Critical Discourse Analysis - Norman Fairclough - Ignasi Capdevila

8/10/2019 Critical Discourse Analysis - Norman Fairclough - Ignasi Capdevila

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Critical Discourse Analysis Norman Fairclough

Sminaire en Thories des Organisations

Travail prsent : Linda Rouleau

Rencontre des Grands Esprits

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The critical study of language

Norman Fairclough

Ignasi Capdevila

HEC Montral, 5 Avril 2011

Ignasi Capdevila 1 / 17 Avril 2011


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Table of contents

About the author

Key concepts

Book Summary

Section A : Language, ideology and power 1.- Critical and descriptive goals in discourse analysis

2.- Discourse representation in media discourse

3.- Language and ideology

Section B: Discourse and sociocultural change

4.- Discourse, change and hegemony

5.- What might we mean by enterprise discourse?

6.- Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse:

the universities

7.- Ideology and identity change in political television

Section C: Textual analysis in social research

8.- Discourse and text: linguistic and intertextual analysis within

discourse analysis

Section D: Critical language awareness

9.- Critical language awareness and self-identity in education

10.- The appropriacy of appropriateness

About the author

Norman Fairclough(born 1941) is emeritus Professor of Linguistics

at Lancaster University. He is one of the founders of critical discourse

analysis, a branch of sociolinguistics or discourse analysis that looks at

the influence of power relations on the content and structure of writings.

Fairclough's theories have been influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin and Michael Halliday

on the linguistic field, and ideology theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis

Althusser, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu on the sociological one. (Source:

wikipedia.org)



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Research Interests

(Written by the author; source:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ias/profiles/norman-fairclough

Since the early 1980s, my research has focused on critical discourse analysis -

including the place of language in social relations of power and ideology, and how

language figures in processes of social change. My main current interest is in

language (discourse) as an element in contemporary social changes which are

referred to as 'globalisation', 'neo-liberalism', 'new capitalism', the 'knowledge

economy' and so forth. Over the past three years I have been working specifically on

aspects of 'transition' in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Romania, from a

discourse analytical perspective.

This research is based upon the theoretical claim that discourse is an element of

social life which is dialectically interconnected with other elements, and may have

constructive and transformative effects on other elements. It also makes the claim

that discourse has in many ways become a more salient and potent element of social

life in the contemporary world, and that more general processes of current social

change often seem to be initiated and driven by changes in discourse. Discourse

analysis, including linguistic analysis, therefore has a great deal more to contribute to

social research than has generally been recognised, especially when integrated into

interdisciplinary research projects.

My own recent contribution to this research has included three main elements:

Theoretical development of critical discourse analysis to enhance its capacity

to contribute to this area of social research

Developing approaches to linguistic analysis of texts and interactions whichare adapted to social research

Application of this theory and method in researching aspects of contemporary

social change

I have maintained research contacts with Lancaster since my retirement through



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collaborative projects in the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Linguistics

department on the 'knowledge-based economy', the Bologna reforms of higher

education in Europe, and 'moral economy'.

Key concepts

Here are presented the main concepts of theCritical Discourse Analysis(CDAfrom

now on) as were developed by Norman Fairclough.

Discourse is a category used by both social theorists and analysts on the one hand

and linguists on the other. Fairclough uses the term as many linguists, to refer

primarily to spoken or written language use, though he extends it to include semiotic

practice such as printed information and non-verbal communication. But referring to

language as a discourse, he considers language as a form of social practice. This

implies that language is a mode of action (socially reproductive) and also socially

shaping, or constitutive (creative, socially transformative). CDA explores the

tension between these two sides of the language use, the socially shaped and the

constitutive, Language is always constitutive of 1) social identities; 2) social relations

and 3) systems of knowledge and belief. CDA is then developed as a theory of

language which stresses in themultifunctionalityof language and which sees every

text as simultaneously having the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions

of language.

Language use is dynamically shaped. On the one hand, societies and particular

institutions within them sustain a variety of coexisting, contrasting and often

competing discursive practices or discourses. On the other hand, there is a

complex relationship between particular discursive events and underlying

conventions or norms of language use. Language may on occasion be used

appropriately but not always. This fact led Fairclough to develop the theories of

appropriateness.



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Fairclough conceptualizes conventions which underlie discursive events in terms of

orders of discourse. There is a complexity of the relationship between discursive

event and convention, where discursive events commonly combine two or more

conventional types of discourse, and texts are routinely heterogeneous in their

forms and meanings. The order of the discourse is the relationships of the

discursive practices(complementarity, inclusion/exclusion, opposition). The orders

of discourse in a society are the set and relationships between more local orders of

discourse.

The boundaries and insulations between and within orders may be points of conflict,

open to being weakened of strengthen, as a part of wider social struggles.

Categorization of discourses: Fairclough distinguishes between discourses (as a

count noun, so that be used in the plural form) defined as ways of signifying areas

of experience from a particular perspective (e.g. patriarchal versus feminist

discourses in sexuality (p132), and genres, defined as uses of language associated

with particular socially ratified activity types such as job interview or scientific

papers (p.132).

CDA aims systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and

determination between (a) discursive practices, events, and texts, and (b) wider

social and cultural structures, relations and processes (p.132)

Fairclough through CDA, investigates how discursive practices are ideologically

shaped by relations of power and struggles over power and explores how the

opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor

providing power andhegemony. Opacity means that the linkages between discourse

and ideology might be unclear to those involved.

Fairclough preaches for the education in critical language awareness in the

teaching of the mother tongue to equip learners with the capacities and

understanding of the powers and hegemony involved and to emancipatethem in

the struggle against alienation ofmarketizationand give them a meaningful choice



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to be democratic and effective citizens.

Some key definitions (p.135):

Discourse (abstract noun) language use conceived as social practice.

Discursive event instance of language use, analysed as text, discursive

practice, social practice.

Text the written or spoken language produced in a discursive

event.

Discourse practice the production, distribution and consumption of a text.

Interdiscursivity the constitution of a text from diverse discourses and

genres.

Discourse (count noun) way of signifying experiences from a particular

perspective.

Genre use of language associated with a particular social activity

Order of discourse totality of discursive practices of an institution, and

relations between them.



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Book Summary

The book is a collection of ten papers on critical discourse analysis which were

written between 1983 and 1992 and were published between 1985 and 1993.

Section A : Language, ideology and power

In this section, the author develops an analytical framework (theory and method) to

study language in its relationship to power and ideology and the struggle against

domination and oppression of linguistic forms.

1.- Critical and descriptive goals in discourse analysis

In this article, the author views social institutions as containing diverse

ideological-discursive formations (IDFs) associated to different groups of the

institution and there is usually one IDF which is clearly dominant. Dominant IDF has

the capacity to naturalize ideologies, to win acceptance as non-ideological

common-sense. The goal of CDA is to denaturalize the discourses. Naturalization

gives dominant ideologies tha status of common sense, and thereby makes them

opaque(there are no longer visible).

Assumptions: 1) the verbal interaction is a mode of social action and this

presupposes a range of structures; 2) these structures are also the products of

action, so actions reproduce structures.

To build his framework, Fairclough integrates micro and macro research and

identifies three levels of social phenomena: the social formation, the social institution,

and social action. The institutional frame includes formulation and symbolizations of

a particular set of ideological representations: particular ways of talking are based

upon particular ways of seeing (p.38). Ways of talking and seeing are inseparably

related. Social institutions are pluralistic and this leads to institutional struggles that

are connected to class struggles.

Even though some concepts developed in this paper were not taken in consideration

in further work (like the IDF concept), Fairclough considered that some aspects of



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this article are significant. First, the claim that ideologies are primarily located in the

unsaid (implicit propositions). Second, norms of interaction involving aspects of the

impersonal meaning and forms (i.e. turn-taking systems) may be ideological as well

as the content of texts. Third, the theorization of power as in part

ideological/discoursal. Even casual conversation has its conditions of possibility

within relations of ideological/discoursal power.

2. - Discourse representation in media discourse

The article is based on the analysis of a set of five newspaper articles and argues that

the detail of text is tuned to social structures and power relations within which the

media operate, and has ideological effects in mystifying relations of domination. The

paper is an application of the emergent CDA framework to a specific case and

identifies the convertionalisation of public discourse.

The articles are analyzed on the base of Direct Discourse (DD), Indirect Discourse

(ID) as converted DD and unsignalled codes (UNSIG) that is secondary, discourse

without being explicitly marked as represented discourse and which the author calls

dissemination. UNSIG is the main mode for dissemination, and all instances of

UNSIG involve dissemination.

The author identifies two tendencies in the representation of discourse in the five articles:

Tendency 1: low demarcation between primary and secondary discourse (p.61).

Newsgivers (the media) have come to adopt the position of mediators. This shift reflects

economic pressures to make news a more saleable commodity in order to win more readers and

advertising possibilities. The author identifies three roles of media: 1) animator the person who is

actually making the marks on paper; 2) the author the one who puts the words together and3)

the principal the one whose position is represented by the words. Newsgivers are animators,sometimes authors and even principals, when in reality they are not. Access to the media is most

open to socially dominant sectors and it can be regarded as transmitting the voices of social

power-holders. This doesnt mean that they are always transmitting a conscious distortion or

manipulation of the information; rather they can be regarded as built into common-sense



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professional practices. In this way, media legitimize and reproduce existing asymmetrical power

relationships by assimilating the voices of the powerful to voices of common sense.

Tendency 2: focus upon representation of the ideational meaning of the words used

(p.61).

News tends to be seen as very much a conceptual and ideational business (statements, claims,

beliefs and positions) rather than feeling, circumstances, social and interpersonal relationships. The

focus is on what and the how is left outside. This assumption is that words themselves are

ideationally transparent and the myth is that the media are a mirror to reality. It supposes that

reality is transparent and can be read without mediation or interpretation. News media can be

seen as an ideological process of considerable social importance.

3. - Language and ideology

In this article, the author explores the theoretical question of what sort of relationships are between

language and ideology. Ideologies reside in texts but it is not possible read off ideologies from

texts because meanings are produced through interpretations of texts and texts are open to diverse

interpretations.

Language is imbricated in social relations. Language is a material formof ideology, and language is

invested by ideology. Discourses have three interrelated dimensions: social practice, discoursal

practice and text. Ideology enters in the ideological elements of producing and interpreting a text

and in the ways in which these elements are articulated together and orders of discourse

rearticulated in discoursal events. Ideology is reflected on the content but also on the form.

Formal features of texts at various levels may be ideologically invested.

Hegemony, a concept that originates fromLenin but further elaborated by Gramsci, is leadership

as well as domination across the economic, political, culturaland ideological domains of a society

(p.76). Hegemonic ideologies become naturalised, or automatized in common sense. People are

faced with ideological dilemmas, which they attempt to resolve or contain through discoursal

forms of struggle. Hegemonic struggle can be conceptualized and analyzed in terms od the view of

discourse even though hegemony is a process at the societal level, whereas most discourse has a



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more local character.

An apparent democratization of discourse involves the reduction of power asymmetry between

people of unequal institutional power. Discoursal democratization is linked to political

democratization, and to the broad shift from coercion to consent, incorporation and pluralism in

the exercise of power. But it can be seen in pessimistic terms as illusions of democracy. For

instance, counselling, that has its origins in therapy, is now a very spread technique across many

institutional domains. Counselling is seen as giving space to people as individuals and look like a

counter-hegemonic practice. However, it has a disciplinary nature in various institutions.

Hegemonic struggle is partly through counselling and partly over counselling.

Limits of ideology. Not all discourse is irredeemably ideological. Furthermore, CDA can

systematize awareness, critique ideology and arise possibilities of empowerment and change.

Fairclough was later not happy with the view of ideology in this paper but underlined that the

features worth noting were the idea that discourse may be ideologically creative and productive,

the concept of ideological complex, the question of whether discursive practices may be

reinvested ideologically, and the broad sweep of features of texts that are seen as potentially

ideological (p.26)

Section B: Discourse and sociocultural change

4.- Discourse, change and hegemony

This article links the macro domain of state, government and policy with the micro domain of

discursive practice, by way of the concept of technologization of discourse.

Fairclough regards technologization of discourse as an important resource in attempts by dominant

social forces to direct and control the course of major social and cultural changes which are

affecting contemporary societies. This argument is based on the theory of power of Gramsci and

his concept of hegemony and on the consideration that hegemonic struggle is embedded to a

significant degree in the discursive practices of institutions and organizations.

Technologization of discourse is part of a struggle o the part of dominant social forces to modify



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existing institutional discursive practices, as one dimension of the engineering of social and cultural

change and the restructuring of hegemonies, on the basis of strategic calculations of the wider

hegemonic and ideological effects of discursive practices. Technologization of discourses is a

process of intervention with the objective of constructing a new hegemony to shape a new

synthesis between discourse practice sociocultural practice and texts. For example, social skills

training is a well-established application of social psychological research and technology of

government.

Technologization constitutes a powerful impetus towards standardization and normalization of

discourse practices, across as well as within institutions. However the engineering of social identity

may have pathological consequences as it may lead to a crisis of sincerity and a crisis of credibility

and a general cynicism. The gap between practices of accommodation and compromise and the

impetus within technologization of discourse towards more standardized and context-free

discourse practice generate strategies of resistance.

Technologization of discourse involves the combination of 1) research into the discursive practices

of social institutions and organizations, 2) redesign of those practices in accordance with particular

strategies and objectives, usually those of bureaucrats or managers, and 3) training of institutional

personnel in these redesigned practices.

5. - What might we mean by enterprise discourse?

This paper is an analysis of enterprise discourse in the political speeches of a minister in

Thatchers government, and in a brochure produced by his ministry. The article highlights the

diffuse nature in changes in discursive practices. A change appears explicitly in the political

speeches as shifting in the meanings of the word enterprise. The three meanings of the word

enterprise are: 1) engagement in arduous undertakings, 2) disposition of readiness to engage in

undertakings of difficulty or risk, and 3) private business as a collective noun. Fairclough

hierarchically orders in salience the different meanings of the word enterprise and explains how a

sociocultural change may be discoursally realized through a restructuring of such hierarchical

relations, by means of a manipulation of context and cotext.



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The author also identifies levels of explicitness of enterprise discourse. A most explicit level, where

enterprise discourse are overt discourse topics; a second level, the discoursal level, where

enterprise discourse is still overtly present in describable features of texts and a third level, a

subdiscoursal level, where enterprise discourse is an implicit interpretative resource.

Enterprise discourse is not a well-defined closed entity, but rather a set of tendencies and cannot

be located in any text. The focus needs to be rather on processes across time and social space of

text production and the wider strategies of texts readers.

6.- Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the

universities

In this paper, Fairclough analyzes of discourse samples which illustrates the marketization of higher

education in Britain. As examples, he uses extracts from advertisements for academic posts,

materials of a conference, a CV, and undergraduate prospectuses. The focus is on shifts in the

identities of groups within higher education, especially academics, and upon authority relations

between groups, for example, between institutional managements and academic staff or students.

Fairclough identifies three sets of interconnected developments in contemporary discursive

practices, characteristics of the language and discourse in late capitalist society:

1.- Contemporary society is post-traditional: This means that traditions have to be justified

against alternative possibilities rather than being taken for granted; that relationships in public

based automatically upon authority are in decline, as are personal relationships based upon rights

and duties. Peoples self-identity, rather than to be a feature of roles, is reflexively built up through

a process of negotiation. This negotiation requires highly developed dialogical capacities. The

informalization (or conversationalization) of public discourse can be seen as a colonization of

the public domain by the practices of the private domain. On the other hand, it can be seen as an

appropriation of private domain practices by the public domain.

2.- Reflexivity, in the sense of the systematic use of knowledge about social life for organizing and

transforming it, is a fundamental feature if contemporary society (Giddens, p138).

Technologization of discourse can be understood as the constitution of expert systems (as



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developed by Giddens) whose domain is the discursive practices of public institutions.

3.- Contemporary culture as promotional, consumer culture point to the marketization and

commoditization and about seeing the discourse as a vehicle for selling goods. The genre of

consumer advertising has been colonizing professional and public service orders of discourse,

generating many new hybrid partly promotional genres (such as the genre of contemporary

university prospectuses).

The colonization of discourse has pathological and ethical effects. There is a serious problem of

trust on the discourses but there is a deeper consequence: it is increasingly difficult not to be

involved oneself in promoting, because self-promotion is becoming part-and-parcel of

self-identity. This calls the ethics of language and discourse. A critical awareness of language and

discourse would then be a urgent prerequisite for democratic citizenship and a urgent priority for

language education.

Fairclough concludes that CDA is a resource for people who are trying to cope with the alienating

and disabling effects of changes imposed upon them.

7.- Ideology and identity change in political television

Like in the previous article, CDA is applied to discourses. Instead of analysing written documents,

in this article analyses media discourse specifically, one section of the late-night political

discussion and analysis programme which was broadcast during the 1992 general election in

Britain. Fairclough argues that the discourse practice of the programme effects a restructuring

between the orders of discourse of politics, private life, and entertainment, through a mixing of

some of their constituent genres and discourses. Chat is an emergent television genre that is an

institutionalized simulation of ordinary conversation as a form of entertainment and humour.

Humour takes an important role as it is taken as a ground-rule that requires any serious political

talk to be lightened by humour.. The domain of politics is then restructured through redrawing of

its boundaries with leisure and the media and the everyday life. The complex discourse practice is

realized in heterogeneities of meaning and form in the text. The complexity of the discourse

practice gives rise to a high level of ambivalence du to the mix of genres. The complexity appears



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also to place heavy demands upon participants and cause difficulties for them which are manifest in

disfluencies and in failures to observe the humoristic rule, which are treated as sanctionable

behaviour by other participants. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ideological effects of

these changes in political discourse.

Section C: Textual analysis in social research

8.- Discourse and text: linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse

analysis

CDA claims that close analysis of texts should be a significant part of social scientific analysis of a

whole range of social and cultural practices and processes. Some discourse analysts try to reduce

all of social life to discourse, and all of social science to discourse analysis. This is not the right

approach. Discourse analysis has to take into consideration the social and the culturalaspects and

also the linguistic-discursive forms of domination and exploitation. Critical awareness as a factor of

domination should be developed and spread.

CDA has to establish itself as a method in social scientific research and must move beyond a

situation of multidisciplinarity and pluralism towards interdisciplinarity, which implies a higher level

of debate from different approaches, methods and theories. Furthermore, Fairclough claims that

CDA papers should reproduce and analyse textual samples in the original samples in the original

language, despite the added difficulty for readers.

Even though the author observes a linguistic turn in social science, he exposes the four reasons

why textual analysis ought to have a more widely recognition as part of the methodologies of social

science:

The theoretical reason is that texts constitute one important form of social action (linking the

macro level with the micro level). An important point is also that language is widely

misperceived as transparent, so that the ideological effects of language are overlooked.

The methodological reason is that texts constitute a major evidence for grounding claims about



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social structures

The historical reason is that texts are sensitive barometers of social processes, movement and

diversity, and texts can provide a good indicator of social change.

The political reason is that through texts the social control and the social domination is exercised

(and indeed negociated and resisted).

CDA see texts as a powerful basis for analysis but what is also important for the analysis is what is

absent or omitted from texts. Choice entails exclusion as well as inclusion argues Fairclough

(p.210).

Structures and relations have become more unstable, and practices more diverse and open to

negotiation, such that there are many hybridizations of traditional medical, counselling,

conversational, managerial and marketing genres and discourses.

CDA needs a developed sense of and systematic approach to both context and text. The signifier

(form) and signified (content) constitute a dialectical and hence inseparable unity of the sign, so

that one-sided attention to the signified is blind to the essential material side and vice versa.

Section D: Critical language awareness

9. - Critical language awareness and self-identity in education

Power is predominantly exercised through the generation of consent rather than through coercion,

through ideology rather than through physical force. Change and instability make that forms of

power and domination are being radically reshaped, i.e. general processes of institutional

marketization and discursive facets of sociocultural processes ofdetraditionalization and

informalization and the technologization of discourse as a peculiarly contemporary form of

intervention in discursive practices to the sociocultural change.

Educational institutions are heavily involved in these general developments affecting language. First,

educational practices themselves constitute a core domain of linguistic and discursive power.

Second, many domains are mediated and transmitted by educational institutions. Third,



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educational institutions are involved in educating people about sociolinguistics order.

The author claims that CDA has an important role in the critical language awareness

programmes to develop the capacities of people for language critique, including their capacities for

reflexive analysis of the educational process itself. There are several reasons for the

implementation of these programmes. The poor record of British schools in foreign language

learning is part of the rationale; there is an emphasis upon developing insight into pattern and

learning to listen as conditions for success in foreign language learning.

Some official educational reports claim that is vital for schools to teach pupils standard English.

There is an assumption that schools can help iron out the effects of social class and equalize the

cultural capital of access to prestigious varieties of English but standard English is promoted

without developing a critical awareness of it. It also creates a socially legitimized stigmatization of

English varieties.

The author concludes that the founding motivation for CDA is the emancipation and the building

of emancipated forms of social life.

10. - The appropriacy of appropriateness

This article deals with the concept of appropriateness in language, and the commonplace view

that varieties of a language differ in being appropriate for different purposes and different

situations. Fairclough argues that appropriateness provides an apparent resolution of the paradox

that se of standard English is to be taught, while use of other varieties is to be respected; that an

appropriateness model of variation is the acceptable face ofprescriptivism; and that giving an

appropriateness view of language variation the status of knowledge inn language awareness

teaching serves an ideological role. He also suggests that the attempt to contain ethnicity- and

gender-related variation within the appropriacy model shows the need to go beyond it.

Language standardization is a matter of hegemony the hegemony of a particular class extended

to the linguistic sector of the cultural domain, manifested as the hegemony of a dialect.

According to Fairclough, learners should be encouraged to develop the ability to use standard



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English in conventional ways when they judge it to be necessary to do so, because they will be

disadvantaged if they do not develop that ability. At the same time, they should be encouraged to

see their own relationships and struggles as members of various communities and to contribute to

the shaping and reshaping of the sociolinguistic order. CDA should not push learners to

disadvantage and marginalization but it should equip them with the capacities of critical, creative

and emancipatory practice.


Critical Discourse Analysis - Norman Fairclough - Ignasi Capdevila

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