. In China textbooks must align with the tasks laid out in the curricular standards. Affiliated with the Ministry of Education is a textbook production unit, the Curriculum and Teaching Materials Development Centre (kecheng jiaocai kaifa zhongxin). This is the central authority responsible for school textbooks. Books designed by this body are published by the People’s Education Press (PEP) and are chosen by the majority of schools across China. The PEP textbooks currently occupy a dominant position in the school textbook industry. In the first year yuwen, Chinese characters and the alphabet pinyin codes are taught (respectively understood as morpheme, homograph and radical awareness, and Chinese phonological awareness). A typical procedure used in teaching word-recognition is: using pinyin for the pronunciation of the new characters, learning the structure of each character, copying characters, making sentences with the characters, and memorising them. An effect of this, one often explicitly recommended in the growing body of research on learning to read and write Chinese, has been a focus on word recognition and recognition-based teaching techniques in early Chinese reading education. Significantly, the Yuwen Curricular Standard

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

297

has been changed to extend the emphasis on word recognition in the first three years for an additional three-year period. A focus on various techniques for word-recognition, such as the use of grapheme-phoneme correspondence for Chinese characters, means that other important aspects of becoming a member of a literate China have been largely ignored by teachers and researchers. That is, notwithstanding the contemporary influence of western psychological theorizing and research, the history of Chinese education involves a social and political path that is different from those societies with heavy investments in the psychological techniques of teaching reading and writing or in the strategic deployment of politically-loaded literacy crises (Welch & Freebody, 1993). What is prominent in current yuwen education is: i) the discourse of science and humanity, ii) a complex collection of restraints, and iii) the intention to retain distinctive disciplinary characteristics, especially in the area of the sciences. These operate largely independent from external interventions. In the Yuwen Curricular Standard 2001, themes and purposes of yuwen are clear. The two beginning introduction paragraphs of the Preface of the Curricular Standard states:

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Modern society requires its citizens to possess good human qualities and scientific qualities; to have the spirit of creativity, willingness to cooperate and an open vision; have multiple basic abilities including reading comprehension and communication skills; and have the abilities to use modern technologies in searching for and handling information. Yuwen education should and could take an important role in producing a new generation of persons needed for the modern society. In facing up to the needs of the development of society, yuwen education must have a systematic reform in curricular aims and contents; ideas of instructions and styles of learning; purposes and methods of assessments, and so forth. The reform of the nine-year compulsory yuwen curriculum should build on the guidance of Marxism and scientific educational theories; should summarize the successes and failures of yuwen education of our country; should reflect over the experiences of teaching and learning native languages in different countries; should follow the rules in yuwen education; endeavouring to construct a relevant yuwen curriculum in compliance with modern social development, and do what it should do to cultivate students’ thought and moral quality, and scientific and cultural quality (Translated by Zhang Bin).

In these statements, human, scientific, moral, and yuwen quality are together rendered as requirements of modernity, the development of a society, and therefore as the bases of yuwen curriculum: Marxism, scientific theories, international lessons, and rules in the subject itself. In other words, modernity is seen as the ultimate destination of social evolution; all the qualities listed are inevitable and indispensable parts of the process. The teaching of Chinese in school is a state-endorsed imposition of these qualities. School students in China, in ways comparable to but distinct from those in other countries, have become subjects under explicit acculturation criteria, some of which are clearly related to the acquisition of textual practices. Borrowing from Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), we can think of the application of these criteria as a way of “inscribing habitus”: the way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel, and act in determinate ways, which then guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu (Wacquant, 2005, p.316).

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

298

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

Habitus is a heuristic that draws attention to a system of schemes of generating and internalising the idealised language structure and the social structure. We aim to exemplify the relation between these elements in a consideration of a text from the yuwen program.

THE MOON, THE PICNIC, AND THE DAUGHTER To give a sense of these intricate processes as they appear on the page, and as they structure the pedagogic activities typically undertaken around the, we examine a text from Year-one Yuwen. An English translation of the text is shown below.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A Wish of the Moon 1. Late at night, the moon penetrated inside through the curtain. It saw a little girl sleeping on her bed, with a backpack beside, and in it there were fruit and snacks. 2. The moon talked to itself, “Tomorrow the children are going to have a picnic in the suburb. I should go to discuss with Grandpa Sun, and let’s have a good day tomorrow.” 3. The moon went inside the window of another family. It saw a little girl taking care of her sick mother. 4. Mother said, “Zhengzheng, go to bed early. Don’t be too tired. Tomorrow you’re going to have a picnic in the suburbs.” 5. “Mum, I don’t want to go.” 6. “You should go tomorrow and have a good time with your friends!” 7. “But the doctor said that you haven’t recovered yet!” 8. The moon left quietly from the window. It thought, “Let me go to have a talk to Grandpa Thunder, and let’s have rain tomorrow!” 9. Two days later, it was a bright sunny day. All the children, without one less, walked in rows happily towards the suburbs (Yuwen II, pp.30-31). In the text of A Wish of the Moon, much of the narrative is advanced via quoted speech. This has long been found to be common in beginning school reading materials (Baker & Freebody, 1989). The quoted speech here, particularly those of the mother and daughter in paragraphs 4-7, make claims about the truth of the story. We can also document how the quoted speech is done in the overall textualizing process of the story. The four-paragraph mother-daughter talk is located after three paragraphs of scene setting and followed by a twoparagraph evaluation. In these circumstances, the figures of mother and daughter recede. The reported mother and daughter talk and the positioning of it in the overall story hence in one way facts are presented in narrated fiction; and interpretation of the story is left in the hands of the narrator’s manoeuvres of assembling and organising the story’s actions and events. This raises an immediate pedagogical concern. The activities of the text characters, the moon, Mother, and Zhengzheng, are heard largely through direct reported speeches and thoughts, as shown in paragraph 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. The reported speeches and thoughts foreground the text characters, and background the narrator. A common practice in reading in China or English speaking countries is that the textual activities, conveyed through the reported speeches and thoughts in this case, are often treated as story line - to be taken in,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

299

empathized with, and appreciated, as inferential knowledge. Thereafter, a child-reader is not acquainted with a method for hearing some segments of text as having been produced by some characters, and for not hearing other bits of text as similarly socially produced (ibid.). In other words, the direct reporting of Mother and daughter dialogue and the moon’s soliloquy and monologue give salience to what the narrator intents to portray for the intended audience – effectively a de-pesonalised story line. Readers learn that they do not need to inquire into the authority or competence of the text to convey what happened in some real or fictional interpretive world. Indeed, the potential disturbance to the story’s plotline would actively discourage them from such inquiry. To represent the characters’ voices, an observable technique employed in the text is the selection of transitivity in the reporting. In most of the texts in the Chinese textbooks, a third person narration is used. In this case, the story is reported from the point of view of the moon. For the human characters, speech verb said is adapted and used succinctly before the first turn of the mother’s utterance. Speakers’ identification can be inferred directly from the interlocutors’ address located within the talk, “Zhengzheng”, and “Mum” in the first talking sequence. At the same time, the quotation marks and the logic of the talking-turn imply that no more indication of speech verbs or speakers’ roles seems to be needed. As soon as the quotations end, the two human characters fade away, and the moon-reporter emerges again. Interpretations of the human activity thereafter, as well as therefore, are turned over to the hands of the moon. In the overall text structure, almost half of the story is devoted to the recounting of the moon. The moon is endowed with autonomy to perform a series of material as well as mental activities, to penetrate, see, talk, go, leave and think. In the text, the moon’s interior activities contextualise and set the scene for the story (paragraph 1, 2, 3) and bring it a solution (paragraph 8). It is noteworthy that the representation of the moon’s mental activities, that is, the use of verbs of “talked to itself” before the quotation in paragraph 2; “saw”, before the strings of quotations before paragraph 4-7; and “thought” before the quotation in paragraph 8, is set after a portrayal of segments of its material activities, (paragraph 1, 3, and 8: “penetrated”, “saw”, “went” and “left”). That is, the moon’s reported talk is interleaved with the narrator’s scene-setting and scene-shifting interjections. Textually, there are levels of narration in this apparently simple story: “(A) character whose actions are the object of narration can himself in turn engage in narrating a story” (Rimmon-Kenan, 2002, p.92). At the same time, the levels of narration are embedded in a textual order. The talk of the mother and daughter is the object of the moon, and the actions of the moon are the direct objects of the narrator. The narrator is seen to have the power to choreograph the text characters, making the story recounted in a hierarchical order: narrator the moon - human characters, in which the narrator quotes the moon; the moon quotes the mother and daughter; and the daughter quotes the doctor (indirectly). In other words, the narrator appears in the “narratorless sentences” (Banfield, 1982), as a “knowledgeable but unobtrusive” storyteller and recounter (Baker & Freebody, 1989). The mother-daughter talk is thus framed through the narrator’s scene assembly to be interpreted in a particular way by the student-readers. Salience is given here to factuality: There is limited use of indirect speech and punctuation in modern Chinese literature; so the use of quotation marks in A Wish of the Moon seems to be markedly intentional. On the other hand, in spite of the linguistic congruence of the properties of direct report, mostly on the moon’s part, (i.e., the adopting of speech act verbs, the switching to the first pronouns, the declarative and imperative mood

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

300

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

used, and so on), such a “factual” representation of a fictitious character creates ambiguity. By choosing the mental act verbs to represent the moon’s utterances, the direct reported utterances seem to function more than to claim truth. Functionally, these utterances are close to the appreciative function of reported speech/thought identified by Vincent and Perrin (1999), which is seen as an expression of an opinion. “When the appreciative function is activated, speech act verbs take on all the attributes of verbs of opinion or of thought” (p.297); hence, the speaker can reproduce a “full complement of communicative roles speaker and hearer – without a full complement of role-performers” (Goffman, 1981, p.80). Also, the kind of directly reported mental activities blurs into the fictionality found in the indirect speech: When representation of mental activities is employed, or where interior activity is reported, it is the narrator’s subjective representation of the character’s interior world that is the place from which the story’s line derives. Banfield (1982) used the term of “represented speech and thought” (free indirect speech/thought) to describe the intermediate zone between direct and indirect utterance (see, pp.65-70), a common practice in narrative fiction. A third person narration is typically seen as equivalent to represented speech and thought, “(W)e can be told what a character does or thinks in a novel, or we can be ‘shown’ it” (p.69). In this stance, narration is a subjective activity, a reflexive form of reporting speech in which speaker’s role can be distilled from real social interactions, and narration can contain narratorless sentence. As Banfield pointed out, fictional narrative statements not appropriately judged at face value as true or false, “rather, it creates by fiat a fictional reality which can only be taken as fictionally true” (p.258), and need to be taken as a fact within the fiction. So the apparently factual representation of the moon’s interior activities and its perceived human world together invite young readers to enter into a “plausible” world, a world with interleaving of fantasy and reality. Embedded in the moon’s utterances are words authorised by someone other than the current speaker. A child-reader is expected to appreciate and be receptive to the pretence of the moon’s communicative ability as well as to the represented “everyday” human scene. As a matter of fact, a depiction of a plausible world seems a common practice in early children’s readings.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION What has drawn our attention in this chapter has been the need to scrutinize semiotic histories, policies, and practices that produce, implicitly or otherwise, standardized technical characteristics of literate-ness, and that thereby become the fetishized objects of testing agencies, the media, communities, curriculum writers, literacy researchers, and, finally, teachers, as the sole attributes to be imposed upon learners via routine day-to-day pedagogy. Extended semiotic analysis is needed to examine the authorial practices embedded in literary texts that carry implications for power and acculturation. As in many beginning school reading materials around the world, our analyses show the significance of the prevalence of speech and third-person narration in yuwen texts: Speeches, whether quoted or unquoted, are delivered as facts, even though in many different voices, and the device of the narrator is employed to mediate and negotiate. As we illustrated in the text A Wish of the Moon, the mother and daughter talk, and the scene of that talk is brought to the fore through the gaze of the moon. Through the moon, the category pertaining to the conventional attributes of gender

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

301

and generational relations are present as valued features of social life. When textual formalities, be they image, genre, or authorial practice, are disembedded from particular social practices and become a force in their own right, they are imposed as legitimate ways of teaching how to investigate and explain the world and human experience. The Chinese setting may be regarded as unrepresentative, in that language has been employed in the past century as revolutionary tools to subvert existing and build new social orders in that country. This is part of what westerners “know” about China. Compared with traumatic language imposition such as this, impositions of attributes of schooled literate experience in the west may seem euphemistic, its authoritarianism less discernable. But systems of symbolic meaning are imposed upon individuals and categories of individuals so that they recognize that meaning as legitimate. It is part of learning to read and write, and the educational system necessarily plays a decisive role in this process. So policy, curriculum, and pedagogy need to be developed that take direct account of this role, and provide resources for youngsters to come to understand and act both with and on it. From the children’s beginning reading materials, both in Chinese and English, we see readers systematically positioned to recognise an array of schooled literate behaviours. School children are acculturated to hear and speak in ways that are relevant to the social relations and inherited orders that embody school-literacy. The right to speak is more than the technically acceptable exercise of word recognition or text comprehension skills. The material and symbolic social order is also acquired, internalized as a set of preferences, categorizations, and classifications that reflect existing social relations, to be boys or girls, with filial piety, adults, mothers, advanced, civilised, and so forth, the taken for granted natural order of school and childhood. The analytic task is constantly to engage in the study of language as praxis, on site, rather than just as logos or as some form of linguistic capital for a school, workplace, or ‘social’ market, reducing the acquisition of reading and writing to only these concerns, and conveying those limited concerns through our teaching and research.

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

REFERENCES Baker, C.D., & Freebody, P. (1989). Children's first school books: Introductions to the culture of literacy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Banfield, A. (1982). Unspeakable sentence: Narrative and representation in the language of fiction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. (R. Nice, Trans.). London and Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Chen, P. (1999). Modern Chinese: History and sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cheng, D. (1998). On the subject of Chinese [Yuwen xueke lun]. Changsha: Hunan Education Publishing House. Cleverley, J. (1991). The schooling of China: Tradition and modernity in Chinese education. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. DeFrancis, J. (1984). The Chinese language: Fact and fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

302

Bette Zhang Bin and Peter Freebody

Ding, G. (2001). Nationalization and internationalization: Two turning points in China's education in the twentieth century. In G. Peterson, R. Hayhoe & Y. Lu (Eds.), Education, culture, and identity in twentieth-century China, (pp. 161-186). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Freebody, P. & Zhang Bin, B. (2008). The designs of culture, knowledge, and interaction on the reading of language and image. In L. Unsworth (Ed.), New literacies and the English curriculum: Multimodal Perspectives, (pp. 23-46). London: Continuum. Guo, L. (2004). The relationship between putonghua and Chinese dialects. In M. Zhou (Ed.), Language policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and practice since 1949 (pp. 45-54). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hayford, C.W. (1987). Literacy movements in modern China. In R. Arnove, F. & H. Graff, J. (Eds.), National literacy campaigns: Historical and comparative perspectives, (pp. 147172). New York and London: Plenum Press. Hayford, C.W. (1990). To the people: James Yen and village China. New York: Columbia University Press. Hayhoe, R. (Ed.). (1992). Education and modernization: The Chinese experience. New York: Pergamon. Liu, L.H. (1995). Translingual practice: Literature, national culture, and translated modernity-China, 1900-1937. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Rawski, E.S. (1979). Education and popular literacy in Ch'ing China. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Rimmon-Kenan, S. (2002). Narrative fiction: Contemporary poetics (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Ministry of Education, P.R.C. (2001). Teaching and curriculum reform: Basic Education

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

curriculum reform [教学与课程改革: 基础教育课程改革]. Retrieved 23122008, from http://www.moe.gov.cn/edoas/website18/94/info6894.htm Schwarcz, V. (1986). The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. U.C. Berkeley: Centre for Chinese Studies. Su, P.C. (2001). Digraphia: A strategy for Chinese characters for the 21st century. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 150, 109-124. Vincent, D., & Perrin, L. (1999). On the narrative vs. non-narrative functions of reported speech: A socio-pragmatic study. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3, 291-313. Wacquant, L. (2005). Habitus. In J. Beckert & M. Zafirovski (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology (pp. 315-319). London: Routledge. Wang, H. (1995). Humanism as the theme of Chinese modernity. Retrieved December 22, 2008 from http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/vol5/hui.html Welch, A.R. & Freebody, P. Crisis and context in literacy education. In P. Freebody & A.R. Welch. (Eds.), Knowledge, culture, and power: International perspectives on literacy policies and practices (pp 6-23). Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Yuan, Z. (2001). The status of Confucianism in modern Chinese education, 1901-49: A curricular study. In G. Peterson, R. Hayhoe & Y. Lu (Eds.), Education, culture, and identity in twentieth-century China (pp. 193-216). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Power, Language, and Literacy Education

303

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Zhang Bin, B. (2006). Becoming school-literate in China: Historical, semiotic and interactional analyses of yuwen texts. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Queensland, Australia. Zhang Bin, B. & Freebody, P. (in press). Image, genre, voice and the making of schoolliterate child. In D. Cole (Ed.), Multiliteracies and change in contemporary literacies. London: Routledge. Zhang, H., & Zhong, Q. (2003). Curriculum studies in China: Retrospect and prospect. In W. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 253-270). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zhang, X. (1997). Chinese modernism in the era of reforms: Cultural fever, avant-garde fiction, and the new Chinese cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Zhou, C. (Chow, Tsetsung). (1960). The May Fourth movement: Intellectual revolution in modern China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Zhou, Y.G. (2001). Language planning of China. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 11(1), 9-16. Zhu, W. (1992). Confucius and traditional Chinese education: An assessment. In R. Hayhoe (Ed.), Education and modernization: The Chinese experience, (pp.3-22). Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CONTRIBUTORS Adeyemi Adegoju, Ph.D., Lecturer, Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Aderonke Adetunji Adesida, Doctoral Candidate, Department of English, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. Barihi Adetunji, Ph.D., Lecturer, Federal College of Education, Abeokuta, Nigeria. Bette Zhang Bin, Ph.D., University of Queensland, Australia. Jill Freiberg, Ph.D., Lecturer, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Joseph Lo Bianco, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Geraldine Castleton, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia. Peter Freebody, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia. Peter James Gleeson, Radiologist, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Insititute, Melbourne, Australia. Sotiria Grek, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh, UK. Annita Lazar, Ph.D., Lecturer in Politics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Michelle M. Lazar, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore. Malcolm N. MacDonald, Ph.D., Lecturer, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Exeter, UK. Quynh Lê, Ph.D., Lecturer, Department of Rural Health, University of Tasmania, Australia. Thao Lê, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia Alison Lee, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Technology – Sydney, Australia. Bernard J. McKenna, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, School of Business, University of Queensland, Australia. John P. O’Regan, Ph.D., Lecturer, Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Emi Otsuji, Ph.D., Lecturer, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology – Sydney, Australia. Richard Parsons, Ph.D., Social Research Consultant, University of Queensland, Australia.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

306

Thao Lê, Quynh Lê and Megan Short

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Daniel Rolf, Ph.D., Lecturer, School of Computing, University of Tasmania, Australia. Philippa K. Smith, Doctoral Candidate, Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand. Megan Short, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia. Rianne K. Subijanto, Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia. Júlia Todolí, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of Valencia, Spain. Xuefang Wang, Ph.D., Lecturer, Taiyuan Teachers College, China.

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

INDEX # 9/11, 259, 261, 266, 267, 268

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A Aboriginal, 119, 197 academic, ix, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 15, 96, 97 accidents, 145 accommodation, 289 accomplices, 244 accountability, 142, 188 accounting, 77, 140, 141, 142, 148 acculturation, 296, 301, 304 accuracy, 209 achievement, 57, 62, 149, 185, 190, 191, 196, 197, 198, 236 ACM, 171 activation, 113, 168 activism, 117, 119, 120, 282 acute, 108, 220 ad hoc, 236 ADA, 7 adaptation, 188, 215 administration, 109, 117, 178, 181, 232, 240, 253, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260, 264 administrative, 109, 110 administrators, 256 adolescence, 220 adult, 97, 108, 140, 150, 151, 203, 204, 208 adult education, 203, 204 adult literacy, 140, 150, 151 adults, 128, 148, 211, 212, 305 advertisement, 28, 57, 60, 96, 246 advertising, 22, 60, 83, 132, 186, 278 advocacy, 62, 95, 290 advocatory, 22, 124, 127 aesthetics, 77

Afghanistan, 259, 261, 264, 265, 268, 269 Africa, 231, 232, 236, 245, 249, 251, 252, 262 African American, 21 African culture, 249, 250, 251 age, 44, 87, 91, 97, 100, 132, 133, 134, 192, 193, 201, 208, 209, 216, 222, 269, 279, 283, 297 ageing population, 212 agent, 205, 226, 287, 289 agents, 13, 33, 40, 169, 200, 204, 217 aggression, 261, 263, 265 aging, 212, 220 aid, 129, 143, 281 AIDS, 42, 184 air, 211 alcohol, 126, 220 alcohol abuse, 126, 220 alternative, 41, 44, 49, 50, 56, 62, 88, 89, 103, 113, 114, 115, 168, 174, 175, 195, 204, 219 alternatives, 44, 82, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 169, 233 aluminium, 191, 194, 196 ambiguity, 57, 97, 189, 221, 224, 304 ambivalent, 119, 222 amendments, 106 amputation, 177, 180 Amsterdam, 47, 63, 64, 78, 79, 90, 91, 118, 119, 137, 183, 259, 269, 291 analysts, 4, 6, 7, 10, 19, 27, 28, 38, 39, 41, 46, 50, 63, 74, 77, 82, 124, 165, 207, 217, 231 analytic techniques, 20, 139, 140 analytical tools, 153 anger, 220, 252, 253, 267 Anglo-Saxon, 264 animals, 250 annihilation, 292 antagonism, 246, 283 anthropological, 37, 39, 43 anthropology, 7, 20, 46, 76, 246 antithesis, 225 antonym, 19

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

308

anxiety, 160, 220 application, 7, 43, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62, 115, 135, 141, 170, 177, 202, 203, 204, 217, 221, 301 applied linguistics, 7, 78, 91, 103, 104, 112, 113, 114, 115, 119 Arabia, 283 argument, 6, 85, 108, 143, 167, 176, 178, 200, 206, 256, 261, 265, 267, 295 armed forces, 11, 236, 241, 266 arrest, 136, 252 articulation, 12, 83, 85, 89, 259, 260, 264, 290 Asia, 133, 262 Asian, 24, 212, 272, 273, 307 aspiration, 109, 297 assassination, 267, 288 assaults, 126 assessment, 126, 157, 232, 297, 307 assets, 109, 193 assignment, 33, 244 assimilation, 108, 110 assumptions, 19, 37, 55, 74, 87, 95, 111, 141, 170, 191, 195, 204, 212, 222, 241 asymmetry, 83, 215, 221, 222, 224, 225 atmosphere, 99 atrocities, 85 attacks, 135, 176, 238, 239, 261, 266, 267, 268, 290 attitudes, 12, 13, 20, 24, 31, 49, 73, 94, 104, 106, 112, 216, 230, 231, 234, 239, 243, 250, 272 attractiveness, 284 attribution, 141, 142, 144, 198 Australasia, 119 Australia, 21, 24, 51, 63, 104, 106, 110, 112, 117, 119, 120, 127, 131, 140, 150, 187, 200, 208, 272, 307, 309, 310 Australian language policy, 103, 114, 117, 119 authenticity, 110, 284 authoritarianism, 305 authority, 4, 11, 51, 76, 77, 105, 110, 206, 222, 224, 264, 274, 275, 300, 303 autonomy, 39, 40, 116, 303 availability, 59, 131 awareness, 21, 81, 82, 90, 115, 116, 118, 154, 157, 158, 161, 174, 177, 193, 217, 226, 275, 285, 300

B babies, 57 background information, 70 backpack, 302 baggage, 204 barriers, 129, 130 bauxite, 188, 194 beaches, 277

beads-on-a-string, 57 beating, 252, 253 beautification, 32 beer, 60, 279 beginning teachers, 153, 162 behavior, 230 behaviours, 6, 55, 104, 122, 124, 125, 166, 250, 305 Beijing, 34, 133, 298, 299 beliefs, 12, 13, 51, 70, 89, 95, 130, 156, 157, 216, 217, 235, 240, 250, 251 benchmark, 193 benefits, 206, 210, 215, 222, 290 beverages, 279 bias, 10, 116, 218, 226, 282 bible, 263, 270 bilingual, 106, 119 bilingualism, 21, 106 binding, 56, 161 biodiversity, 193 biological responses, 124 bipolar, 259, 260 birth, 162, 269 blame, 149, 291 blends, 194 blindness, 297 blocks, 179, 180 blog, 132, 134, 136 blogs, 131, 135, 136, 292 blood, 210 Blood pressure, 122 bloodshed, 284, 291 boat people, 29, 30 boats, 277 body image, 217 body language, 24, 72 body weight, 122 borrowing, 34 Boston, 201, 279, 306 boys, 305 brain, 167, 168, 169 Brazil, 28 Brazilian, 137 Britain, 208, 210, 272 broadcaster, 273, 278 Brooklyn, 292 Brundtland report, 186 brutality, 261, 263, 265, 268 budget deficit, 243 buffalo, 100 building blocks, 13, 161 building societies, 174 buildings, 174, 177, 179, 181, 182, 263, 282 Bush administration, 260

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index business model, 204 business organisation, 40

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

C cabbage, 60 campaigns, 174, 297, 306 Canada, 21, 140, 208 cancer, 123, 176, 220 candidates, 231, 238 capacity, 72, 76, 109, 139, 140, 206, 217, 250 capital punishment, 217 capitalism, 20, 83, 90, 187, 192, 201, 202, 256, 257 capitalist, 83, 216 cardiovascular disease, 220 carrier, 191 case law, 219 case study, 282 cassettes, 282 cast, 142, 199, 203, 204, 264 casting, 144, 260, 268, 269 categorisation, 38, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 139, 141, 218 categorization, 55, 140, 141, 142, 151 category a, 53, 56, 58, 59, 61 category b, 154 category d, 52, 53, 55 Catholic, 51 Catholic Church, 51 causal relationship, 56 CDA, v, ix, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 46, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 99, 103, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 153, 163, 203, 204, 205, 206, 212, 234, 235, 251, 271, 273, 277, 285 censorship, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134 Central Asia, 133 CEO, 187 certificate, 145 certification, 217 chaos, 263 charm, 271, 275 chewing, 255 childhood, 128, 154, 296, 305 children, 57, 64, 94, 106, 108, 125, 132, 151, 210, 211, 252, 254, 263, 295, 296, 302, 304, 305 chimneys, 209 China, vi, 133, 134, 137, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 305, 306, 307, 310 cholesterol, 122

309

Christianity, 252 CIA, 288 circulation, 46, 283 citizens, 90, 129, 131, 135, 136, 174, 178, 206, 209, 263, 301 citizenship, 104, 108, 112, 113, 115, 191, 202, 278 civilian, 232, 237, 240 classes, 44, 50, 53, 283 classical, 166 classification, 42, 50, 55, 58, 59, 111, 188, 193, 219 classroom, 6, 56, 58, 61, 63, 81, 91, 107, 155 cleaning, 177 clients, 178 clinical examination, 219 clinics, 218 Clinton administration, 260 closure, 10, 39, 40, 89 clusters, 261 CNN, 269 Co, 56, 105, 106, 151, 201, 269 codes, 44, 250, 300 coding, 42, 154, 188, 192 coercion, 230, 256 co-existence, 12, 253 cognition, 69, 73, 112, 190, 198, 229, 234 cognitive, 9, 13, 61, 69, 73, 74, 112, 125, 146, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 181, 205, 217, 223, 234, 235, 246, 253, 295 cognitive activity, 61 cognitive dimension, 69, 235 cognitive function, 223 cognitive models, 168, 171 cognitive process, 234 cognitive psychology, 112 cognitive science, 166, 168 cognitive system, 125 coherence, 70, 86, 95, 112 cohesion, 8, 70, 124, 130, 209 cohort, 156 Cold War, 259, 260, 261, 269 collaboration, 33, 115, 131 colonialisation, 278 colonialism, 256, 257 colonisation, 45, 225, 254, 257, 272 Columbia University, 306 commercials, 273 commodity, 216 communalism, 256 communication, 5, 7, 9, 18, 21, 22, 23, 47, 50, 64, 76, 79, 94, 96, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 126, 129, 130, 132, 136, 146, 148, 151, 161, 166, 169, 185, 201, 202, 206, 215, 217, 218, 219,

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

310

Index

220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 230, 235, 237, 251, 285, 292, 299, 301 communication skills, 301 communication strategies, 23 communities, 12, 63, 109, 110, 117, 118, 122, 126, 195, 196, 200, 201, 210, 253, 262, 263, 264, 265, 274, 279, 297, 304 community, 11, 31, 44, 89, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 114, 123, 125, 127, 131, 134, 140, 178, 186, 187, 189, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 202, 206, 218, 232, 252, 253, 254, 256, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 279, 284, 286, 297 compatibility, 222 competence, 21, 139, 144, 147, 149, 161, 239, 303 competition, 197, 204, 224, 260 competitor, 278 compilation, 133 complement, 304 complexity, 18, 38, 44, 46, 129, 169, 297 compliance, 148, 223, 301 components, 19, 33, 53, 60, 104, 168, 192, 199, 222, 250 composition, 242 compounds, 300 comprehension, 295, 305 concealment, 115 concept map, 202 conception, 5, 8, 67, 68, 70, 81, 84, 155, 160, 239 conceptualizations, 167 concrete, 8, 40, 55, 94, 111, 112, 115, 117, 175, 179, 189 concreteness, 189, 266 confession, 288, 292 confidence, 276, 277 configuration, 39, 55, 85, 113, 299 conflict, 134, 136, 147, 158, 170, 172, 178, 211, 229, 232, 233, 236, 239, 241, 242, 244 conformity, 216, 264 confrontation, 243 Confucianism, 297, 306 Confucius, 307 confusion, 72, 160, 181, 273 Congress, 99, 137, 268, 269 congruence, 303 conjunction, 61, 197, 263 connectivity, 129, 132, 224 consciousness, 29, 45, 76, 81, 82, 109, 116, 125, 126, 202, 216, 235, 253 consensus, 69, 125, 173, 174, 176, 179, 182, 183, 217, 224, 242 consent, 83, 112, 158, 216, 237, 242 consolidation, 68, 76, 108, 110, 155, 232 conspiracy, 45

Constitution, 108 constraints, 13, 46, 146, 204, 301 construction, 4, 29, 42, 46, 51, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 98, 113, 114, 116, 158, 167, 174, 175, 178, 182, 190, 206, 240, 243, 261, 264, 276, 277, 290, 292 construction sites, 174 consulting, 196, 222 consumption, 70, 132, 134, 226, 271, 283 contamination, 282 contextualization, 251 control, 4, 11, 12, 13, 17, 33, 52, 76, 81, 82, 87, 111, 122, 123, 126, 129, 132, 134, 135, 136, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 223, 225, 229, 234, 236, 238, 242, 245, 262, 272, 284, 289 conversational analysis, 20, 28, 151 conversion, 32 conviction, 134, 231 corporate social responsibility, 185, 201, 202 corporations, 112, 185, 186, 187, 188, 200 correlation, 126, 145, 219 corrosive, 111 corruption, 136 cosmetic surgery, 217 costs, 12, 131, 170, 178, 179 cough, 223 counseling, 288 coverage, 56, 281, 282, 285 creative process, 276 creativity, 131, 301 credentials, 209 credibility, 112, 150, 275 crime, 30, 56, 58, 211, 252, 264 crimes, 85 criminal, 56, 260, 261, 262, 264, 267, 268 criminal acts, 262, 264 criminality, 264 criminals, 259, 262, 264, 266, 268 critical analysis, 49, 52, 81, 83, 104, 130, 165, 170, 259, 295 critical period, 233 critical studies, 116 critical thinking, 206 criticism, ix, 7, 9, 10, 35, 76, 117, 220 critique, 6, 7, 14, 49, 50, 74, 76, 78, 81, 83, 86, 87, 91, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 204 cross-cultural, 96 CSR, 186, 187 cultivation, 104 cultural connections, 169 cultural differences, 250 cultural factors, 130 cultural heritage, 174, 251, 257 cultural practices, 257

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index cultural transformation, 254 cultural values, 125 culture, 6, 20, 21, 24, 39, 43, 62, 76, 78, 90, 96, 105, 110, 114, 123, 129, 141, 169, 175, 176, 178, 203, 204, 206, 207, 216, 225, 226, 249, 250, 251, 257, 271, 272, 275, 282, 285, 300, 305, 306 curriculum, 57, 226, 297, 299, 301, 304, 305, 306, 307

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

D danger, 84, 96, 223 data analysis, 93, 98, 127, 130 data collection, 6, 93 data communication, 129, 131 dating, 45 death, 59, 89, 136, 175, 233, 252, 263, 267, 288 debt, 243 decision making, 117, 124, 225 decisions, 230, 284 decoding, 95, 112 deconstruction, 4, 113 deficiency, 146 definition, 5, 18, 38, 41, 42, 132, 181, 186, 196 defraud, 45 degrading, 181, 183 delivery, 131, 224 democracy, 232, 236, 238, 240, 242, 243, 244, 260, 288, 291 Democratic Party, 232 democratization, 76, 232 demographics, 108, 124, 205 denial, 89 Denial of Service, 135 density, 27, 29, 31, 32 depressed, 125, 128, 224, 276 deprivation, 4 destruction, 24, 177, 181, 182, 252 destructive process, 181 detention, 220 determinants of health, 124 determinism, 83 deterrence, 266 devolution, 109 diabetes, 220 dichotomy, 4, 9, 19, 98, 231, 243 dictatorship, 51, 64, 237, 244, 291 differentiation, 7, 86 diffusion, 250 digital divide, 132 dignity, 134, 178 disability, 122 disabled, 95, 160

311

disappointment, 232 disaster, 181 discipline, ix, 3, 21, 37, 130, 153, 170, 210, 211, 285, 300 disclosure, 136 discoursal practice, 34 Discovery, 208 discrimination, 4, 13, 22, 95, 117, 123, 124, 127, 285, 286 discriminatory, 95, 100, 224, 234 disease, 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 182, 211, 217, 219, 220 diseases, 123, 219 disinformation, 136 dislocations, 154 dispersion, 108 disposition, 103, 149, 239 dissatisfaction, 219, 232 dissociation, 89 distillation, 107 distress, 217 distribution, 12, 20, 34, 62, 69, 70, 123, 124, 125, 132, 159, 197, 220 diversification, 155 diversity, 3, 15, 68, 69, 71, 79, 90, 115, 119, 128, 160, 163, 205, 272, 273, 277 division, 31, 87, 157, 260 divorce, 20 doctor-patient, 226 doctors, 29, 176, 216, 217, 218, 220, 225 domestication, 250 dominance, 4, 9, 14, 25, 45, 52, 124, 216, 222, 229, 234, 235, 242, 262 donations, 198, 211 doors, 210, 299 download, 130, 133, 135 dream, 196 drowning, 126 drug dealing, 178 drugs, 42 due process, 266, 267 duration, 209, 220 dust, 211

E early school reading materials, 295, 296 ears, 21 earth, 196, 209, 253, 263, 274, 298 East Timor, 116, 118 eating, 220 eating disorders, 220 ecological, 124, 181

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

312

Index

economic development, 187 economic globalisation, 20, 197 economic growth, 186, 232 economic migrants, 209 economic performance, 140, 193 economic status, 146, 157, 277 economics, 118, 186, 187, 192, 195, 201 Education, vi, 63, 64, 78, 119, 150, 151, 157, 162, 213, 295, 300, 305, 306, 307, 309, 310 educational policies, 203 educational system, 155, 305 educators, 157 ego, 240 Egypt, 286 elaboration, 40, 57, 262 elderly, 256 elders, 249, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257 election, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243, 244 elementary school, 61 elephant, 118 email, 134 emancipation, 81, 82, 89, 91, 111 embryos, 57 emission, 198 emotion, 10, 73, 167, 175, 239, 267, 284 emotional, 238, 267 empathy, 224, 225 employees, 31, 146, 147, 148, 180, 190 employment, 122, 123, 124, 140, 148, 170, 197, 198, 210 empowered, 109, 129, 237 empowerment, 4, 129 encoding, 33, 34, 95, 236, 237 encouragement, 222 enculturation, 20 energy, 7 engagement, 37, 77, 81, 99, 104, 112, 113, 117, 118, 161, 196, 197, 200 England, 275 English for Specific Purposes, 215 English Language, 258, 309 Enlightenment, 297, 298, 306 enterprise, 41, 178, 203, 204, 206 entertainment, 206, 275, 277, 279, 295 enthusiasm, 32, 299 entrepreneurs, 209, 210, 212 environment, 62, 118, 126, 132, 142, 147, 149, 177, 186, 201, 220, 253, 275, 277 environmental factors, 122, 126 environmental impact, 187, 194 environmental issues, 186 environmentalism, 187, 216

epidemiology, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128 episteme, 86 epistemological, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 67, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 204 epistemology, 41, 42, 62, 67, 68, 201 equality, 256 equity, 82, 125 erosion, 275 estates, 210 estrangement, 216 ethics, 81, 88, 89, 127, 185, 192, 193, 202, 218, 219, 226, 251, 257 ethnic groups, 237, 238, 243, 244 ethnicity, 7, 146, 242, 274 ethnographers, 77 Euro, 184 Europe, 112, 131, 177, 260 European Union, 138, 181 Europeans, 146 evening, 51 evil, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 268 evolution, 131, 166, 205, 217, 253, 276, 301 exaggeration, 104 excision, 260 exclusion, 19, 29, 38, 82, 158, 160, 231, 234, 245 execution, 261 exercise, 83, 84, 153, 235, 242, 266, 305 expert, 56, 177, 183, 220, 288 expert systems, 220 expertise, 11, 224 exploitation, 82, 208, 210, 217 exposure, 103, 109, 111, 113, 116, 122, 215, 279 expulsion, 177 extinction, 109, 115 extremism, 287 eye contact, 225 eyes, 21, 33, 97

F fabric, 76 face-threatening, 237 face-to-face interaction, 169 failure, 39, 76, 85, 113, 149, 224, 288 fairness, 19 fairy tale, 170 faith, 218, 271 false statement, 86 familial, 85 family, 20, 53, 58, 61, 87, 123, 217, 220, 239, 252, 302 family life, 220 fauna, 187

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index fax, 282 fear, 136, 252, 253 fears, 252 February, 128, 137, 226 federalism, 232 feeding, 264 feelings, 95, 98, 157, 225, 240 fees, 208 feet, 211 feminist, 39 fertilization, 217 feudalism, 108 fever, 209, 307 filial piety, 305 film, 57, 209, 212, 271, 272, 278 filters, 134 finance, 192, 193 financial regulation, 22 fire, 243 fires, 168 fish, 250, 274 fitness, 220 flexibility, 160 flora and fauna, 187 flow, 41, 46, 133, 238 fluid, 155 focusing, 7, 69, 71, 86, 131, 136, 170, 231, 271 food, 211 football, 60 foreign affairs, 210 foreign policy, 176 foreigners, 30, 108, 251 formal education, 108 Foucault, 5, 6, 14, 46, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 149, 151, 155, 158, 162, 163, 217, 219, 225, 226, 260, 262, 265, 266, 269 framing, 154 France, 28, 108, 110, 209, 210 freedom, 132, 134, 217, 234, 260, 267 freedoms, 136 friendship, 222, 238 fruits, 250 frustration, 217 fuel, 192, 278 fuel efficiency, 192 functional approach, 162 functional aspects, 27, 35 functional grammar, 25, 27, 28, 35, 99, 111, 201, 258, 269 funding, 106, 204, 277, 278 funds, 278 futures, 58, 59, 103, 108, 114

313

G gangs, 288, 289, 292 gas, 263 GDP, 125 gender, 7, 21, 50, 82, 87, 162, 216, 222, 224, 285, 304 gender differences, 224 genealogy, 47, 154, 163 general education, 106 general election, 232 general practitioner, 215 generation, 50, 130, 132, 301 generic structure, 28 genocide, 263 genre, 20, 28, 44, 70, 72, 87, 96, 98, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 206, 256, 267, 278, 288, 299, 305, 307 gentrification, 173, 174, 176 geography, 87 Georgia, 134, 136 Gibbs, 183 gifts, 197, 135, 209, 211 girls, 211, 305 global village, 20, 94, 250 globalization, 20, 76, 83, 130, 197, 249, 250, 251, 252, 254, 257, 258 goal-directed, 191, 198 goals, 70, 108, 109, 195, 230, 231, 235, 237, 241, 242, 245, 256, 299 God, 74, 85, 209, 240, 284 gold, 274 good faith, 218 goods and services, 34 Gore, 246 gossip, 22 governance, 114, 163, 201, 232, 233, 243, 244, 269, 298, 299 government, iv, 10, 11, 33, 40, 83, 106, 119, 122, 134, 135, 141, 149, 186, 204, 232, 238, 240, 244, 264, 265, 268, 284, 287, 288, 298, 299 government policy, 119 grades, 56, 157 grading, 57 grain, 212 grammar, 8, 9, 15, 18, 19, 28, 33, 70, 87, 94, 116, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 189, 209, 246 grants, 221, 278 grass, 255 gravity, 221, 264 Great War, 57 greenhouse, 191, 194

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index

314

greenhouse gas, 191 greenhouse gases, 191 grief, 267 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 125 grounding, 69, 111 group interests, 236, 238 group membership, 222 group therapy, 58 grouping, 290 groups, 7, 9, 13, 14, 22, 44, 73, 84, 88, 103, 104, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131, 135, 137, 158, 169, 173, 178, 191, 197, 198, 199, 208, 216, 224, 225, 232, 234, 237, 238, 242, 243, 244, 276, 282, 284, 287 growth, 68, 76, 168, 186, 193, 232, 236 guidance, 161, 284, 301 guidelines, 300 guilty, 261, 266, 268 Gulf War, 259, 261 gun control, 58 guns, 268

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

H habitation, 257 hacking, 135 handling, 9, 301 hands, 75, 115, 178, 243, 252, 255, 256, 267, 302, 303 hanging, 292 harbour, 264 harm, 88, 129, 242, 250 harmony, 129, 242, 250 Harvard, 118, 125, 128, 150, 231, 307 hate, 94, 157 Hawaii, 305 headache, 22 health, ix, 13, 14, 53, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 142, 144, 176, 177, 178, 195, 197, 215, 218 health care, 13, 53, 123 health discourse, 121 health effects, 122 health problems, 126, 127 health status, 124 hearing, 149, 303 heart, 50, 156, 238, 252, 273, 274 heat, 232 hegemony, 4, 11, 13, 17, 83, 113, 116, 118, 125, 158, 216, 259, 260, 269, 288, 291 heme, 27 heterogeneous, 206, 219 heuristic, 156, 188, 302 high school, 283

higher education, 157, 162, 205 higher-income, 125 hip, 11, 22, 122, 196, 237 hiring, 146, 148 holistic, 9, 189, 192, 193 holistic approach, 189 Holland, 140, 142, 149, 151 homogenized, 250 homogenous, 110, 117 homograph, 300 Hong Kong, 119, 133, 283 horizon, 62, 284 horse, 135, 189, 275 hospitality, 89, 276 host, 193, 196, 273, 278 hostilities, 170 hostility, 223 House, 226, 269, 305 household, 61, 134 housing, 211, 264 human, 4, 18, 28, 32, 41, 44, 57, 64, 94, 95, 98, 104, 112, 113, 116, 122, 124, 129, 130, 136, 141, 151, 165, 166, 172, 176, 178, 190, 197, 199, 216, 230, 237, 243, 249, 250, 253, 257, 274, 287, 288, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305 human activity, 130, 216, 230, 303 human agency, 197, 199 human experience, 98, 176, 305 human interactions, 124 human rights, 32, 122, 178, 243, 288 human sciences, 41, 64, 151 humane, 219, 262 humanism, 83 humanity, 86, 250, 257, 299, 300, 301 humans, 250 humiliation, 252 humorous, 273, 279 hunting, 268 husband, 53, 54, 156, 212 hybridity, 18, 275 hygienic, 176 hyponym, 19 hypothesis, 93, 97, 166, 170, 171, 225

I id, 137, 189, 200, 209, 238 identification, 54, 123, 134, 181, 239, 251, 256, 260, 261, 303 identity, 5, 110, 116, 130, 141, 142, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 162, 191, 206, 208, 220, 226, 237, 239, 240, 251, 257, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 290, 292, 306

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index ideology, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 28, 73, 78, 82, 83, 84, 90, 95, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 137, 174, 175, 191, 199, 207, 208, 216, 229, 233, 234, 244, 251, 256, 257, 281, 282, 283, 285, 288, 290, 291, 292 IETF, 131 illiteracy, 296, 297, 299 illusion, 74 imagery, 130, 135, 230 images, 117, 181, 182, 183, 187, 205, 206, 276, 281, 291, 295, 296 imagination, 94, 251 imbalances, 220 immigrants, 272 immigration, 220, 272, 273 imperialism, 257, 286, 291 implementation, 105, 106, 282, 300 implicature, 19, 24 imprisonment, 134, 252, 253, 257 in situ, 62 in vitro, 217 in vitro fertilization, 217 inactive, 182 inattention, 219 incidence, 223 inclusion, 29, 110, 160, 204, 205, 226, 231, 234, 275, 286 income, 87, 122, 123, 125 incubators, 263 incumbents, 53 independence, 134, 209, 222, 223 Indian, 212 Indiana, 163 indication, 9, 303 indigenous, 106, 110, 115, 187, 198, 199, 200, 202, 251, 253 individual character, 124 individual characteristics, 124 individual differences, 122 individual power, 11 individualism, 201, 256 individuality, 224 Indonesia, ix, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288, 292, 310 industrial, 83, 142, 186, 187, 192, 194, 195, 199, 201, 208, 211, 260 industrial relations, 83, 142 industrial revolution, 201 industrialisation, 210 industry, 142, 144, 145, 146, 149, 187, 190, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 208, 209, 210, 211, 278, 300 inequality, 7, 9, 13, 14, 72, 81, 82, 83, 87, 108, 111, 124, 128, 242

315

inequity, 12, 113, 125 inert, 83 inertia, 89, 113 infancy, 136 infants, 211 infections, 220 inferences, 50, 175, 224, 256 infinite, 45, 74, 89, 240 inflation, 243 information sharing, 131 information technology, ix, 133 infrastructure, 131, 133 inheritance, 109, 156 inherited, 114, 305 injury, 122, 267 injustice, 4, 11, 25, 82, 111, 122, 126, 127, 240, 241 innovation, 40, 105, 106, 107, 201 insane, 51, 56, 217 insecurity, 4 insight, 85, 166 inspection, 133, 134, 171 instability, 273 institutionalisation, 95 institutions, 13, 69, 104, 107, 112, 116, 123, 126, 156, 162, 216, 234, 250, 284, 298 instruction, 106, 296 instruments, 107, 219 integration, 167 integrity, 192, 193 intelligence, 172, 262, 263, 264, 265 intensity, 266 intentionality, 263 intentions, 70, 105, 130, 186, 191, 199, 222, 237 interaction, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 20, 25, 28, 30, 52, 59, 64, 78, 79, 90, 91, 104, 116, 118, 122, 125, 126, 128, 215, 216, 218, 221, 222, 230, 234, 246, 256, 306 interactions, 5, 12, 59, 69, 111, 122, 123, 124, 130, 155, 159, 166, 169, 215, 300, 304 interdependence, 108, 207 interdisciplinary, ix, 3, 11, 14, 17, 69, 70, 127 interdiscursivity, 22, 40, 46, 70, 72, 185, 187, 192, 203, 206 interest groups, 104 interface, 69, 79, 124 interference, 10 internalised, 74 international law, 261, 263, 265 international relations, 260 international standards, 232 internationalization, 306 Internet, vi, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 168, 250, 257, 282

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index

316

Internet Engineering Task Force, 131 Internet Protocol (IP), 134 interpersonal function, 154 interpersonal relations, 11, 216 interpersonal relationships, 216 interpretation, 8, 9, 13, 49, 50, 51, 54, 60, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 87, 91, 106, 111, 112, 115, 117, 130, 134, 156, 162, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175, 204, 205, 207, 219, 249, 256, 284, 302 interrelationships, 5 interrogations, 64 intertextuality, 3, 11, 21, 70, 72, 187 intervention, 6, 7, 14, 104, 113, 178, 179, 180, 220, 233, 288 interview, 22, 46, 90, 98, 140, 141, 146, 148, 212, 215, 216, 221, 222, 223, 225, 274, 275 interviews, 40, 61, 63, 64, 75, 90, 106, 139, 140, 142, 151, 162, 211, 220 intimidating, 275 intonation, 24, 70, 221, 223 intrinsic, 12, 28, 44, 237 intuition, 106 investment, 32, 104, 108, 193, 201, 206 Iran, 292 Iraq, 170, 172, 259, 261, 263, 265, 269, 287, 288 irrationality, 291 Islam, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 292 Islamic, 173, 174, 177, 179, 181, 269, 282, 283, 284, 286, 287, 290 Islamism, 291 Islamist magazine, 281, 283 isolation, 123, 217, 220 Israel, 286, 287, 290, 291, 292 iteration, 154

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

J JAMA, 226 Japan, 133, 260, 283 Japanese, 76, 78, 79 Jefferson, 64 jobs, 143, 145, 146, 206 Jordan, 199, 201 journalism, 277 JSS, 245 judge, 85, 97, 268 jurisdictions, 109 jury, 268 justice, 3, 4, 12, 13, 17, 38, 62, 82, 124, 127, 154, 225, 253, 259, 260, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269 justification, 32, 225, 259, 261, 265, 269 juvenile delinquency, 42

K Kant, 219 killing, 57, 59, 144, 252, 253, 287 Kuwait, 170, 263, 269

L labour, 140, 209, 210, 216 labour force, 140 land, 200, 239, 252, 253 landscapes, 187 language acquisition, 94, 295 language diversity, 115 language policy, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 113, 114, 117, 119 language policy and planning, 103, 104, 109, 113, 114 law, 51, 107, 108, 163, 166, 219, 238, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 286 law enforcement, 262, 263, 264, 265 laws, 12, 104, 106, 123, 131, 132, 134 lawyers, 105 layering, 50 leadership, 99, 135 learners, 97, 107, 304 learning, 20, 44, 47, 61, 108, 119, 130, 150, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 163, 177, 203, 204, 205, 207, 212, 251, 296, 298, 300, 301, 305 learning process, 207 legal systems, 122 legality, 266 legislation, 13 leisure, 204 lenses, 12, 155 liberal, 110, 250, 260, 284, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292 liberalism, 112, 299 liberty, 45 licenses, 131 licensing, 136 life experiences, 254 life quality, 123 lifelong learning, 206 lifestyle, 122, 217, 279 likelihood, 33, 34, 145, 177 limitations, 76, 81, 127, 158, 199, 208, 237 Lincoln, 91, 99, 213 linear, 41, 167 lingual, 108, 110 linguistic metaphors, 166, 173, 175 linguistically, 8, 106, 111, 112, 116, 121, 158

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index linkage, 165, 166 links, 68, 81, 90, 111, 123, 133, 144, 149, 157, 159, 167, 206, 235, 263, 272 listening, 105, 221, 224 literacy, 7, 8, 51, 56, 57, 61, 63, 83, 90, 105, 110, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 157, 226, 295, 296, 299, 300, 301, 304, 305, 306 litigation, 223 living environment, 211 local action, 54 local community, 187 local order, 63 localization, 219 location, 38, 53, 59, 131, 134, 155, 156, 179, 266 logging, 134 logical reasoning, 132 London, 14, 15, 25, 35, 47, 63, 64, 65, 78, 79, 90, 91, 99, 100, 118, 119, 120, 127, 128, 137, 151, 162, 163, 172, 183, 184, 200, 201, 202, 212, 213, 226, 246, 247, 258, 269, 279, 280, 292, 305, 306, 307 loneliness, 220 long period, 169, 175 love, 32, 94, 175, 212, 257, 274 loyalty, 278 Luxembourg, 118

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

M machinery, 145, 187 machines, 192, 282 magazines, 57, 233, 283 Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 169 magnets, 211, 212 Maine, 268 mainstream, 4, 11, 81, 84, 87, 90, 272 maintenance, 21, 88, 142, 154, 156, 261 major cities, 283 Malaysia, 283 malicious, 288 management, 51, 54, 62, 104, 126, 140, 141, 148, 149, 182, 186, 187, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201, 202, 204, 226, 235, 245 mandates, 226 manifold, 39, 104 manipulation, 82, 87, 217, 232, 235, 238, 242, 256, 278 manners, 277 manufacturing, 146 Mao Zedong, 299 Maori, 272, 273, 276, 277 mapping, 56, 87, 167, 175, 177, 180, 181, 202 market, 117, 195, 203, 204, 206, 279, 284, 305

317

marketing, 199, 204, 213, 226 marketing strategy, 199 marketisation, 173 marketplace, 110, 139, 140 markets, 134, 202 marriage, 57 Marx, 216 Marxism, 91, 299, 301 Marxist, 81, 82, 115, 202, 216 masculinity, 236 mask, 143 masking, 57, 174, 181 mass media, 136 mastery, 45, 49 mathematics, 11 matrix, 254 Mauritania, 286 MCA, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 62, 139, 140, 141 meaning making, 45, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 171 meanings, 12, 28, 30, 33, 41, 43, 44, 50, 60, 62, 70, 94, 96, 97, 106, 107, 114, 115, 116, 142, 158, 160, 169, 171, 175, 181, 207, 243, 283, 284 measurement, 123, 197, 266 measures, 107, 147 media, 47, 59, 69, 82, 112, 130, 131, 132, 136, 216, 246, 277, 279, 281, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 293, 304 media coverage, 281, 282 media texts, 59 mediation, 18, 73 medical care, 226 medical communication, 215 medications, 176 medicine, 176, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 226 membership, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 74, 139, 140, 141, 151, 156, 157, 161, 216, 222 memory, 112, 168, 181 men, 31, 56, 57, 58, 209, 210, 224, 252, 263, 266, 275, 287 mental health, 123 mental image, 180 mental processes, 176, 189, 191, 198 mental representation, 13, 73, 167 mental states, 13 messages, 74, 105, 135, 205, 230, 242 metafunction, 28 meta-message, 224 metaphor, 19, 20, 27, 29, 33, 34, 96, 129, 136, 161, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 189, 190, 230, 234, 237, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

318

Index

metaphors, 17, 20, 33, 34, 94, 96, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 189, 198, 261, 267 metastasis, 177, 180, 182 methodological dilemmas, 72 methodological implications, 81 methodology, ix, 6, 9, 11, 17, 41, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 75, 77, 88, 107 microcosm, 251 middle class, 157 migrant workers, 211 migrants, 21, 24, 30, 208, 209, 212 militarization, 178 military, 105, 132, 134, 135, 176, 229, 232, 233, 236, 237, 238, 240, 243, 244, 259, 260, 261, 263, 265, 266, 267, 286, 288 military aid, 232 military dictatorship, 237, 244 military government, 232, 238, 240 Millennium, 269 mimicry, 166 minerals, 194, 196, 200 mining, 187, 189, 194, 199, 201, 202 Ministry of Education, 300, 306 Minnesota, 126, 128, 292 minorities, 243 minority, 103, 106, 114, 115, 118 mirror, 62 miscommunication, 224, 225 misconceptions, 282 misinterpretation, 96 misleading, 45, 171 missions, 263 misunderstanding, 219 MIT, 202, 246 mixing, 21, 287 mobility, 108 modalities, 86 modality, 8, 33, 34, 45, 114, 254, 267 models, 13, 27, 28, 42, 45, 73, 76, 81, 104, 107, 160, 168, 171, 204 modern society, 225, 301 modernism, 56, 307 modernity, 14, 25, 77, 90, 99, 108, 171, 297, 298, 301, 305, 306 modernization, 77, 299, 306, 307 molecular structure, 109 molecules, 111 money, 32, 95, 135, 209, 210, 211 monopoly, 298 mood, 30, 31, 33, 34, 208, 239, 249, 254, 277, 303 Moon, 302, 303, 304 moral code, 219

morale, 236 morality, 51, 63, 263, 298 morals, 154, 163 morbidity, 220 morpheme, 18, 300 morphological, 19, 32 morphology, 17, 18, 19 mortality, 123, 211 mortgage, 51 mothers, 263, 305 motivation, 56, 73, 97, 190, 219, 230, 283, 284 motives, 236, 277, 286 motor area, 168 mountains, 277 mouth, 255, 274 movement, 6, 7, 41, 46, 67, 68, 69, 70, 77, 175, 210, 211, 212, 283, 284, 287, 298, 307 multicultural, 106, 118 multiculturalism, 246 multidimensional, 19 multidisciplinary, ix, 3, 9, 11, 14, 127, 137, 160, 246, 285 multimedia, 131 multinational corporations, 33 multiplicity, 89, 277, 295 murder, 51, 56, 263 music, 133, 277, 300 Muslim, 179, 282, 284, 292 mutual respect, 196 mutuality, 198, 199

N naming, 173, 181, 182, 183, 219 Nanyang Technological University, 309 narratives, 57, 114, 154, 204, 205, 206, 288 nation, 19, 110, 113, 114, 233, 238, 241, 243, 265, 266, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274, 278, 279, 280, 286, 298 national culture, 296, 306 national identity, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279 national interests, 232, 238, 241 national policy, 104 National University of Singapore, 309 nationalism, 118, 272, 277, 279 nationality, 106, 109, 110 nation-building, 271, 272 natural, 13, 33, 45, 49, 75, 109, 112, 125, 141, 173, 182, 183, 201, 202, 210, 221, 305 natural science, 45 negative attitudes, 115 negativity, 224

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index neglect, 73, 87 negotiating, 217, 226 negotiation, 113, 155, 185, 198, 199, 218, 219, 224, 225 neighbourhoods, 182 neo-liberal, 112, 114, 117 network, 83, 84, 86, 122, 129, 133, 135, 162, 179, 287 neurons, 168 neuroscience, 168 New Jersey, 47, 63, 78, 162 New South Wales, 162 New World, vi, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269 New World Order, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269 New York, 14, 15, 47, 63, 64, 78, 79, 90, 99, 119, 127, 150, 151, 162, 163, 171, 172, 183, 200, 201, 213, 226, 245, 246, 261, 266, 268, 269, 270, 273, 292, 306, 307 New York Times, 201, 268 New Zealand, vi, ix, 202, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 310 newsletters, 196, 199 newspapers, 56, 131, 136, 174, 184, 243, 274 Nietzsche, 154, 163 Nigeria, vi, ix, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 238, 240, 242, 244, 245, 246, 252, 254, 309 noise, 19, 178, 243 nominalisation, 27, 29, 32, 126, 189, 198 non-English speaking, 146, 147 non-linear, 155 non-native, 146, 147, 148, 215 non-renewable, 196 non-renewable resources, 196 normal, 95, 109, 125, 126, 135, 140, 198, 216 norms, 74, 107, 110, 122, 123, 153, 155, 156, 235, 250, 262, 268 North America, 297 North Carolina, 280 noun, 5, 7, 29, 32, 33, 72, 156, 262 nursing, 6

O obedience, 264 objectivity, 98, 218 obligation, 56, 59, 88, 144 obligations, 53, 55, 59, 61, 186, 187, 200 observations, 57, 82, 130, 219 occupational, 123 oceans, 266 offenders, 56, 264, 265

319

oil spill, 174, 251 older people, 96 online, 156, 157, 189 opacity, 235 openness, 89 operating system, 135 operator, 143, 254 opposition, 41, 83, 85, 89, 135, 145, 147, 205, 230, 242, 243 oppression, 86, 220 optimism, 51, 109 oral, 6, 251, 299 oral tradition, 251 organization, 83, 87, 140, 181, 200, 202, 234 organizations, 13, 50, 126, 234 orientation, 8, 30, 46, 60, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 82, 95, 192, 199, 234, 238, 242, 249, 257 orthodox, 195 otherness, 89, 109 out-casting, 260, 269 outrage, 260, 266 overtime, 147 ownership, 131

P Pacific, 261, 266, 273, 307 pain, 267 paints, 95 pairing, 53 palm oil, 251 paper, 10, 21, 23, 41, 78, 79, 81, 82, 89, 91, 95, 104, 122, 127, 166, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 185, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 208, 215, 271, 273, 281, 283, 285, 291, 295 paradigm shift, 166 paradox, 159 paradoxical, 291 parallelism, 230 parental care, 61 parent-child, 53 parents, 20, 32, 57, 61, 125, 263 partnership, 20, 196 passive, 18, 156, 188, 289, 290 patho-physiological, 220, 225 pathways, 122, 128, 134 patient doctor discourse, 215 patients, 63, 177, 178, 183, 218, 220, 222, 224, 225 patriotism, 238, 243, 299 pattern recognition, 166 patterning, 57, 300 pedagogical, 302 pedagogy, 7, 47, 78, 90, 304, 305

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

320

Index

peer, 136 Pennsylvania, 306 PEP, 300 per capita, 125 perception, 24, 33, 82, 86, 175, 284 perceptions, 20, 125, 154, 168, 205, 231 perceptual component, 168 performance, 23, 24, 46, 47, 61, 78, 104, 117, 140, 143, 144, 145, 149, 153, 154, 156, 158, 162, 163, 186, 187, 188, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 205 performance indicator, 197, 198, 205 performative action, 103, 105, 107, 108 performativity, 153, 154, 156, 160, 162 performers, 144, 304 permit, 241 person deixis, 229 personal, 12, 19, 30, 69, 73, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 107, 114, 116, 123, 129, 132, 134, 159, 160, 171, 208, 215, 217, 219, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 237, 238, 240, 241, 244, 252, 253, 254, 267, 275, 289, 295 personal communication, 129, 215 personal goals, 237 personal problems, 219 personality, 146, 271, 272, 275, 277, 278 persuasion, 10, 23, 108, 235 Perth, 210 phenomenology, 45 Philadelphia, 183, 306 philanthropic, 211 philanthropy, 186 philosophers, 17, 115, 217 philosophical, 28, 63, 112, 251, 276 philosophy, ix, 20, 23, 46, 90, 100, 119, 189, 219, 226 Phoenix, 268 phoneme, 19, 301 phonological, 19, 230, 300 phonology, 17, 19 physical world, 20 physicians, 226 physiological, 217 physiology, 217, 219 Pierre Bourdieu, 204 pitch, 230, 243 placebo, 222 plague, 147 planning, 21, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 199, 307 plants, 187 play, 19, 22, 24, 44, 103, 107, 130, 158, 175, 181, 182, 204, 215, 239, 242, 255, 277

pleasure, 86, 190 pluralism, 110, 117, 237 plurality, 155, 237 poison, 263 Poland, 172 polarity, 158, 254 police, 29, 59, 61, 64, 265, 267 policing, 259, 260, 261, 266, 267, 268 policy makers, 126 politeness, 21, 115, 221, 222, 254 political crisis, 229, 230, 233 political enemies, 260 political leaders, 175, 237 political parties, 112 political speeches, 10, 170, 229, 230, 231, 234, 239 politicians, 62, 105, 131, 230, 231, 234, 242 politics, 14, 25, 46, 47, 77, 78, 82, 86, 87, 90, 91, 109, 113, 115, 118, 119, 128, 136, 166, 170, 230, 236, 239, 244, 246, 284, 285, 287, 290 pollution, 178, 217 poor, 32, 60, 108, 123, 124, 126, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 179, 223, 225 poor health, 124, 126 population, 53, 54, 105, 108, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 131, 174, 212, 272, 273, 275, 277, 278 population health, 121, 123, 126 positive discourse analysis, 7, 114 positivist, 41, 42 post-Cold War, 259, 260, 261 poststructuralism, 39, 44, 68, 74, 81, 85 post-traumatic stress, 128 post-traumatic stress disorder, 128 posture, 225, 240, 241 poverty, 4, 72, 211, 252 power relations, 7, 22, 70, 75, 88, 113, 122, 149, 169, 171, 196, 234, 246, 266 power sharing, 12 powers, 106, 155 pragmatic, 23, 37, 39, 40, 96, 180, 231, 232, 235, 247, 306 pragmatics, 7, 10, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 63, 64, 70, 96, 115, 150, 231, 264 praxis, 64, 151, 305 prayer, 284 predicate, 59, 63, 150 prediction, 98 predisposing factors, 225 pre-existing, 39 preference, 230, 240, 244 pregnancy, 217 prejudice, 4, 21, 25, 87, 93, 95, 97, 266 premium, 133, 210 prescriptive grammar, 159, 160

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index preservative, 250 president, 135, 244, 268, 284, 286 President Bush, 267, 269 pressure, 122, 278 presupposition, 19, 24, 41, 241, 286, 287, 290 prevention, 122, 126 primary school, 108 priming, 9 printing, 283 private, 104, 107, 163, 239, 243, 296 proactive, 190 probe, 189 procedural rule, 53 producers, 134, 272 production, 12, 37, 40, 46, 70, 72, 73, 76, 88, 109, 113, 114, 116, 118, 120, 124, 125, 147, 154, 162, 189, 192, 193, 197, 205, 207, 234, 242, 254, 256, 271, 273, 276, 278, 283, 284, 291, 300 productivity, 145 professional teacher, 155 professions, 216 profits, 188, 201, 206, 212 program, 41, 119, 135, 232, 240, 296, 302 programming, 279 proliferation, 113 promote, 84, 124, 127, 173, 176, 206, 225, 257 pronoun, 19, 29, 231, 236, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246 pronunciation, 299, 300 propaganda, 242, 281, 282 propagation, 153 property, 60, 87, 234, 237 proposition, 24, 33, 149, 287 prosperity, 149, 193 protection, 284 protocols, 131 proverb, 243, 251, 255, 256 psychiatric institution, 217 psychiatrist, 218 psycholinguistics, 17, 167 psychology, ix, 7, 14, 130, 235, 285 public, 51, 61, 78, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 114, 117, 123, 124, 127, 136, 138, 170, 173, 174, 175, 182, 186, 187, 197, 204, 205, 208, 212, 213, 221, 225, 235, 238, 242, 243, 246, 274, 278, 280, 286, 295, 296, 298, 300 public discourse, 78, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 117, 197, 225, 235, 238, 295 public domain, 205 public education, 114 public health, 124, 127 public interest, 204 public opinion, 175, 182

321

public policy, 105, 117, 123 public relations, 186 public service, 280 public texts, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 117 punishment, 264, 265, 266 punitive, 268 pupil, 56

Q qualifications, 123, 298 qualitative research, 93, 96, 98, 99, 100, 200, 201, 213 quality of life, 127, 206 quantitative research, 96, 97, 98 questioning, 42, 46, 89, 111, 112, 171, 186, 206, 225, 275 questionnaire, 98

R race, 50, 82, 87, 129, 216, 222, 275, 285 racial issue, 276 racism, 4, 7, 87, 112 radical, 7, 42, 43, 45, 46, 89, 108, 116, 210, 219, 283, 299, 300 radicalism, 287 radio, 104, 106, 131, 136 rain, 302 Ramadan, 292 range, ix, 3, 9, 11, 22, 38, 54, 68, 69, 70, 81, 83, 87, 88, 110, 122, 123, 140, 141, 142, 146, 149, 155, 159, 160, 189, 208, 231, 276, 278, 283, 298 rash, 253 ratings, 277 rationalisation, 218 rationality, 53, 60, 61, 62, 86, 115, 217, 291 reading, 6, 44, 45, 46, 47, 63, 73, 74, 78, 87, 90, 91, 95, 97, 113, 114, 143, 144, 146, 149, 158, 192, 215, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 305, 306 reading comprehension, 301 real estate, 174 real time, 168, 169 realism, 251, 298 reality, 31, 42, 43, 76, 88, 95, 98, 109, 111, 161, 170, 173, 174, 175, 181, 182, 183, 211, 217, 243, 271, 304 reasoning, 57, 62, 86, 89, 111, 124, 132, 211 recall, 238, 241, 267 reception, 40, 67, 71, 74, 131, 154, 162

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

322

Index

recognition, 11, 50, 63, 64, 135, 148, 161, 166, 190, 191, 198, 224, 275, 286, 295, 297, 300, 305 reconstruction, 108, 115, 116, 234, 271, 299 redevelopment, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 182 redistribution, 50, 177 reduction, 189, 198 reductionism, 85, 169 reflection, 104, 109, 217, 267 reflexivity, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 87, 198, 220 reforms, 299, 307 refugees, 30, 31 regeneration, 204, 206 regional, 21, 108, 109, 110, 156, 244 regression, 119 regular, 283 regulation, 22, 181, 217, 298 regulations, 12, 22, 104, 106, 134 rehabilitation, 180 reincarnation, 253 reinforcement, 225 rejection, 85, 133 relevance, 22, 29, 54, 60, 61, 72, 111, 235, 278, 296 reliability, 32, 93 religion, 12, 57, 166, 216, 219, 252, 253, 254, 257, 282, 283, 287, 290, 291 religions, 11 rent, 83 replicability, 77 repo, 240 reporters, 51, 131 reporting, 58, 131, 144, 145, 185, 186, 187, 200, 201, 282, 283, 288, 290, 303, 304 representation, 20, 33, 76, 140, 167, 168, 184, 204, 230, 251, 272, 279, 281, 282, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 303, 304, 305 repression, 86 reproduction, 7, 12, 72, 108, 124, 154, 155 reputation, 12, 186, 276 research, ix, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 22, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 67, 68, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 105, 111, 115, 117, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 150, 151, 165, 166, 167, 169, 174, 175, 183, 184, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 207, 212, 213, 226, 230, 234, 281, 283, 284, 297, 300, 301, 305, 307 research design, 99 research methodology, 67, 68, 75, 77, 93, 121 researchers, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 20, 34, 38, 43, 69, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 125, 126, 127, 169, 204, 295, 301, 304 residential, 174

resistance, 7, 84, 108, 158, 173, 174, 230, 265, 289, 290 resolution, 239, 267 resources, 4, 9, 11, 13, 40, 50, 51, 52, 74, 100, 104, 105, 113, 114, 115, 118, 122, 126, 132, 159, 196, 253, 262, 263, 264, 265, 305 responsibilities, 140, 148, 185, 186, 187, 198, 199, 200 responsiveness, 160 restructuring, 177, 181 retention, 106, 232 retribution, 265, 266 returns, 88, 195, 211 revenue, 132, 193 revolt, 298 revolutionary, 210, 299, 305 rewards, 110, 150 rhetoric, 106, 112, 149, 223, 229, 232, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246 rhyme, 289 righteousness, 265 risk, 11, 87, 117, 123, 124, 148, 193, 197, 223, 226 risk assessment, 197 risk factors, 123 risk management, 226 risks, 123, 219 rivers, 277 robustness, 221 Roman Empire, 236 routines, 61, 116 rule of law, 261, 262 rural, 273 Russia, 136 Russian, 39, 134, 135, 136

S sacred, 240 sacrifice, 94 Saddam Hussein, 170, 259, 260, 262, 264, 265, 287, 288, 290, 292 safety, 122, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 190, 195, 197, 200 salt, 254 sample, 9, 22, 41, 177, 233 satellite, 133, 136, 292 satisfaction, 220, 253 Saudi Arabia, 283 scaffold, 215 scepticism, 51 schema, 111, 207 scholarship, 32, 46, 69, 109, 112, 115, 204, 282

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index school, 20, 23, 32, 51, 56, 57, 61, 63, 67, 68, 69, 77, 94, 106, 108, 110, 118, 155, 156, 162, 216, 217, 283, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 305, 307 school learning, 295, 296 school literacy, 295 schooling, 108, 146, 297, 300, 305 scientific theory, 74 scientists, 17, 25, 230, 250 scripts, 153, 154, 295, 299 search, 6, 31, 54, 55, 110, 112, 113, 188, 262, 263, 264, 265, 300 searches, 49, 182 searching, 301 secular, 260, 264, 291 security, 133, 135, 178, 267 Security Council, 238 selecting, 38, 46, 57, 60, 70, 83, 98, 131, 143 selective attention, 168 selectivity, 112 Self, v, 93 self-consciousness, 74, 299 self-control, 99 self-interest, 185, 187, 195, 236 self-presentation, 266, 277 self-rated health, 123 self-reproduction, 108 seller, 112 semantic, 17, 19, 33, 131, 167, 168, 175, 202, 254, 255, 264, 265 semantics, 10, 15, 17, 19, 28, 93, 172 semiotics, 37, 39, 46, 78, 114, 130 senior citizens, 275 sensitivity, 233 sentence, 5, 7, 12, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 29, 94, 160, 166, 188, 189, 285, 287, 289, 304, 305 sentences, 5, 18, 94, 95, 160, 161, 166, 188, 195, 198, 209, 290, 300, 303 separation, 89 September 11, 247, 268 series, 51, 58, 70, 119, 157, 159, 219, 247, 271, 272, 273, 274, 278, 279, 297, 300, 303 service provider, 63, 221 services, 34, 129, 130, 131 settlers, 272 sex, 87 sexism, 7, 87 sexuality, 90 SFL, 9, 11, 27, 28, 189, 190 shame, 210 Shanghai, 133 shape, 107, 154, 155, 221, 250, 277 shaping, 163, 278

323

shareholders, 186, 195 shares, 109 sharing, 12, 131, 132, 134, 136, 219, 224, 231, 238, 275, 284 sheep, 279 short period, 133 short-term, 112 short-term memory, 112 shy, 56, 132 sign, 88, 119 signalling, 266 signals, 7, 19, 25, 148, 212, 288 signs, 39, 49, 57, 86, 88, 147, 206, 223 similarity, 21 simulation, 168 simulations, 168 Singapore, 309 singular, 5, 112, 159, 231, 239, 240, 241, 246, 265, 300 sites, 12, 105, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 158, 162, 189, 235 skills, 45, 55, 110, 140, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 206, 224, 226, 295, 301, 305 sleep, 212 smoking, 123 social activities, 12, 52, 53, 59, 60, 62, 140 social attitudes, 21 social behaviour, 125 social category, 50, 51, 52 social change, 4, 14, 20, 25, 34, 40, 47, 71, 77, 90, 116, 176, 183, 200, 213, 220, 251, 257, 258 social cognition, 13, 73, 158 social cohesion, 124, 130 social construct, 7 social constructivism, 7 social context, 3, 5, 10, 11, 13, 20, 21, 28, 35, 37, 73, 85, 87, 111, 122, 125, 126, 130, 155, 205, 226, 246 social contract, 262 social control, 11, 219, 226, 265, 269 social costs, 179 Social Democrat, 232 social determinants of health, 121, 122 social development, 301 social distance, 256 social environment, 254 social epidemiology, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128 social events, 20, 40, 158 social exclusion, 72, 206 social fabric, 177, 211 social factors, 31 social group, 9, 14, 123, 126, 161, 216, 234, 256

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

324

Index

social impacts, 197 social inequalities, 71, 124, 126 social influences, 73 social injustice, 4, 11, 25, 82, 122, 126, 127 social institutions, 13, 85, 125 social isolation, 123, 220 social justice, 3, 4, 17, 82, 124, 127, 154 social life, 52, 72, 85, 86, 87, 148, 155, 220, 235, 305 social network, 123, 132 social norms, 123 social order, 9, 20, 34, 62, 77, 191, 251, 264, 299, 305 social phenomena, 82, 87, 112, 197 social policy, 124 social power, 11, 12, 116, 124, 125, 234, 242 social practice, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 25, 40, 50, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 83, 86, 87, 88, 104, 113, 124, 125, 126, 127, 158, 160, 161, 178, 205, 285, 305 social presence, 105 social problems, 7, 8, 42, 176, 241 social relations, 11, 20, 28, 44, 82, 83, 84, 94, 104, 107, 109, 113, 125, 154, 198, 199, 203, 204, 207, 216, 250, 253, 305 social relationships, 28, 44, 107, 198, 199 social research, 4, 37, 67, 68, 74, 75, 77, 95, 183 social responsibility, 185, 186, 188, 190, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202 social roles, 11 social sciences, 10, 43, 99, 130 social situations, 6, 20, 74, 75, 77, 254 social standing, 230 social status, 11, 157, 274 social structure, 8, 11, 40, 44, 63, 70, 72, 74, 215, 216, 217, 220, 234, 302 social support, 122, 123 social systems, 169 social theory, 9, 10, 82 social units, 12 social work, 6 socialisation, 105, 108 socialist, 90, 297 socially responsible, 185, 186, 195 sociocultural, 281, 282 socioeconomic, 122, 123 sociolinguistics, 9, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 64, 107, 115, 151, 305 sociological, 11, 28, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 52, 62 sociology, ix, 14, 20, 41, 45, 46, 47, 63, 64, 78, 124, 163, 207, 235, 285 software, 130, 135, 188, 193

solidarity, 19, 69, 170, 222, 231, 235, 236, 237, 246, 289 sounds, 19, 97, 224, 290, 291 South Africa, 236 South Asia, 212 South Pacific, 119 sovereignty, 108 Spain, ix, 174, 176, 310 spatial, 39, 40, 266 specialisation, 7 species, 109, 250, 279 specificity, 39, 40, 52, 211, 266 spectrum, 215 speculation, 216 speech, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 34, 51, 56, 57, 61, 96, 100, 103, 111, 112, 114, 115, 131, 132, 136, 217, 231, 233, 236, 239, 241, 261, 264, 267, 268, 269, 277, 298, 299, 302, 303, 304, 306 speech act, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 96, 100, 114, 115, 217, 231, 261, 264, 267, 303 speed, 129, 133, 136 spelling, 6 spheres, 130 spirituality, 276, 292 spoken language, 251 sponsor, 191 sporadic, 242 sporting heroes, 278 stability, 277 stages, 28, 70, 71, 122 stakeholder, 187, 193, 195, 197, 200, 201 stakeholders, 83, 149, 200, 225 standardization, 131, 299 standards, 107, 115, 117, 122, 131, 136, 143, 232, 300 stars, 298 State of the Union, 268, 269 statehood, 109, 110 statistical analysis, 98 statistics, 148 steel, 147, 148 stereotype, 24, 161 stereotypes, 17, 230, 282, 291 stereotypical, 224 stimulus, 112 strategic management, 197 strategies, 23, 24, 43, 52, 97, 125, 181, 192, 213, 215, 221, 222, 230, 234, 246, 261, 262, 273, 276, 287, 288 stratification, 123 strength, 10, 109, 124, 189, 222, 243, 252, 277 stress, 70, 76, 123, 136, 217, 226 strikes, 176, 211

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index stroke, 235 structural changes, 219 structuralism, 7, 90 structuring, 18, 112, 116, 159, 299 students, 58, 61, 62, 82, 156, 160, 161, 163, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301 subjective, 57, 73, 125, 212, 235, 304 subjective experience, 125 subjectivity, 39, 97, 98, 112, 118 subsidy, 278, 279 substitution, 33 suburbs, 280, 302 Sudan, 259, 261 suffering, 217 Suharto, 283, 284 Sui dynasty, 298 suicide, 252, 263 Sun, 302 sunlight, 276 superiority, 209, 225, 262 supernatural, 264 supervisors, 141 supplements, 296 supply, 75, 176, 193 suppression, 29, 132, 136 surgery, 177, 182, 183, 217 surgical, 111, 114, 176, 177 surveillance, 220, 266 survival, 230, 236 sustainability, 119, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 200 sustainable development, 186, 188, 195, 201, 202 Sweden, 258 switching, 21, 223, 303 symbiotic, 217 symbolic, 99, 104, 105, 106, 110, 118, 178, 206, 233, 234, 295, 305 symbolic violence, 295 symbols, 5, 168, 230 symmetry, 222 sympathetic, 10, 196 sympathy, 224, 240 symptom, 217 synonym, 19, 89 syntactic, 18, 19, 27, 223, 234 syntactic structure, 27 syntax, 17, 18, 19, 70, 109, 111, 206 synthesis, 18, 68, 90, 205, 216, 299 Syria, 292 systemic functional linguistics, 27, 35, 188, 189, 200, 258

325

systems, 13, 40, 42, 44, 82, 85, 89, 109, 114, 115, 117, 119, 122, 134, 135, 154, 166, 169, 171, 180, 192, 194, 197, 217, 265, 305

T Taiwan, 297, 298 Taliban, 264, 265, 268 tangible, 196, 197, 240 tar, 181, 182, 183 targets, 136, 189, 197, 198 taste, 274 taxonomy, 23 TCP, 131 TCP/IP, 131 teacher performance, 153 teachers, 20, 61, 62, 82, 105, 106, 108, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 258, 295, 301, 304 teaching, 6, 13, 81, 82, 96, 105, 108, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 163, 184, 257, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 305 teaching experience, 155 technicians, 177 technocratic, 197, 199 technological advancement, 197 technology, 114, 131, 132, 136, 142, 193, 266, 268 teenagers, 97 telecommunications, 132 teleology, 87 telephone, 64 television, 40, 59, 60, 63, 106, 131, 136, 201, 271, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 292 television commercial, 59, 60, 63 television coverage, 131 tellers, 59 temporal, 114 tension, 147, 217, 253, 276 terrorism, 259, 269, 287 terrorists, 263, 264, 265, 266 testimony, 64 text analysis, 20, 70, 95, 114, 209 textbooks, 298, 300, 303 textile, 211, 212 textual function, 29, 30 The Economist, 187, 202 theory, 9, 18, 23, 25, 28, 39, 44, 46, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 76, 77, 78, 84, 91, 96, 100, 109, 113, 115, 116, 128, 153, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172, 187, 195, 197, 200, 201, 204, 213, 217, 218, 226, 274, 275, 280, 285, 296 therapeutic benefits, 222 thesaurus, 194

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

326

Index

thinking, 5, 38, 41, 42, 72, 81, 86, 116, 155, 165, 175, 190, 198, 205, 273, 281, 282 threat, 24, 129, 132, 134, 136, 158, 259, 260, 269, 286 threatened, 237, 238, 257 threatening, 23, 116, 181, 225, 237 threats, 241, 268 three-dimensional, 8, 13, 70, 273, 276 three-dimensional model, 273, 276 Tibet, 133, 137 tides, 298 time, 7, 10, 13, 22, 31, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 51, 53, 78, 91, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 116, 121, 133, 135, 136, 137, 147, 150, 169, 170, 175, 176, 177, 179, 204, 208, 219, 221, 223, 225, 239, 240, 244, 250, 251, 257, 259, 260, 261, 266, 268, 272, 275, 277, 279, 281, 284, 285, 289, 290, 291, 298, 299, 300, 302, 303 time frame, 10, 169, 225 timing, 223 tissue, 177 title, ix, 3, 133, 222, 289 tolerance, 253, 257 Tony Blair, 33 tourism, 272, 277 tourist, 204, 208 toxic, 176 tracking, 111 traction, 105 trade, 254, 272 trading, 208 tradition, 5, 8, 18, 37, 41, 77, 83, 103, 108, 111, 115, 161, 216, 219, 225, 252, 274, 298 traditional authority, 222 traditionalism, 277 traffic, 126, 133 training, 10, 95, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 218, 252, 298 training programs, 143 traits, 268 trajectory, 39, 299 trans, 163, 169, 219, 262 transactions, 154, 250 transcription, 208 transcripts, 46 transference, 33, 236 transformation, 18, 32, 47, 56, 61, 62, 71, 72, 91, 108, 115, 116, 117, 118, 146, 147, 253 transformations, 33, 252, 256, 257 transition, 148, 232, 239, 240 transitions, 251, 254 transitivity, 8, 33, 249, 254, 256, 303 translation, 108, 119, 125, 143, 247, 296, 297, 302

transmission, 131, 300 transparency, 23 transparent, 75, 229, 284 travel, 161, 177, 208, 273, 277 treason, 243 trees, 12 trend, 18, 205, 250, 282, 283 trial, 261, 266, 267 triangulation, 127 triggers, 112 trust, 198, 199, 225, 240, 275

U U.S. military, 288 ubiquitous, 108, 237 uncertainty, 4, 5, 46 undergraduate, 154, 156 undergraduate education, 156 unemployment, 243, 275, 276 uniform, 69 United Kingdom (UK), 25, 35, 91, 99, 112, 140, 172, 201, 203, 204, 208, 212, 277, 309 United Nations, 202 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 187, 202 United States, 128, 137, 140, 213, 266, 267, 268 units of analysis, 37 universal law, 219 universe, 89 universities, 78, 94, 155 unmasking, 6, 104, 109, 111, 252 upload, 132 uranium, 200 urban areas, 299 utilitarianism, 218 utterance, 5, 23, 24, 39, 43, 50, 51, 73, 168, 220, 223, 224, 303, 304

V Valencia, 174, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 310 validation, 105, 244, 275 validity, 93, 150 values, 12, 20, 28, 51, 55, 57, 61, 70, 95, 125, 147, 158, 186, 195, 199, 200, 216, 220, 225, 235, 250, 251, 257, 268, 283, 286, 287, 290, 291, 298, 299 variables, 29, 71, 94, 97, 98, 224, 244 variance, 161 variation, 6, 21, 69, 93, 161, 230 vein, 111, 243

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Index verb, 31, 32, 34, 94, 156, 188, 189, 191, 198, 254, 262, 287, 289, 303 victims, 56, 263 Victoria, 225 Vietnamese, 19, 21, 28, 100, 146, 148, 222 village, 252, 253, 306 violence, 110, 245, 261, 262, 265, 269, 282, 286, 287, 290, 295 violent, 161, 281, 284, 286, 291 visible, 44, 75, 133, 136, 166, 216, 224 vision, 74, 196, 206, 209, 219, 261, 301 visual images, 205, 276 vocabulary, 8, 70, 82, 87, 209, 225 voice, 11, 75, 96, 98, 111, 158, 188, 218, 219, 220, 225, 226, 236, 237, 254, 274, 282, 288, 307 voters, 231 vulnerability, 76

Copyright © 2009. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

W Wales, 162 war, 20, 85, 135, 167, 170, 173, 176, 178, 184, 246, 259, 261, 262, 265, 269, 270, 272, 292 war crimes, 85 war on terror, 20 warfare, 176 Warsaw, 269 water, 250 watershed, 232 weakness, 10, 104, 253 wealth, 206, 210, 216, 217, 220, 222 web, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 216, 232, 262 Web 2.0, 129, 131 web pages, 135 web service, 130 web sites, 131, 132, 133, 135 web-based, 132 websites, 40, 199 welfare, 125, 218, 219 wellbeing, 121, 123, 178, 196 wellness, 193

327

White House, 269 windows, ix winning, 250, 273 wireless, 250 wires, 62, 168 wisdom, 251 withdrawal, 178 witnesses, 241 wives, 252 women, 24, 31, 78, 209, 210, 211, 217, 224, 263, 266 word recognition, 300, 305 work environment, 147, 149 workers, 22, 29, 32, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 204, 208, 210, 211, 212, 263, 275, 283 workforce, 140, 142, 145, 146, 150 working-class backgrounds, 125 workplace, 76, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 157, 217, 305 World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), 187, 202 World Health Organisation, 128 World Resources Institute, 202 World Wide Web, 130, 131 worldview, 12, 20, 112 worry, 239 WRI, 187, 202 writing, 18, 30, 46, 76, 78, 90, 98, 103, 105, 109, 112, 113, 114, 116, 136, 143, 157, 160, 189, 210, 283, 298, 299, 300, 301, 305 writing process, 283 written language, 19 WTC, 282

Y yield, 43, 165, 170, 253, 267 young men, 56, 58 Yugoslavia, 85 Yuwen, 296, 297, 300, 301, 302, 305

Le, Thao, and Megan Short. Critical Discourse Analysis : An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,