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prairiedaun Apr. 18th, 2006 11:45 pm)
prairiedaun Apr. 18th, 2006 11:45 pm)1. aDiscuss the approach to discourse analysis of conversation analysis, ethnography of communication and critical discourse analysis.
Discourse conveys meanings in many different planes and scales. Discourse analysis is undertaken in many different ways in order to discover the many different ways that discourse encodes meanings. The three approaches to discourse analysis that will be examined here are conversation analysis, ethnography of communication and critical discourse analysis.
Conversation analysis is the approach that we worked with most closely this year. It is a [art of the sociological study of language and culture called ethnomethodology. CA views language as a form of social action and tries to discover and describe how the organization of social interaction manifests and reinforces the structures of social organization and social institutions. It is focused on naturally occuring conversation, and looks at how participants understand and respond to one another CA breaks down the sequence of conversations by looking at patterns of turns, and by looking at the patterns they can determine what is to be expected in any particular situation. This prediction can be made through the idea of preference that, as a response to any particular turn there will be a preferred type of response (if these turns are almost always expected to occur together, we may think of them as adjacency pairs). However, there are considerable drawbacks to this form of analysis. One of the largest critiques is that there is considerable subjectivity involved in deciding what is a turn, and what constitutes and adjacency pair. A second critique is that most of CAs discoveries about conversation comes from studying fragments of small conversations; conversation is often a long and indefinitely sustainable thing- not much work has been done on what these things mean for the longer conversations. Finally, CA "offers a powerful interpretation of conversation as dynamic interactive achievement:" without saying what the achievement is. These need to be addressed by shifting away from conversation as a form of social interaction that is verbal, to linguistic interaction that is social.
Prior to conversation analysis, we've seen the approach of ethnography of communication. Where CA focuses on the conversation and ignores somewhat the context, EC does the reverse. EC is greatly concerned with the context of discourse, the rules of speaking in a community. EC's concern with context aligns it with the discipline of anthropology, how all of the culture influences aspects of language. A person understands language and communication through their use of communicative competence. This is concerned with whether what is being said is grammatical, appropriate, feasible and actually done in practice. EC examines discourse on three levels: that of speech situations (events, ceremonies that are not purely communicative, but are the wider context for speaking), speech events (activities that are communicative and governed by rules of speaking) and speech acts (smallest unit of the set that may involve 2+ turns from 2+ people, like greetings, jokes, orders). As a method of analysis of the speech event Dell Hymes came up with the SPEAKING model. It describes the speech acts situation, participants, ends, act sequence, key (spirit of speaking), instrumentalities (channel), norms of interaction, and genres.
Critical Discourse analysis is different from both CA and EC. Where CA is sociological and EC anthropological, CDA is philosophical. CDA is critical in the sense of examining language and discourse to uncover ideological practices, hidden meanings and value structures. CDA is not descriptivist like the other approaches we've seen- they're not attempting to say what should happen, or what can be predicted to happen. Instead, CDA looks at what the motivation is for speech, how speech is and should be studied, and how we examine different genres of conversation, and the genre of conversation itself.
2. Compare Jakobson's approach to language functions or metafunctions to Halliday's.
Halliday is a part of the London school, and he observesthat in language there are 3 metafunctions. three metafunctions, ways of studying meaning in language, the ideational (experiential) which looks meanings about the world, representations of reality (topics, subject matter); realized by choices made from the system of transitivity. The interpersonal function looks at meanings about roles and relationships (status, intimacy, contact, sharedness between interactants); realized by choices from the system of mood and modality. The textual function looks at meanings about the message (foregrounding/salience, types of cohesion); realized by the system of theme in the clause.
Jakobson observes six metafunctions (language factors):
referential
poetic
emotive phatic conative
metalingual
The referential function is the context factor of the speech event; it is "what is going on." It is aligned with Halliday's ideational function. The emotive function is the addresser factor of the se, "expressive" function. It is aligned most closely with the interpersonal metafunction. The conative function (addressee factor) "find its purest grammatical exp\resseion in the vocative and imperative" this is also a part of the interpersonal. The phatic (contact) is concerned with the ritual of language, what we expect to find. This can be seen as a part of the interpersonal in Halliday's terms, as it is a part of what we expect to see in the real world.between people. The poetic (message) is concerned with how language is expressed, what seems to "go right together", and this a a part of Halliday's textual function. Finally there is the metalingual (code) this is the glossing function of language, how we make sure that we are actually understanding one another. This is also a part of the textual, as is has to do with how language is expressed.
referential
poetic
emotive phatic conative
metalingual
4. Discuss how Grice's work on the cooperative principals and Goffman's work on face may have influenced Brown/Levinson and Holmes work on politeness.
Grice's Cooperative principals ensure that turns in conversation are, according to our culture's system, "good" statements. The principals fall into four main categories, quantity, quality, relation and manner. For Quantity, statements should 1)be as informative as is required, and 2)not more informative than required. For Quality, statements should 1)not be false, 2)not be said with inadequate evidence. For relation, statements should be relevant. For manner statements should 1)avoid obscurity of expression, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief, 4)be orderly.
Face is "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. A person can have good face, where the situation positively reflects on him, or bad face where it negatively reflects on them. There is also face-work,which "counteracts incidents where symbolic implications threaten face. Different types of face work are the avoidance process (avoiding face threatening situations completely), the corrective process (where they try to repair face).
Brown/Levinson look at negative face (basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction, ie freedom of action and freedom from imposition) and positive face (the positive consistent self-image or 'personality' (the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants). They look at face as basic wants (which every member knows ever other member desires) so face can be restated as negative face (the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others) and positive face (the want of ever member that his wants be desirable to at least some others) This is obviously influenced by Goffman's work on face.
Brown and Levinson also look at specific ways that face can be threatened. These are mostly acts that put interactants in a line that challenges their face. These can be done in two ways off record, where there could be ambiguities and a chance for the other interactant to back down or to grant face. It can also be done on record, where there is no ambiguity as to what the participant is doing. On record FTAs can be accoplished two ways: baldly is the most direct, unambiguous way and follows Grice's maxims of cooperation (this is mainly done when the speaker does not fear retribution. Redressive action is taken in cases where there could be retribution, but this is usually mitigated by the granting of face. This can be done using either positive politeness (done by including the other as part of the group) and negative politeness (done by excluding the other). Holmes addresses the issue of positive and negative politeness in her work on popliteness and gender, where she found that women tend to use positive politeness and attempt to include each other in the group, whereas men tend to use negative politenes, creating bonds by excluding one another (through disagrement, swearing, etc.)
5. Discuss Bakhtin's use of genre to Eggins & Slade and Martin's use of the same word, and also to Halliday's use of register (which Malcolm also uses), and Tannen's use of frame and knowledge schema.
(121) Bakhtin defines the speech genre as the relatively stable type of utterance developed for different spheres in language. They are boundless because the various possibilities of human activity are inexhaustible. They may be similar in style, theme and composition, but they are fluid and adaptable to all of the different situations.
(2.6.2.6) Eggins & Slade and Martin's use of genre is seen as the context that is important in analysing conversational data. Hasan describes genre as being identified by the internal structure of a text. Martin's theory of genre is different but complementary theory of genre, as "a staged, goal oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture". They move through a number of steps, towards a certain point, negotiated interactively and realize a social purpose.
Halliday defines register as the different configurations of relationships that define situations (field, mode, personal and functional tenors).
Tannen uses frame and knowledge schema to discuss the context of a situation, and how to interpret it. The interactive frame defines what is going on in any given situation. It is the background information one needs in order to interpret any given situation; the monkey biting example (to know whether a monkey is biting out of play or fight, one needs to know the situation.) The knowledge schemas are the expectations of participants in regards ro people, objects, events and settings in the world. We can't expect people to have a knowledge schema about hammers if they've never seen a hammer before in their lives. We can see schemas interact with frames in the example of Tannen and her friend on the phone, yelling at the dog.
6. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the following analysts approach to discourse structure: Labov & Bell, Eggins & Slade, Malcolm
Labov and Bell study discourse structure in terms of narrative analysis. They examione narrative, and look to identify genres based on structural components. This is good because it serves to differentiate the different types of narrative based on a quantifiable level.They had identified several essential components to narrative, and were able to identify the different genres based on what was and wasn't present. The downside is that they study the discourse on such a macro level that it oftentimes feels generic and basic; also, the distinctions between the components can be seen as rather subjective.
Eggins and Slade focus heavily on conversation and turn-taking. Where Bell and Labov look at the macro level, Eggins and Slade focus on the Micro level; conversations are broken down into turns and acts, parsed into the lightest unit of meaning. This means that all components of conversation can be analyzed, the interrelations be studied. It is possible to come up with theories and predictions about what can and can not go together in a conversation. Also, other elements like how power is shared can be studied using their methods. What is lost is the ability to generalize about language and conversation. Also, because it so intensely studies small conversations it hasn't really yet been applied to longer conversations, where meanings tend to shift much more often and be more complicated and involved. It is also highly subjective (the explanations of what is and what isn't a turn can be vague at times), and the semantics of conversation are't easily described by the analysis. It also looks at neither the prosody involved in conversation, the minor clauses or above or below the sentence level.
Malcolm's study of discourse structures combines both the macro and micro level study of discourse. It identifies both the register and situation of the communicative event, and looks at how this is expressed at the micro level of different levels in the text, from the phonological, the syntactic and rhetoric. It is also able to analyze literary and non-literary genres, oral and written. It is highly adaptable and highly defined- by labelling something, one knows exactly what is meant by the label. One of the drawbacks to this is that it because it is highly detailed, it is time consuming- analysis of longer texts would require plenty of time and patience. Also, while attention to the macro happens, because of the intensity of studying the micro it can sometimes be forgotten. And again, it is a very subjective.
7. A. Discuss Fairclough's argument for a three dimensional view of discourse and discourse analysis.
B. Why does he believe Halliday's systemic functional framework is particularly well-suited to fulfilling at least one of these roles.
In the CDA approach, language is seen as a social practice mediating reality, and language use is seen as a process of constructing reality from particular perspectives. Consequently, it is maintained that texts should always be analysed with reference to their social contexts.
Fairclough proposes that texts be analysed along three dimensions:
Text (i.e. in terms of the formal features of texts, such as grammar, vocabulary, and text structure)
Discursive Practice (focussing on the production, consumption and distribution of the discourse studied)
Social practice, which moves the analysis to a broader, societal level.
Fairclough also argues for the importance of an intertextual dimension of text analysis (within the text): he sees intertextual analysis as a mediating level of analysis, enabling the analyst to connect a text and its social context.
We never judge features of a text without some kind of reference to text production and/or interpretation. Therefore it is impossible to make a sharp distinction between text analysis and analysis of discursive practices. Some of the categories in the framework for text analysis seem to be oriented to language forms and others to meanings. As Fairclough points out, critical approaches to discourse analysis make the assumption that signs are socially motivated , i.e. that there are social reasons for combining particular signifiers with particular signified. This may be a matter of vocabulary choice, grammar and text organisation
Text analysis is usually organised by critical linguists into four groups: vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and text structure. Also, there is an important distinction between the meaning potential of a text and its interpretation. We usually reduce the text potential to a small set of meanings. Discursive practice involves processes of text production, distribution, and consumption of texts and the differences between discourse types vary according to social factors.
Individual speakers echo the texts produced by the political party they belong to. As texts are also consumed differently in different social contexts, I notice that speakers in my corpus knew that their texts would be consumed collectively by an audience.
The basic framework, seen as a resource for people who are struggling against domination and oppression in its linguistic forms, is called critical discourse analysis (CDA) by Fairclough. Power is conceptualised both in terms of asymmetries between participants in discourse events, and in terms of unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed in particular sociocultural contexts. There is a range of properties of texts, which is regarded as potentially ideological, including features of vocabulary and metaphors, grammar, presuppositions and implicatures, politeness conventions, speech-exchange (turn-taking) systems, generic structure, and style.
Fig.1 Fairclough's three dimensional conception of discourse
Fairclough's model is especially useful in that it incorporates both the Hallidayan grammar of critical linguistics and the consideration of vocabulary choices, along with aspects of turn-taking and exchange structure. It therefore provides a comprehensive base for linguistic analysis.
Halliday's interest in the relationship between the "texture" of texts (love that!) and their relationship to the social context are clearly useful in conjunction with the Fairclough model. It is better suited to linguistic analysis, as opposed to formalism, which F requires in order for hjis "text" dimension to have any relevance. S-F model is a functional one.
8. Discuss the findings of THREE other discourse analysts in their work on gender, sexuality, race or identity.
For three discussions of how discourse analysts look at different topics, I'll be examining Michel Foucault's "The Incitement to Discourse", which examines sexuality throughout Western history, Deborah Cameron's "Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity", and Deborah Tannen's "New York Jewish Conversational Style".
In his article Foucault discusses how the topic of sexuality has gone through stages of acceptability in conversation. With every change in the level of acceptability comes new ways of talking about it without really talking about it: euphemisms change over time as they become more accepted.. When it was taught by the church that you don't discuss sexuality, it was only acceptable to be talked about in the confessional, and new ways of discussing it were instituted. In the late 18th century, the medical establishment needed a way to talk publically about sex, so medical terms began to be used (same for the police and legal terms). Then politicians needed a way to talk about it, so they began to talk about "population growth", etc.
Deborah Cameron looks at the paper of a male student analyzing the "male" discourse of he and some friends. She thought that while yes, a lot of the topics they were discussing were typically "male" topics, once they came to the discussion of gay men, they shifted into "gossip talk" (generally characterized as being "female" talk. They talked about who was and wasn't gay, what they sounded like and what they wore, all while asserting their own heterosexuality. Cameron argues not that heterosexual men take on "feminine" talk while discussing homosexuality, but that we really can't call discourse genres gender specific.
Discourse conveys meanings in many different planes and scales. Discourse analysis is undertaken in many different ways in order to discover the many different ways that discourse encodes meanings. The three approaches to discourse analysis that will be examined here are conversation analysis, ethnography of communication and critical discourse analysis.
Conversation analysis is the approach that we worked with most closely this year. It is a [art of the sociological study of language and culture called ethnomethodology. CA views language as a form of social action and tries to discover and describe how the organization of social interaction manifests and reinforces the structures of social organization and social institutions. It is focused on naturally occuring conversation, and looks at how participants understand and respond to one another CA breaks down the sequence of conversations by looking at patterns of turns, and by looking at the patterns they can determine what is to be expected in any particular situation. This prediction can be made through the idea of preference that, as a response to any particular turn there will be a preferred type of response (if these turns are almost always expected to occur together, we may think of them as adjacency pairs). However, there are considerable drawbacks to this form of analysis. One of the largest critiques is that there is considerable subjectivity involved in deciding what is a turn, and what constitutes and adjacency pair. A second critique is that most of CAs discoveries about conversation comes from studying fragments of small conversations; conversation is often a long and indefinitely sustainable thing- not much work has been done on what these things mean for the longer conversations. Finally, CA "offers a powerful interpretation of conversation as dynamic interactive achievement:" without saying what the achievement is. These need to be addressed by shifting away from conversation as a form of social interaction that is verbal, to linguistic interaction that is social.
Prior to conversation analysis, we've seen the approach of ethnography of communication. Where CA focuses on the conversation and ignores somewhat the context, EC does the reverse. EC is greatly concerned with the context of discourse, the rules of speaking in a community. EC's concern with context aligns it with the discipline of anthropology, how all of the culture influences aspects of language. A person understands language and communication through their use of communicative competence. This is concerned with whether what is being said is grammatical, appropriate, feasible and actually done in practice. EC examines discourse on three levels: that of speech situations (events, ceremonies that are not purely communicative, but are the wider context for speaking), speech events (activities that are communicative and governed by rules of speaking) and speech acts (smallest unit of the set that may involve 2+ turns from 2+ people, like greetings, jokes, orders). As a method of analysis of the speech event Dell Hymes came up with the SPEAKING model. It describes the speech acts situation, participants, ends, act sequence, key (spirit of speaking), instrumentalities (channel), norms of interaction, and genres.
Critical Discourse analysis is different from both CA and EC. Where CA is sociological and EC anthropological, CDA is philosophical. CDA is critical in the sense of examining language and discourse to uncover ideological practices, hidden meanings and value structures. CDA is not descriptivist like the other approaches we've seen- they're not attempting to say what should happen, or what can be predicted to happen. Instead, CDA looks at what the motivation is for speech, how speech is and should be studied, and how we examine different genres of conversation, and the genre of conversation itself.
2. Compare Jakobson's approach to language functions or metafunctions to Halliday's.
Halliday is a part of the London school, and he observesthat in language there are 3 metafunctions. three metafunctions, ways of studying meaning in language, the ideational (experiential) which looks meanings about the world, representations of reality (topics, subject matter); realized by choices made from the system of transitivity. The interpersonal function looks at meanings about roles and relationships (status, intimacy, contact, sharedness between interactants); realized by choices from the system of mood and modality. The textual function looks at meanings about the message (foregrounding/salience, types of cohesion); realized by the system of theme in the clause.
Jakobson observes six metafunctions (language factors):
referential
poetic
emotive phatic conative
metalingual
The referential function is the context factor of the speech event; it is "what is going on." It is aligned with Halliday's ideational function. The emotive function is the addresser factor of the se, "expressive" function. It is aligned most closely with the interpersonal metafunction. The conative function (addressee factor) "find its purest grammatical exp\resseion in the vocative and imperative" this is also a part of the interpersonal. The phatic (contact) is concerned with the ritual of language, what we expect to find. This can be seen as a part of the interpersonal in Halliday's terms, as it is a part of what we expect to see in the real world.between people. The poetic (message) is concerned with how language is expressed, what seems to "go right together", and this a a part of Halliday's textual function. Finally there is the metalingual (code) this is the glossing function of language, how we make sure that we are actually understanding one another. This is also a part of the textual, as is has to do with how language is expressed.
referential
poetic
emotive phatic conative
metalingual
4. Discuss how Grice's work on the cooperative principals and Goffman's work on face may have influenced Brown/Levinson and Holmes work on politeness.
Grice's Cooperative principals ensure that turns in conversation are, according to our culture's system, "good" statements. The principals fall into four main categories, quantity, quality, relation and manner. For Quantity, statements should 1)be as informative as is required, and 2)not more informative than required. For Quality, statements should 1)not be false, 2)not be said with inadequate evidence. For relation, statements should be relevant. For manner statements should 1)avoid obscurity of expression, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief, 4)be orderly.
Face is "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. A person can have good face, where the situation positively reflects on him, or bad face where it negatively reflects on them. There is also face-work,which "counteracts incidents where symbolic implications threaten face. Different types of face work are the avoidance process (avoiding face threatening situations completely), the corrective process (where they try to repair face).
Brown/Levinson look at negative face (basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction, ie freedom of action and freedom from imposition) and positive face (the positive consistent self-image or 'personality' (the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants). They look at face as basic wants (which every member knows ever other member desires) so face can be restated as negative face (the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others) and positive face (the want of ever member that his wants be desirable to at least some others) This is obviously influenced by Goffman's work on face.
Brown and Levinson also look at specific ways that face can be threatened. These are mostly acts that put interactants in a line that challenges their face. These can be done in two ways off record, where there could be ambiguities and a chance for the other interactant to back down or to grant face. It can also be done on record, where there is no ambiguity as to what the participant is doing. On record FTAs can be accoplished two ways: baldly is the most direct, unambiguous way and follows Grice's maxims of cooperation (this is mainly done when the speaker does not fear retribution. Redressive action is taken in cases where there could be retribution, but this is usually mitigated by the granting of face. This can be done using either positive politeness (done by including the other as part of the group) and negative politeness (done by excluding the other). Holmes addresses the issue of positive and negative politeness in her work on popliteness and gender, where she found that women tend to use positive politeness and attempt to include each other in the group, whereas men tend to use negative politenes, creating bonds by excluding one another (through disagrement, swearing, etc.)
5. Discuss Bakhtin's use of genre to Eggins & Slade and Martin's use of the same word, and also to Halliday's use of register (which Malcolm also uses), and Tannen's use of frame and knowledge schema.
(121) Bakhtin defines the speech genre as the relatively stable type of utterance developed for different spheres in language. They are boundless because the various possibilities of human activity are inexhaustible. They may be similar in style, theme and composition, but they are fluid and adaptable to all of the different situations.
(2.6.2.6) Eggins & Slade and Martin's use of genre is seen as the context that is important in analysing conversational data. Hasan describes genre as being identified by the internal structure of a text. Martin's theory of genre is different but complementary theory of genre, as "a staged, goal oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture". They move through a number of steps, towards a certain point, negotiated interactively and realize a social purpose.
Halliday defines register as the different configurations of relationships that define situations (field, mode, personal and functional tenors).
Tannen uses frame and knowledge schema to discuss the context of a situation, and how to interpret it. The interactive frame defines what is going on in any given situation. It is the background information one needs in order to interpret any given situation; the monkey biting example (to know whether a monkey is biting out of play or fight, one needs to know the situation.) The knowledge schemas are the expectations of participants in regards ro people, objects, events and settings in the world. We can't expect people to have a knowledge schema about hammers if they've never seen a hammer before in their lives. We can see schemas interact with frames in the example of Tannen and her friend on the phone, yelling at the dog.
6. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the following analysts approach to discourse structure: Labov & Bell, Eggins & Slade, Malcolm
Labov and Bell study discourse structure in terms of narrative analysis. They examione narrative, and look to identify genres based on structural components. This is good because it serves to differentiate the different types of narrative based on a quantifiable level.They had identified several essential components to narrative, and were able to identify the different genres based on what was and wasn't present. The downside is that they study the discourse on such a macro level that it oftentimes feels generic and basic; also, the distinctions between the components can be seen as rather subjective.
Eggins and Slade focus heavily on conversation and turn-taking. Where Bell and Labov look at the macro level, Eggins and Slade focus on the Micro level; conversations are broken down into turns and acts, parsed into the lightest unit of meaning. This means that all components of conversation can be analyzed, the interrelations be studied. It is possible to come up with theories and predictions about what can and can not go together in a conversation. Also, other elements like how power is shared can be studied using their methods. What is lost is the ability to generalize about language and conversation. Also, because it so intensely studies small conversations it hasn't really yet been applied to longer conversations, where meanings tend to shift much more often and be more complicated and involved. It is also highly subjective (the explanations of what is and what isn't a turn can be vague at times), and the semantics of conversation are't easily described by the analysis. It also looks at neither the prosody involved in conversation, the minor clauses or above or below the sentence level.
Malcolm's study of discourse structures combines both the macro and micro level study of discourse. It identifies both the register and situation of the communicative event, and looks at how this is expressed at the micro level of different levels in the text, from the phonological, the syntactic and rhetoric. It is also able to analyze literary and non-literary genres, oral and written. It is highly adaptable and highly defined- by labelling something, one knows exactly what is meant by the label. One of the drawbacks to this is that it because it is highly detailed, it is time consuming- analysis of longer texts would require plenty of time and patience. Also, while attention to the macro happens, because of the intensity of studying the micro it can sometimes be forgotten. And again, it is a very subjective.
7. A. Discuss Fairclough's argument for a three dimensional view of discourse and discourse analysis.
B. Why does he believe Halliday's systemic functional framework is particularly well-suited to fulfilling at least one of these roles.
In the CDA approach, language is seen as a social practice mediating reality, and language use is seen as a process of constructing reality from particular perspectives. Consequently, it is maintained that texts should always be analysed with reference to their social contexts.
Fairclough proposes that texts be analysed along three dimensions:
Text (i.e. in terms of the formal features of texts, such as grammar, vocabulary, and text structure)
Discursive Practice (focussing on the production, consumption and distribution of the discourse studied)
Social practice, which moves the analysis to a broader, societal level.
Fairclough also argues for the importance of an intertextual dimension of text analysis (within the text): he sees intertextual analysis as a mediating level of analysis, enabling the analyst to connect a text and its social context.
We never judge features of a text without some kind of reference to text production and/or interpretation. Therefore it is impossible to make a sharp distinction between text analysis and analysis of discursive practices. Some of the categories in the framework for text analysis seem to be oriented to language forms and others to meanings. As Fairclough points out, critical approaches to discourse analysis make the assumption that signs are socially motivated , i.e. that there are social reasons for combining particular signifiers with particular signified. This may be a matter of vocabulary choice, grammar and text organisation
Text analysis is usually organised by critical linguists into four groups: vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and text structure. Also, there is an important distinction between the meaning potential of a text and its interpretation. We usually reduce the text potential to a small set of meanings. Discursive practice involves processes of text production, distribution, and consumption of texts and the differences between discourse types vary according to social factors.
Individual speakers echo the texts produced by the political party they belong to. As texts are also consumed differently in different social contexts, I notice that speakers in my corpus knew that their texts would be consumed collectively by an audience.
The basic framework, seen as a resource for people who are struggling against domination and oppression in its linguistic forms, is called critical discourse analysis (CDA) by Fairclough. Power is conceptualised both in terms of asymmetries between participants in discourse events, and in terms of unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed in particular sociocultural contexts. There is a range of properties of texts, which is regarded as potentially ideological, including features of vocabulary and metaphors, grammar, presuppositions and implicatures, politeness conventions, speech-exchange (turn-taking) systems, generic structure, and style.
Fig.1 Fairclough's three dimensional conception of discourse
Fairclough's model is especially useful in that it incorporates both the Hallidayan grammar of critical linguistics and the consideration of vocabulary choices, along with aspects of turn-taking and exchange structure. It therefore provides a comprehensive base for linguistic analysis.
Halliday's interest in the relationship between the "texture" of texts (love that!) and their relationship to the social context are clearly useful in conjunction with the Fairclough model. It is better suited to linguistic analysis, as opposed to formalism, which F requires in order for hjis "text" dimension to have any relevance. S-F model is a functional one.
8. Discuss the findings of THREE other discourse analysts in their work on gender, sexuality, race or identity.
For three discussions of how discourse analysts look at different topics, I'll be examining Michel Foucault's "The Incitement to Discourse", which examines sexuality throughout Western history, Deborah Cameron's "Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity", and Deborah Tannen's "New York Jewish Conversational Style".
In his article Foucault discusses how the topic of sexuality has gone through stages of acceptability in conversation. With every change in the level of acceptability comes new ways of talking about it without really talking about it: euphemisms change over time as they become more accepted.. When it was taught by the church that you don't discuss sexuality, it was only acceptable to be talked about in the confessional, and new ways of discussing it were instituted. In the late 18th century, the medical establishment needed a way to talk publically about sex, so medical terms began to be used (same for the police and legal terms). Then politicians needed a way to talk about it, so they began to talk about "population growth", etc.
Deborah Cameron looks at the paper of a male student analyzing the "male" discourse of he and some friends. She thought that while yes, a lot of the topics they were discussing were typically "male" topics, once they came to the discussion of gay men, they shifted into "gossip talk" (generally characterized as being "female" talk. They talked about who was and wasn't gay, what they sounded like and what they wore, all while asserting their own heterosexuality. Cameron argues not that heterosexual men take on "feminine" talk while discussing homosexuality, but that we really can't call discourse genres gender specific.
