Analysis: Discourse
Why is Discourse Analysis Useful to this project?
All ideas are from Sandra Taylor’s article Taylor, Sandra C (2004)
Researching educational policy and change in 'new times': using critical
discourse analysis. Journal of Education Policy 19(4):pp. 433-451.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00001201/01/1201_2.pdf
Discourse analysts see discourse as part of social action.
Norman Fairclough suggests that discourse (semiosis) is particularly important now as an aspect of contemporary social practice [consistent with our NLS and DPA approaches]. He also suggests that there is a more conscious use of discursive strategies by policy-makers and others in pursuing institutional objectives.
Therefore, policy activists need to understand these strategies in order to be able to make their own discursive interventions in the field. [consistent with ANT in seeing policy as an unstable social project]
Specifically, critical discourse analysis can offer the following:
? A way of explaining the relationship between discursive/linguistic features of texts and wider social relations and processes, thereby offering a link between linguistic and more Foucauldian approaches to DA [quote from para at bottom of p. 3: “CDA explores how texts construct representations of the world, social relationships and social identities and there is an emphasis on highlighting how such practices and texts are ideologically shaped by relations of power”]
? It illuminates the politics of discourse in policy arenas, relation of policy texts with historical, social and cultural contexts they are part of; [so, for our purposes, consistent with DPA]
? It provides a framework for systematic analysis – demonstrating in detail how policy texts work
? It enables documentation and analysis of a complex, discursive space, characterised by multiple, overlapping and hybrid discourses. [cf Sanguinetti’s “discourse mapping”]
? It highlights marginal (submerged) discourses and silences
? It allows us to trace discursive shifts in policy processes [i.e. it can deal with change]
Which Documents did we analyse?
[links from key “pubs” page in main story] We chose the following documents to carry out a detailed discourse analysis. These seven documents cover the full timespan of the Changing Faces Project and each is significant in terms of the work it did in the field (following the categories suggested by Wodak [link to “fields of action grid] …. Below, we describe each one briefly and its significance for our study.
1. A Right to Read. BAS –1974
A campaign/pressure group document – presented to the Secretary
of State for Education.
2. Report: A strategy for the basic education of adults –ACACE
–1979
A report commissioned by the sec. Of state for education and science
3. Where do we go from here? – GateHouse Books – 1983
Both a reader for adult students and for teachers, policy makers etc –
giving the perspective of adults who want basic education. (a promotional
or consciousness raising text)
4. Adult Literacy – the first decade – ALBSU – 1985
Report and campaign document- the Unit as main information source and
pressure group
5. Basic Skills for life: DFEE – c. 1997
Report on provision and announcement of new government measures by the
Conservative government.
6. The Moser Report: A fresh start: improving literacy and numeracy –DES
–1999
(K’s copy) report and strategy document of a working party commissioned
by the new labour government.
7. Skills for Life: The national strategy –DFEE –2001
Official new labour government strategy for ABE.
What was our analysis strategy?
We developed a 3 stage discourse analysis method [add link to page with
How we carried out the Discourse Analysis: steps we followed that can
be used to analyse other documents ] We used this to explore the discursive
strategies used in each of the documents we chose for detailed analysis.
This strategy can be usefully applied to other policy documents. They
can also be applied to the interview texts though there are further features
that become relevant to these.
We do not offer our approach as a definitive “method” for critical discourse analysis. We have crafted for the purposes of this study but it may be adapted or extended by others interested in similar research problems.
The method we have developed draws on several sources, but mainly on Norman Fairclough’s work (see Fairclough for a good introduction to this).The sources we drew on were:………….
1. Ruth Wodak…[add link].from whom we have taken ideas about how to frame the overall discourse analysis and select appropriate documents to analyse….…..
2. Norman Fairclough from whom we have taken a set of questions to use to interrogate the texts e.g. what is the social problem here and whose interests does it serve and a repertoire of paradigmatic and syntagmatic features to attend to in the text [add link to his books]
3.
4. Jill Sanguinetti [add link]……from whom we have taken the
idea of “micro-practices of discursive resistance” such as
humour, distancing. These are especially applicable to the interview transcripts
where people are commenting on, passing their opinions of the public discourses
and narratives they work within as practitioners, learners and policy
actors.
5. Barbara Czarniawska [add link to her book] adds ideas from narrative analysis for more detail on the symbolic uses of language e.g. metaphor, synecdoche etc and the idea of emplotment
Additional resources on discourse analysis that we have found useful include………..
Sandra Taylor
Charles Antaki
Potter and Weatherall
How we carried out the Discourse Analysis: steps we followed that can be used to analyse other documents
Steps in our Discourse Analysis Strategy
[incorporating ideas from Wodak, Fairclough, Sanguinetti, Czarniaska and Taylor]
STAGE A Select and Contextualise Documents:
Wodak’s steps 1-4:
1. Identify object of study (including research question(s)
2. Identify fields of action and political control relevant to that object
of study
3. Assemble information on historical context and identify key public
discourses
4. Identify topoi (arguments or warrants) that mark public discourses
MH adds step 5:
5. Select key texts from relevant fields of action with justification and information about the authors and intended /actual audiences/ circulation in public and private domains etc.
STAGE B Map the Discourses present in each of the selected texts, referring
back to analysis of public discourses in Stage A. Note interdiscursivity
(The juxtaposition or combination of discourses within a single text;
multi-voicing; hybridity):
Wodak’s steps 5,7 and Sanguinetti’s step 2:
6. Identify interdiscursivity (noting both discrete and overlapping discourses,
relative prominence of different discourses) and intertextuality (reference
to other texts, identify “genre chains” showing how different
discourses and discourse topics travel across texts and fields chaining
of texts)
7. At this stage, work sequentially through texts, not on a theme by theme
basis
STAGE C: Analyse the Discursive Strategies and Resources used to construct
the text and make it do it’s work: the aim is to document in detail
the work being done by the text in representing the social world, identifying,
valuing and relating different elements of it [from Taylor and Fairclough]
Wodak’s step 6 and Fairclough’s and Sanguinetti’s lists
of possible strategies:
8. Approach the text both paradigmatically (explore structure of clauses
etc) and syntactically (explore use of semiotic resources, textures)
9. Analyse discursive strategies used in creating the topoi: transitions
between steps in the argument, warrants used, evidence referred to. In
particular look at the flow of arguments used to exclude or make distinctions
between groups.
10. Look for any of the following (from Fairclough):
a. contradictions, inconsistencies, change/fluidity,
b. how boundaries are set up around key concepts
c. Transitivity, modality (interrogative, imperative, assertion etc.).
d. Identify arguments and their presuppositions,
e. How dialogic is the text – are alternatives posed? Are different
voices heard?
f. Choice of Vocabulary,
g. Collocation – what other words regularly appear with key terms?
h. Pronouns and slippage from one person to the other
i. Metaphors, evaluative words.
11. Look for strategies of discursive resistance employed by authors
of texts: (from Sanguinetti who calls them “micro-practices”)
a. rational critique
b. Objectification (distancing)
c. Subversion
d. Refusal
e. Humour
f. The affirmation of desire (reconstituting self within a discourse that
legitimises and celebrates connections, relationship and desire –
p 170)
12. Look for narrative structures and features (from Czanaraswka) such
as emplotment and metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony
The text below needs to be fitted into the above method:
1. Identify how this document fits into the constellation of documents, discourses and events that we have mapped as being significant for the field of action (Wodak, Sanguinetti)
2. Identify the social problem we are looking at in this document and who does it benefit? (Fairclough)
3. The discursive features we look at as we go through a document include:
e.g.
Action (the effect the text can have on the field)
Materiality
Genres drawn on in the document (e.g. political, promotional, instructional,
policy, consultative)
Modality (e.g. dialogic, declarative, persuasive)
Agency (participants and non-participants, nominalisation, pronouns)
Silences
Contradictions
Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony
what’s the plot? Tragedy, romance, comedy, satire (Czarniawska)
Legitimation/authority/ warrants and topoi
Thematic discourses:
commodification
conversational style etc.
Discursive resistance (Sanguinetti)
Valuing (positive, negative, distancing, embracing etc)
1. Interdiscursivity: Map the discourses present in the text. Are the three perspectives identified earlier really in the texts as recognisable discourses (schooling, vocational, lifelong learning)? What other texts are mentioned or drawn upon (intertextuality)
2. If they are there, describe each of them in one or two sentences and say what the rationalising arguments for each of them are (Wodak’s “topoi”). This is so they could be recognised in other documents. How are these topoi constructed discursively and how are they used to exclude/include and discriminated between different persons or groups (Wodak, but also Fairclough on “identifying” function of a text.
3. Sum up how much the discourse has changed since “Right to Read”? Are there more continuities that discontinuities? Are there “submerged discourses” identifiable throughout?
4. How have the learner narratives been “sanitised”?