Levels of Analysis in Critical Discourse - Term Paper Example

 Discourse Analysis Introduction Discourse analysis refers to examination of structural variations in language according to the varied pattern of people’s utterance when they participate in different domains of their social life. Language occurs in a particular social set up and never in isolation. It occurs among people, at different times and in a specific situations and circumstances. Specific semiotic signs for instance symbol and gestures accompany language. A variety of value, ideology, attitudes and emotions affects the language. Discourse divides the world into distinct categories, into groups such as political and medical discourses. There are dominant forms of discourse that are legally recognized by the law and less dominant and marginalized discourses that are often assumed. Discourse analysis is categorized as the critical discourse analysis and the conversation analysis (Gee, 2014 p.5). Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Critical discourse analysis takes into consideration what is included and omitted in particular text. The Critical Discourse analyst takes into account the different constructs of a particular text and the implications of these alternative constructs (Bednarek and Caple, 2014, p. 135). CDA is a type of basic discourse research that scrutinizes enactments of diverse social abuse of power, social inequality and dominance. The medium for enactment of concern is through text and talks. The critical discourse analyst therefore has a role of identifying, comprehending and resisting some social inequity in the society (Johnstone, 2008 p.12) Critical discourse analysis finds use in analysis of a wide spectrum of texts and articles covering a extensive topics including racism, homophobia, and crime among other issues (Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000, p. 447). The critical discourse analyst is majorly politically motivated in their analysis work on a specific text. Through the critical discourse analysis techniques, it is possible to analyze virtually all articles. Different elements considered in writing a given text normally portrays the underlying ideology of the text. Considerations such as the perspective from which the text is written and the terms selected in naming individual all impact on the ultimate ideology of the text (Fairclough, 2013 p. 15). Levels of Analysis in Critical Discourse Analysis The emphasis by the critical discourse analysis is that the studying of various articles in their complete social context and historical context. Different levels of analysis exist in the critical discourse analysis. The three levels involved are the micro, macro and meso analysis. The macro analysis entails the analysis of the relationship between the text and the wider social contexts and ideologies. The meso analysis on the other hand emphasizes the context of text production and the text reception. It focuses on the place of production of the text, individual involved in the production process and the tentative audience or users of the text. At the microanalysis level, there is analysis of the specific themes and issues in the texts. In addition, the language use and the various devices employed in the text are analyzed (Ginns, Martin, & Marsh, 2013 p. 24). Method of Linguistic Analysis I the CDA Several items can be implied from the grammatical choices and the lexical choices the author makes in any given text. The choices of different linguistic techniques are not random in the ideological term and remain particularly selected to exhibit a particular ideology. The CDA are used in the analysis of the linguistic devices used in the text. Some commonly analyzed devices in the text include (Jones, 2004 p. 32). Active and Passive Voice Use of different voices in a text can give equally different implication of the text. The author’s choice for different voices is crucial for discourse analysis of the text. Active voice when used by the author clearly denotes directly both the doer and recipient of the information. The active voice creates a perception on the author’s intentions relating to concerned individual. Passive verbs on the other hand, denote the action done and recipient on the action. However, passive verbs avoid direct blames on doer of the action. In critical discourse analysis, the implications of such variant of voice can indicate myriad perspective of view of the author. From such voice, deeper understanding of the text can remain facilitated. Different ideologies are generated from the different voice used in the text. Nominalization can also be equally be used, in this specific instance, the noun form of a verb is used to create further emphasis on the text. For instance, ‘Revenge on the enemies’ create an emphasis can illicit different social ideology Naming Naming also perpetuate diverse ideology on the text. The form and the way the author selects to refer to different characters in the text significantly portray the particular purpose. Naming is a powerful indicator of the author’s perspective of view concerning particular subjects in the text. Use of alternative names can totally change the perceived ideology. For instance, ‘ a thousand people die of gender based violence in this locality’ and ‘ a thousand women die of gender based violence in this locality’. The use of name ‘people’ in the first sentence and’ women’ in the second statement creates a different ideology on the subject matter, domestic violence In addition, the description of people in a particular text exposes diverse ideology on the social outlook of the text. For instance, ‘the president is appointing his cabinets today’ and ‘the corrupt and nepotistic president is appointing his cabinet today’. The critical discourse of evaluation of such sentences about the same president results to very different point of understanding on the president. The description used in the second sentence is primarily exposing and creating negative ideologies towards the president. Pre-modifiers The pre-modifiers used in the text results to diverse ideology concerning the text. The pre-modifiers used modify the names of the subjects and objects in the text that ultimately results into a different interpretation of the text. For example, Professor Tim, the most learned man in our nation, has carried out many researches on Discourse Analysis. The two use of a pre-modifier in the second sentence portrays the professor so differently. The author may therefore, selectively use particular pre-modifiers in the analysis of the text. These modifiers equally results to different ideology in the social discourse. Indirect Quotes In cases where the there is reporting on a given issue without the need of mentioning the source of the information in terms of individuals, indirect quoting are used. Indirect quoting are often applied in the reporting of the pool reports regarding a particular outcome. For example, more than fifty percent of the Scottish voted No to their independence from the United Kingdom. Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis is another renowned method of discourse analysis. Unlike the critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis focuses on the daily conversation. It primarily focuses on the basic daily interactive and normal construction of the conversation. Conversation analysis originated from ethnomethodology. The division of the sociologist group has facilitated it. Due to such characteristics, conversation analysis has specific characteristics (Stivers, 2015, p. 1). Conversation is the unplanned, spontaneous and the daily exchange of different talks among many people or between two given individuals. In a normal conversation, the involved parties tends to take turn and participants tends to associative moves that accompanies there speech. Conversation analyst bases their principles on the fact that it is both managed in an interactional and local perspective. This implies that the conversation is organized both as a unit, and in a cooperative way, the organization is a dealt with at the organization at an individual’s local stage, which involves the sequential utterance. Methods of Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis analyses the conversation based on those participating in the conversation. It explores on the real intention and the meaning of conversation and build on other implied course of conversation. To achieve the objectivity of analysis, conversation analysis makes use of the degree on interruption. One utterance induces over the other, the misunderstanding entailed in conversation, observed hitches and cases of repair ion the conversation. Conversation analysis bases its strength on the conception of participants on intent of the conversation. Procedures and due expectations of the participant to the understanding of the conversation is the main target of the conversation analyst. Conversation contrary to the monologue, can gives the analyst an important analytical source and resource. Due to the response of obtained in turn, there second response offer analysis of the first statement. The analysis offered in such a case is not only important for the participants of the conversation but also to the analyst (Orpin, 2005 p. 40). The importance of utterance or the impact of conversion is determined in respect to its location in the sequence of the related conversation actions. The course of conversation is influenced by the preceding action and takes note of the anticipated action in the course of conversation. There is construction and the designing of participants own speech at the same time understanding the speech of the other party. The participant also design there subsequent actions to take into consideration of the speaker’s identity and consequently there interest. The nature of any utterance in both designed and derived interpretation depends on the context, which include verbal and non-verbal aspects. Every individual tends to have a subjective interpretation of the utterance in conversation. Whereas, an inter-subjective interpretation of the utterance also exists in the sense that it depends on the context of conversation (Gross, 2014 p. 500). Speech Act Utterance is performativity in nature. They find use in accomplishing various actions. According the conversation analysis, the act of speech can be categorized into several groups. The different groups are; Commissive acts that tend to involve the speaker in the course of action. Commissive act involves the speaker and mainly tend to get it to persuade them into action. The speaker is constrained to promise over an issue, give a guarantee and make the due commitment in the story line. In directive act, the recipient of the action is engaged into a particular action. The directive acts demand more action from the recipient such as telling more and giving a promise and such activity. The recipient is mostly engaged in the decision and the action in a particular context. The assertive on the other hand tends to predispose the belief of the concerned speaker on the propositional content of their utterance asserts. The acts are employable in reporting and making of the announcement and such actions in the course of conversation. The speech acts can also be expressive in nature. The intent of such is to elaborate and compliment the speaker’s state psychologically. In contrast, specific speaker does the declaration speech act. In the declaration act, the speaker makes a declaration in regards to a particular action and the recipient. Various acts of speech illustrated are only effective when interpreted in the context of the speech, taking the due considerations of the sequence of speech and the person involved in the speech. Therefore, it is crucial to consider structural form of the conversation in analyzing the act of speech presented by such a given conversation. The conversation analysis takes into serious consideration the act of turn taking in a conversation (Damico et al, 2105 p.15) Turn- Taking Turn taking forms an important aspect of conversation. It entails the sequence of information flow of the participant’s involvement in the conversation. The time length between the two-participant speeches may take fairly a shorter duration and does not always occur in isolation. Discussion and Conclusions From the preceding discourse analysis methods, it is noteworthy that critical discourse analysis is concerned majorly with the written texts and articles. Significant weakness of CDA is that analysis of the text is subjective to the analyst. On the other hand, in conversation analysis, analysis takes into considerations the context of conversation, speaker involved and such details in analysis of the conversation. The contextual view of the conversation may present a limitation to accurate analysis. The two analysis methods however provide a discourse analysis and leads to the finer interpretation of the written and spoken texts and articles. Bibliography Bednarek, M, & Caple, H., 2014, 'Why do news values matter? Towards a new methodological framework for analysing news discourse in Critical Discourse Analysis and beyond', Discourse & Society, 25, 2, pp. 135-158. Blommaert, J., & Bulcaen, C., 2000. Critical discourse analysis. Annual review of Anthropology, 447-466 Damico, J, Tetnowski, J, Lynch, K, Hartwell, J, Weill, C, Heels, J, & Simmons-Mackie, N., 2015, 'Facilitating Authentic Conversation: an intervention employing principles of constructivism and conversation analysis', Aphasiology, 29, 3, pp. 400-421. Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge Gee, J. P. (2014). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis 4th Edition: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Ginns, P, Martin, A, & Marsh, H 2013, 'Designing Instructional Text in a Conversational Style: A Meta-analysis', Educational Psychology Review, 25, 4, pp. 445-472 Gross, C 2014, 'Couple Narratives and Adult Attachment - Using Conversation Analysis in Assessment', British Journal Of Psychotherapy, 30, 4, pp. 499-516. Johnstone, B. (2008). Discourse analysis. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Jones, PE 2004, 'Discourse and the Materialist Conception of History: Critical Comments on Critical Discourse Analysis', Historical Materialism, 12, 1, pp. 97-125. Orpin, D 2005, 'Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Examining the ideology of sleaze', International Journal Of Corpus Linguistics, 10, 1, pp. 37-61, Academic . Stivers, T., 2015, 'Coding Social Interaction: A Heretical Approach in Conversation Analysis?', Research On Language & Social Interaction, 48, 1, pp. 1-19. Read More