Unpacking the Power of Critical Discourse Analysis in Contemporary Societies

DISCOURSE

ANALYSIS

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 1

The term critical discourse analysis is the interdisciplinary approach that studies the discourse

that views the language as one of the forms of social practice. The scholar that are working in

the tradition of the critical discourse analysis argues that the social practises and the linguistic

practises comprise of one another and focusses on the investigation of the power relations

that are established and also reinforces through the use of the language (Corson, 1995).

The concept of critical discourse analysis is a contemporary approach that studies the

language and the discourse in the social institutions (Foucault, 1980). This concept mainly

focusses on the drawing on the poststructuralist theory of discourse and also the critical

linguistics. This further focusses on the social relations, identity, knowledge and the power

that is construed on the basis of the written and the spoken texts in the various communities,

schools and the classrooms. There have been of the articles that have been written in the

historical contexts and the theoretical precedents for the sociological models that helps in

studying the languages, discourse and the text in the education. There are many of the

unresolved issues and the challenges for the discourse analysis and the sociology of education

(Cazden, 1988).

The following demonstrates an understanding of the discourse analysis:

1. Language and the discourse in the contemporary education: in this context, there

is an unprecedented education expansion and the growth in the populations, post-war

sociology of the education that has focussed on the urgent issues in and around the

institutional structure, the production of the skilled workers and this increase caused

in an access and participation. By the year 1960, various attempts were made for the

purposes of explaining and redressal of the minority in the education and the lower

socioeconomic groups that has generated the main debates in the sociolinguistics and

the ethnography of the communication (Henriques, 1984). The work has focussed on

the development of the language and the acquisition of the acquisition that has served

as the key factors in the differential student achievement and the intergenerational

reproduction of the educational inequality (Halliday, 1995). There have been of the

debates relating with the role of the social class that is somewhatspecific to the speech

codes and the linguistics deficits along with the educational consequences of the

multilingualism and the institutional status of the non-standard English that has not

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 2

been fully resolved till now. Even now, after many years have passed, the educators

still face the same challenge of the new cultural practices, media texts and the hybrid

cultural identities and the emergent social formations and the institutions and the

changing structures of work and economy. The large scale of immigration and the

emergence of the multicultural and the multilingual nation states have marked the ear

of the post war. It were some of the questions like these that raised many concerns

and also addressed on the focussing on how the language, discourse and the text

figure in the educational processes, practices and the outcomes could be used

(Bourdieu, 1991).

2. Poststructuralist and Postmodern Discourse Theory: the development of the new

sociology of the education in the early years of 1970’s, there was a key moment in the

application of the Western social philosophy and sociology of the educational theory

and the problems (Luke, 2016). The phenomenological, symbolic, interactionist and

the neo-Marxian approaches have helped in the studying of the identity, knowledge

and the change in the institutions that has led to the development and the application

of the various different methods of interpretation when it comes to educational

research (Kress, 1989). These included the action research, the literary analysis, the

revisionist historiography and the critical ethnography. But these are the various

approaches that are very often conflated with the later post structuralist and the

postmodern social theory under the general category of the critical theory (Ball,

1990). When the French discourse theory was being followed, it led to the follow of

the educational research from the translation and the dissemination of the work of the

various researchers in England and America during the years of 1970’s and the

1980’s. The main thing that separated the French poststructuralist theory and the

Anglo American poststructuralist theory was the recognition of the centrality of the

language and the discourse. As per the various authors, the language and the discourse

is not very transparent or neutral when it comes to describing and analysing the social

and the biological world. In fact, they are effectively construct, regulate and control

the concept of knowledge, social relations and the institutions. Foucault sought an

answer to the question as to whether the natural and the social worlds are knowable,

accessible and analysable without the discourse to the constitutive forces of discourse.

He did not put an end to his understanding of language but simply referred to the

reiterated key words and the statements that recurred in the local texts of all the kinds.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 3

These are the statements that appeared to be intertextually across the various texts and

consisted of the familiar patterns of the disciplinary and the paradigmatic knowledge

and the practice. In order to illustrate, one might speak of the discourses of physics or

the politics but also specify the fine grained categories of discourse like the quantum

mechanics or the socialist politics and this depends upon the texts contained in the

question and this is the main aim of the analysis. The various disclosures have both

the disciplinary and the disciplining effects. They are able and delimit the fields of

knowledge and also the inquiry and they also govern what can be said, thought and

done within the stated fields. The post structuralism theory aims to examine the way

of writing, texting and the discourses that are constructive phenomena that helps in

the shaping of the identities and the practices of the human subjects. The

poststructuralist theory aims at examining the historical configurations of the

discourse that have construed the various new kinds of the human subjects. He further

argued that the institutionalised discourses comprised of the categorical grids of the

specification that successfully classified and regulated the identities of the people,

bodies, domestic and the civil spaces and the social practice of the various different

relations of knowledge and power. Such of the discourses have worked down on the

local situations of the social institutions in the various ways that is beyond

explanation by reference to any of the roles of any individual or the group. This has

led to the answering of the various questions that are raised by the most essential

human subjects, the individual agents and the social realities that are independent of

their dynamic historical construction in the social and the cultural discourses. There

were many of the different theories that were offered by different authors (Discourses,

2016). The first was given by Foucault that shifted the attention on to the regulatory

nature of the discourse whereas Derrida questioned the cultural texts that could have

some intrinsic author or the canonical state as the accounts of the truths about the

phenomenal world. This was the approach that was followed by the different

researchers (Digital commons, 2016).

3. Educational Applications of Discourse Analysis: the term discourse analysis helped

in a significant impact on the educational research in the ear of post war. The term

described the interdisciplinary family of the methodologies and the approaches to the

study of the language and the text that showed the various linguistics, literary theory

and the cultural studies, philosophy of the language and the sociology and the

psychology. The term was being used for the purposes of describing the linguistics

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 4

analysis of the semantic structures that were well above the level of the sentence.

With time, the work of the discourse analysis has changed and the outstanding task

for the critical discourse analysis was to provide the detailed analysis of the cultural

voices and the exist in the local educational sites and also attempted to provide the

theoretical and also connected the same with the understanding of the power and

ideology in the broader social formations and configurations. In many of the ayes, this

was a restatement of an archetypal task of educational sociology. The main work of

this theory was to link the specific educational processes with the systematic

sociological outcomes. But then, it is also true that the task has been framed by the

challenge of the post structuralism. The main work was to theorise and also describe

the social change that exists between the word and the material world (Jaffer

Sheyholislami, 2016).

4. Critical Discourse Analysis: the critical discourse analysis means the use of an

ensemble of the various techniques for the purposes of studying the textual practices

and the use of language use as the social and the cultural practices. It helps in building

the broad theoretical orientations. This form of discourse analysis always begins with

the systematic asymmetric of the power and resources between the speakers and the

listeners, readers and the writers that are able to link the linguistics and the social

resources. In this way, the presupposition of the critical discourse analyse sin the

institutions like the schools could act as the gatekeepers of the mastery of the

discursive resources (Ojs, 2016).

The concept of discourse analysis is the methodology that enables the vigorous assessment of

what is meant when the language has been used for describing and explaining the assessment

(Baker 1989). The following is the definition of the same:

'to 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; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and

are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power' .

There are various texts, languages, communications that must always necessarily form a part

of the social context since they help in shaping and informing the wider processes within the

society. This helps in reporting upon the world and they imbue the same within the stated

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 5

meaning. The said analysis helps in fabricating, shaping the various perspectives and call the

world into being. Discourse can be considered as the active relation into reality and this has

the following characteristics:

• Genres which are the ways of acting

• Discourse which are the ways of representing

• Styles that are the ways of being (Apple, 1996).

Hence, in the nutshell discourse means the being and the doing along with the way of doing

any specific practice that is understood and is also interpreted as the demonstrative of the

further analytical elements of the study which are the production, form and the reception.

This is the structure and the relationship between the three and the interplay amongst them

through the political and the cultural concerns that helps in the development of the myriad of

the social effects of the discourse. This is the social effect which is dependent upon the access

of the audience, comprehension, use and the resistance of using this discourse. The discourse

must be used in isolations rather than the discourses and act upon one another in an act of

intertextuality. One of the authors by the name of Bakhtin during the year 1986 stated the

following:

“The author has his own inalienable right to the word, but the listener also has his own rights,

and those whose voices are heard in the word before the author comes upon it also have their

rights.'

Hence, the entire article can be summed up by saying that the analysis of the critical

discourse is the examination the form, structure and the content of discourse and extends

form the grammar and the wording that is employed when it comes to the creation to its

reception and interpretation by some of the wider audience. The employment of the verbs,

pronouns and nouns within discourse is as much part of this analysis as the assessment of the

content and tone of the discourse. The methodology facilitates an assessment based upon

more than simple quotations but upon what the discourse is doing and what it is being asked

to do in its production, dissemination and consumption (History, 2016).