10

Chapter II

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

'There is no knowledge without discourse".

(Jaques Lacan in Lemaire, 1977)

2.0. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the critical discourse

analysis which I intend to use as the conceptual apparatus to read the print

advertisements. The chapter discusses briefly the linguistic tum that caused the

emergence of discourse analysis and the approaches to discourse analysis. It then

details the critical and the non-critical approaches to discourse analysis by defining

the key terms discourse and text in the light of these approaches. The chapter argues
\
that non-critical approaches to discourse analysis, though methodologically sound, are

purely descriptive. Therefore, it has been pointed out that, CDA should be endorsed to

understand and unmask the ideologies, prejudices, inequalities, discriminations and

power relations that are embedded in language use. At the end it has been

demonstrated that for the present purpose CDA is a better tool kit than the NCDAs to

establish the constitutive role of language use.

2.1. Setting the stage

Linguistics has conventionally been defined as the systematic or scientific

study of language. Within the discipline of linguistics there are two broad approaches:

the formal or structural linguistic approach and the functional or sociolinguistic

 11

approach. The formal linguistics studies the sentence and its constituents in isolation

from the context. It mainly examines the phonemes and morphemes and the relations

they form to constitute sentences that are syntactically and semantically well formed.

2.2. Structuralist and mentalist approaches

The Saussurean structuralism, with the publication of Course in General

Linguistics (1974[1916]), has seminally influenced the methods adopted for research

in structural linguistics. Saussure was writing at a time when the scientific status of
'" .
linguistics was threatened by an increasingly dogmatic insistence upon the subjective

side to linguistic facts. Goodrich (1987:21) observes that to save the objective of

linguistics from disintegrating into the hands of a variety of disciplines, Saussure

proposed the constitutive distinction between the language system (langue) and the
I
speaking subject, (parole). For Saussure, it is this distinction which makes the science

of linguistics possible. Saussure was interested in the linguistic system, the langue,

and how it is related to the reality it constructs. He conceived langue as a systematic

and universal unity and is best studied as a static and ahistorical system. He mainly

looked at the complex ways in which a sentence can be constructed and in the way its

form determines its meaning. He was hardly interested in how langue is related to the

user and his/her socio-cultural position. Thus, linguistics, in Saussurean tradition, is

the synchronic study of langue. (the system) not the parole (the use). He justifies this

position in the following way:

We must from the very outset take langue as our starting point of departure

and use langue as the norm of other manifestations of language ... Taken as a
 12

whole, language is many-sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas

simultaneously, physical, physiological, and psychological- it belongs both to

the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human

facts, for we cannot discover its unity. Langue, on the contrary, is a self

contained whole.

(1974:09)

Langue is thus conceived as a self-sufficient and logically coherent system of

signs separated from what is individual, the subjective parole. Saussure regarded

parole as not amenable to any systematic study as it is essentially an individual

activity. He believed that individuals use language in unpredictable ways in

accordance with their personal and social needs. That is why he kept parole -

language in use, outside the territory of research.

The entry of generative syntax with the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic

Structures (1957) added a new dimension to the study of Saussurean langue. The

Chomskyan mentalist paradigm attaches a new significance to the study of language:

the study of language as knowledge. For Chomsky, language is a reflexive system,

mirror of the mind - a mental phenomenon. He believes that by a detailed study of

language one might hope to reach a better understanding of how human mind

produces and processes language:

There are a number of questions that might lead one to undertake a study of

language. Personally, I am primarily intrigued by the possibility of learning

 13

something from the study of language that will bring to light inherent

properties of human mind.

(Quoted in Radford, 1988: 1)

Chomsky's assumption thus is to use the arguments about the nature of

language to inform the theories about the nature of the mind. The intricacies with

which language operates at multiple levels implicitly reflect the intricacies of the

human mind. He has announced that the objective of a linguistic enquiry is to study

the structures but not the functions of language:

If we hope to understand human language and the psychological capacities on

which it rests, we must first ask what is, not how or for what purposes it is

used.

(1968:62)

Thus, observes Raymond Williams (1977:27), the living speech of human

beings in their specific social relationships in the world was theoretically reduced to

instances and examples of a system which lay beyond them.

2.3. Sociolinguistic approach

The fundamental flaw of Saussurean and Chomskyan linguistics (ignoring the

parole) was systematically critiqued and exposed by the sociolinguists. Contradicting

Saussure, they asserted that language use was shaped socially not individually. They

are: Hymes (1971), Labov (1972), Halliday (1978) and Bernstein (1971). Their
 14

argument is that any study of language structures in isolation from their proper social

structures is partial. Apart from projecting the importance of language variation in the

socio-cultural context (as opposed to the homogeneityllanguage autonomy of

Chomskyan school), the sociolinguists have emphasised that text and context are

inseparable and that the steps to study a language must coincide with the study of the

social situation that has produced it. That is, any grammar of a language is meaningful

only when it conforms to the grammar of society. Therefore Hymes (1971), in his

seminal work on communicative competence, argues that mere grammatical

competence, as expounded by Chomsky (1957) is partial if the speaker does not have

communicative competence. Communicative competence implies the tacit social,

psychological, cultural and linguistic knowledge that govern appropriate use of

language. It includes the ability to use where, when and how of an utterance. This is a

radical departure from the priorities announced by Saussure and Chomsky for
. \

linguistics.

Thus setting the ground firmly, sociolinguists believe that the nexus between

language and the social context is inseparable. Austin (1962) and Searle (1969)

further argue that the moment we start to study how language is used in social

interaction, it becomes apparent that communication becomes impossible without

shared knowledge and assumptions between speakers and hearers, and that any study

of a text within its context should make the study functional and social. Thus, the

social or functional approach to language study, which includes discourse analysis,

endeavours to unravel the complex networks and underpinnings of a society.

 15

2.4. Discourse analysis

The interest to extend the interdisciplinary perspective to study connected talk

and text has lead to the advent of discourse analysis. Zellig Harris (1952) was the first

linguist to use the word discourse in a limited, technical sense for analysing what he

calls language beyond a clause. For Harris, discourse is 'sentence writ large'; it is

quantitatively different but qualitatively the same phenomenon. He saw discourse as a

manifestation of formal regularities across clauses or sentences in combination.

Harris' approach to discourse analysis is, undoubtedly, a theoretical and

methodological extension of linguistic structuralism. Since then different scholars

within linguistics and within other areas of social sciences and humanities have used

the term differently. As a result of this heterogeneous application, the tenn discourse

seems to be shrouded in some ambiguity and different researchers take its different

meanings. Widdo~son (1995: 157) observes that 'discourse is a contentious area of

enquiry'. Few discourse analysts have defined the word discourse and text without

prefixing the clause 'it is difficult to define the discourse ... '. Fairclough (1992) says:

Discourse is a difficult concept, largely because there are so many conflicting

and overlapping definitions formulated from various theoretical and

disciplinary standpoints. Further, discourses differ with the kind of institutions

and social practices in which they take shape; and with the positions of those

who speak and those whom they address.

(1992: 03)

The result is that there is a terminological turmoil; we not only have the terms

discourse and text to define appropriately but also have a variety of discourses.
 16

Though there are diverse definitions emerging from diverse conceptual stand points

about what language actually is, there appears to be a common agreement among

discourse analysts about the material for discourse analysis; that is: language at

extended levels either actually used in spatio-temporal and socio-cultural contexts or

wholly concocted

2.5. Text

In the discourse studies available in conventional linguistics, the notion of text

is not situated on the same plane as that of discourse (or the clause, the syntagm and

so on). For Widdowson (1995:159), text is that which is meaning potential, be it a

sign or chains of signs, and discourse is the process of reading the text. For Stubbs

(1983:05), the terms discourse and text are often ambiguous and confusing. For Chafe
\
(1992), the two terms appear in free variation:

The terms discourse and text are used in similar ways; both terms may refer to

a unit of language larger than the sentence: one may speak of a discourse or a

text.

(1992:300)

For Crystal (1987:307), they refer to two different things: "text refers to a

stretch of language recorded or transcribed for the purpose of analysis and

description". For text linguists (Beaugrand and Dressler; 1981), texts are seen as
..
language units that have a definable communicative function, characterised by such

principles as cohesion and coherence and informativeness which can be used to

 17

provide a fonnal definition of what constitutes their identifiable textuality or texture.

In this stJldy the tenn text is viewed in a broader Hallidayan (1978) and Barthean

(1977) sense which includes not only the verbal but also the non-verbal signifying

practices of all sizes and shapes of the advertisements which are meaning potential.

2.6. Discourse and discourses

The routine use of the word discourse means a lecture such as a discourse on

the Gita. In the strict fonnal linguistic sense discourse refers to 'study of connected

speech or writing occurring at supra sentential levels, i.e., at levels greater than the

sentence' (Harris, 1952). In the fonnal approaches to discourse analysis, the term

discourse is used to refer to the level of language organisation beyond that of the

sentence while text is a single instance of discourse realisation. In other words,

I
discourse represents the 'system' where as text is 'a product' of the system. Thus, it

has been construed that discourse represents the deep structure phenomena and text its

surface structure realisation.

The issue is further complicated by the use of the tenn discourse both as a

mass noun and as a count noun. When used as a mass noun, it roughly means the

same as language use or language in use. As a count noun a discourse means a

relatively subset of a whole language used for specific social or institutional purposes.

This usage carries the implication that "discourse is a way of ordering categories of

thought and knowledge, a kind of treatise" (McHoul, 1994). In the critical branches of

sociology and philosophy, for instance in Foucault (1971), the tenn discursive carries

the sense of something which is textually or linguistically produced McRoul

 18

explains this phenomena by saying that Foucault's thesis on madness may be referred

to as discursively constructed within certain forms of knowledge or disciplines for

certain political or ideological purposes.

The notion of discourse which is advanced in the critical studies of language

(Fowler 1992, Kress 1978, Dijk 1993, Fairclough 1992, Wodak 1989), and

social/critical semiotics (Hodge and Kress, 1988) is that of the symbolic (verbal and

non-verbal) enunciation of world views for maintaining the existing relations of

power. Gunther Kress, one of the pioneers of Critical Linguistics points out that

discourse is a category that ...

.. belongs to and derives from the social domain, and text is a category that

belongs to and derives from the linguistic domain. The relation between the
\

two is one of realization; discourse finds its expression in text.

(1978:28)

Explaining this stand further Fairclough observes that:

A text is a product rather than a process- a product of the process of text .

production. ..the term discourse refers to the whole process of social

interaction of which a text is just a part. This process includes in addition to

the text the process of production, of which the text is a product, and the

process of interpretation, for which the text is a resource.

(1989:24)
 19

Considering the polysemic or to use Volosinov's (1929) term, multiaccentual,

nature of the sign, one cannot, however, state that this is a straightforward relation.

Because, as Kress (1985) says that 'anyone text may be the expression or realisation

of a number of competing and contradictory discourses'.

Such a view in essence points to the fact that social institutions such as

classroom, courtroom, family, military, advertising and so on use language in distinct

ways. Their use of language is dependent on their place and their role in the social

processes. Kress explains that discourses are 'systematically organised sets of

statements' which give expression to the meanings and values of the institution they

come from:

In relation Ito certain areas of social life that are of particular significance to a

social institution, a discourse will produce a set of statements about that area

that will organise, define, describe, delimit, and circumscribe what is possible

and impossible to say with respect to it, and haw it is to be talked about.

(1978:28)

For instance in the discourse of power and authority, social agency is assigned

In particular ways and this will be articulated in particular transitivity forms; or

specific modal forms. The use of honorifics systematically expresses relations of

power. In this way a given discourse, say the discourse of advertising, uses certain
. quite characteristic linguistic and non-linguistic features which are expressive of

consumption, persuasion, sensuousness, glamour, exaggeration, and so on to

 20

topicalise specific aspects of the discourse. The point to be emphasized in the scope of

the present study is that in the case of adverts, the mode of expression cannot happen

in isolated expressions, nor can it happen through stretches of connected speech alone.

Instead these linguistic features are supplemented, complemented, reinforced,

replaced, inflected and subverted by other semiotic systems such as images, colours,

pictures, postures, people, graphics, etc. The ways in which these symbolic entities

are positioned in adverts are quite symptomatic and characteristic of this domain.

Within the scope of the present study the terms discourse and text are defined

in the following ways. Discourse is a study of extended, institution specific, symbolic

(both the verbal and the non-verbal) enunciation of ideologies for achieving social

consensus for the purpose of maintaining the status quo of the existing order of things

while text is its material realisation.

\

2.7. Approaches to discourse analysis

Contemporary scholars (McDonnell 1986, McHoul 1994, Fairclough, 1992,

Dijk 1993, Schiffiin 1994, Wood and Kroger 2000, Wodak and Mayer 2001) of

discourse analysis have observed that there are a number of approaches to study

discourse. In this section an attempt is made for a comparative study of the

approaches to discourse analysis that are in vogue. These approaches are discussed in

terms of the critical and non-critical paradigms to emphasise why critical approaches

to discourse analysis have been endorsed for doing the discourse analysis of the

adverts.
 21

I would first like to discuss non-critical approaches, so that it becomes easier

later on to comprehend the critical approaches to discourse analysis. The approaches

to discourse analysis have been divided as critical and non-critical on the basis of the

way they offer answers to the question: 'What is language?' The approaches of

discourse analysis which look at language as a static, transparent and reflexive

medium are brought under 'non-critical' (NCDA) and the approaches which assume

. language as a constitutive medium are discussed as 'critical' approaches to discourse

analysis (CDA). Fairclough (1992) explains:

Critical approaches differ from non-critical approaches in not just describing

discursive practices but also showing how discourse is shaped by relations of

power and ideologies, and the constructive effects discourse has upon social

identities, ~ocial relations and systems of knowledge and belief, neither of

which is normally apparent to discourse participants.

(1992: 13)

2.8. Non-critical approaches to discourse analysis

2.S.1. Harris

The bulk of research in the contemporary studies of language and discourse

has been decidedly 'non-critical' even when it has focused on the social dimensions

of language use. Such studies have 'typically aimed at describing the world, and

ignored the necessity to change it' (ibid). The non-critical approaches to discourse

analysis are the direct descent of Harris (1952). Ignoring the process and the fluid
 22

nature of discourse, the non-critical discourse analysis tends to construe discourse as

'text analysis'. That is why Harris, true to his structuralist milieu, claimed that

discourse is the next level in a hierarchy of morphemes, clauses and sentences. Harris,

like his contemporary structuralists and mentalists in the 50s, used invented data (not

naturally occurring language) to study the formal structural properties of connected

speech. He analysed the longer stretches of language by extending the formal

descriptive methods of transformations applied for the analysis of independent

seritences. He believed that the methods of formal linguistics could be used to

understand how sentences are connected, not simply the formal structure that exists

within a sentence.

Discourse analysis is a method of seeking in any connected discreet linear

material, whether language or language -like, which contain more than one
\

elementary sentence, some global structure characterizing the whole discourse

or larger sections of it. The structure is a pattern of occurrence (i. e. a

recurrence) of segments of a discourse relative to each other.

(1963:7)

In his procedure there is an implication that discourse is a structural unit at a

higher level like the sentence at a lower level of language organization. His primary

concern was with the formal distribution of sentences without any reference to

meaning. He focused his study, as noted above, with the help of invented data on the

way different units of a clause/sentence function in relation to each other. Schiffrin

(1994:19) says, "structure was so central to Harris's view of discourse that he argues

that what opposes discourse to a random sequences of sentences is precisely the fact
 23

that it has structure: a pattern by which segments of discourse occur relative to each

other". Therefore, his discourse analysis suffers from the same drawbacks that the

structuralism did in the 50s.

In the ensuing years after Harris, the procedure of inventing whole texts and

judging their acceptability has not found wide spread application. There is therefore. a

strong tendency among discourse analysts to rely more heavily on observation of

naturally occurring language. From the work available in discourse analysis it is

apparent that the study of discourse has emerged as a distinct and established branch

of linguistics only since the 1970s. It also shows a great heterogeneity of approaches.

The data studied, the theoretical positions taken and the overlaps with other

disciplines are diverse enough to suggest that discourse constitutes more than one

distinct sub field of linguistics. Point to be noted, however, is that the common vein

that runs through these diverse approaches is the emphasis on the study of language

use beyond the boundaries of clause/sentence since natural language rarely occurs in

isolated sentence forms.

Criticizing Harris and the other formal approaches to discourse analysis

MeHoul (1994) says:

It is extremely mechanistic - attempting as it does to read off quite general

discursive norms from imagined or invented texts as though discourse were

less of a social phenomenon and more of a formal system in its own right.

(1994:942)
 24

2.8.2. Speech act approach

Two philosophers, John Austin (1962) and John Searle (1969), developed

speech act theory from the basic insight that language is used not just to describe the

world, but also to perform actions. The issuance of the utterance indicates the action

performed. For example the utterance, I promise to be true to my work, performs the

act ofpromising while I am happy today, performs the act of asserting.

Although, speech act theory was not first developed as a means of analysing

discourse, particular issues within the speech act theory like that of the problems of

indirect speech acts, multijunctionality of the acts and the context dependency of the

acts for beingfelicitous lead to discourse analysis. Take for example:

Example: 1

Speaker (S): Can you pass the salt?

Hearer (H): (passes the salt)

S's utterance can be understood both as a question (about H's ability) and a

request (for H to pass the salt to S). These two understandings are largely separable by

context (the fonner associated, for example, with tests of physical ability, the latter

with dinner table talk). Thus, the speech act approach to discourse analysis focuses

upon the knowledge of underlying conditions for production and interpretation of acts

through words. In the example above, we have seen that words can perfonn more than

one function at a time and that context may help to separate multiple functions of
. utterances from one another. The interesting aspect of this approach is that it heavily

depends on the context for resolving the conflict in the adjacency pairs. This is
 25

perhaps the only advancement over the previous approach. Like Harris' approach to

discourse analysis, the speech act approach also suffers from the same limitations:

hypothetical contexts supplied along with the hypothetical utterances.

2.8.3. Pragmatic approach

A pragmatic approach to discourse (pragmadiscourse) analysis is based

primarily on the philosophy ofH.P.Grice (1975). Grice proposed distinctions between

different types of meaning and argued that general 'maxims of co-operation' provide

inferential routes to a speaker's communicative intention. Commenting on the

relevance of pragmatics to discourse analysis Schiffiin (1994: 192) says that though

pragmatic approach is purely descriptive, it helps to understand the speaker meaning,

the conversational implicature, in the context with the help of the general Co-

operative Principl~ (CP). Gricean CP consists of what are called, conversational

maxims. They are the maxim of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. These

maxims are not rules, but norms that are expected to be followed in a speech situation

by the participants for resolving the crisis of meanings. Here is an example that

illustrates the interplay between co-operation and inference (or what Grice calls

implicature), which is central to the Gricean approach. The example is from Grice

himself (1975:51).

Example: 2

A: Smith does not seem to have a girlfriend these days.

B: He has been paying a lot of visits to New York.

 26

Like the speech act example (1), the prototypical pragmatics example (2) is

also an imagined utterance in an imaginary context. The tools of conventional syntax

cannot explain the acceptability of these utterances. At first, it appears that the

utterances in (2) are unrelated to each other. They both appear to be independent.

Grice was aware that people do not always adhere to the maxims. Such a non-

adherence of maxims generates 'implicatures'. Grice points out that the absence of

connection does not prevent us from trying to interpret B' s utterance. Because, as

Attardo (1993:537) comments, the violation of a maxim is salvaged by the fact that

the speaker fulfils another maxim. Therefore, we do not look at the utterance

meaning. Instead, we read the speaker meaning with the assumption that, though B

has violated the maxim of relation, slhe has adhered to other maxims. When we

encounter such violations in our normal speech situations, we supplement the literal

meaning of utterances
\
with assumptions of human rationality, co-operation and our

past lm.owledge in simHar situations to gain the meaning. These allow B to infer that

A has implied that Smith has a girl friend in New York. Thus Gricean pragmatics

suggests that human beings work with very minimal assumptions about one another

and their conduct, and that they use those assumptions as the basis from which to

draw highly specific inferences about one another's intended meaning. In this sense

pragmatics is extended semantics. Though particular issues like the force and

implicature have generated useful results, pragmatics by its very nature is descriptive

and lacks explanatory power; particularly of how culture and related concepts like

worldviews are embedded in discourse.

 27

2.8.4. Sinclair and Coulthard

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975, 1977) worked towards a general descriptive

classroom discourse. Their descriptive system is based on units, which are similar to

the units in systemic grammar of Halliday (1961). There is a rank scale of units in

systemic grammar, with units of higher rank being made up of the units of lower rank.

So, in grammar a sentence is made up of clauses, which are made up of groups and so

forth. Likewise in classroom discourse of Sinclair and Coulthard, there are four units

of descending rank - lesson, transaction, exchange and move such that a lesson is

made up of exchanges and so on.

Critically, Sinclair and Coulthard have little to say about the 'lesson'; but they

do suggest a clear structure for the 'transaction'. Transactions consist of exchanges,

i
which are opened and closed by 'boundary exchanges', which consist minimally of

framing moves. For example, "Well, today I thought we'd do three quizzes", consists

of a framing move ('well') and a focusing move, which tell the class what the

transaction is all about.

The strength of the approach is in the pioneering way in which it draws

systematic organizational properties of dialogue and provides ways of describing

them. Its limitations are two fold: the data does not reflect the current classroom

practices and there is an absence of a developed social orientation to discourse.

Observing the weakness of Sinclair and Coulthard's approach to discourse,

Fairclough (1992:15) says that it is purely descriptive and makes the classroom

discourse seem more homogenous than actually is; and naturalises the dominant
 28

practices by making them appear to be the only practice. In short, Sinclair and

Coulthard's approach to discourse lacks a developed social orientation as it has failed

to understand how 'power relations have shaped discourse practice in the classroom'.

2.8.5. Conversational Analysis (CA)

Conversational Analysis is an approach to discourse analysis whose project is

to describe how people talk and communicate. Research findings in CA are not

presented as the analysts' interpretation, but as real life practices as revealed in the

data. CA has been originally developed in sociology by a group of sociologists called

'ethnomethodologists' (such as Harvey Sacks and Harold Garnfinkel). They

concentrate mainly on the informal conversations between equals such as telephone

conversations and formal conversations between doctor and patient looking for

patterns from wh~t they talk to each other. CA contrasts with the Sinclair and

Coulthard's approach by highlighting 'what speakers do when they talk'. Though CA

is descriptively refined and exhaustive, there is a neglect of discussion of power as a

factor in conversational exchanges. The CA has left undiscussed the asymmetry of

conversational moves and the resultant power relations. For example, in his research

on psychic practitioners Wooffitt (2001:49-92) does not comment on the ideology that

installs the doctor and the patient in unequal terms. Instead, as he himself says,

"analysis is data driven, not theory led" (p.58). The role of the analyst in the CA

tradition is that of a detached observer who looks for generalisable patterns of talk.

Such a mechanical consideration of the conversation (text) for analysis leaving aside

the contextual features makes CA as yet another non-critical approach to discourse

analysis. van Dijk (1983) sums up the limitations ofCA in the following way:
 29

It is evident in any conversational situation that producing discourse is part of

wider process of producing social life, social relationships and social

identities; yet much of C.A. in its harmonious reading of interaction between

the equals gives the impression that producing discourse is an end in itself

(1983:19)

The other NCDAs are Labov and Fanshell's (1977) Therapeutic Discourse,

Potter and Wetherell's (l987) Social Psychology Approach to Discourse Analysis,

Gumperz's (1982) the Interactional Sociolinguistic Approach to Discourse Analysis,

Dell Hymes' (1974) Ethnography of Communication. Though each of these

approaches is powerful descriptively, they lack a motivated social approach to the

study of discourse as social action. They have all treated language as an innocent

medium and described it accordingly. They have never asked questions like Foucault

(l972:62), how is 'it that one particular statement appeared rather than the other?

They are all in one way or the other influenced by the prevailing orthodoxy of

linguistics which is that it is a descriptive discipline, which has no business passing

comments on materials which it analyses. Some linguists backed by powerful social

theories, on the other hand, see no reason why there should not be branches of

linguistics with different goals and procedures. They feel that language is not a

transparent conduit; it is a refracting and inflected medium in terms of values,

ideology, inequality, power etc. They practise a kind of emancipatory linguistics

which addresses and explains such social issues, and this is the branch that has come

to be known as Critical Linguistics (CL) or Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Teo

(2000) observes that these critical branches ...

 30

... move from the surface attentiveness to a recognition of the crucial role

played by deeper, larger social forces which exists in a dialectical relationship

with the discourse; discourse shapes and is shaped by society.

(2000:12)

2.9. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Research in critical approaches to discourse analysis attempts to find out

answers to Roger Fowler's question. Fowler, echoing Foucault, has asked:

Why this sentence? Why have all other possible sentences been rejected?

It is obvious that grammar in itself, the individual's ability to produce

English or French sentences give no reason at all for the production of

one sentenge rather than another.

(1970: 185)

Saussurean or Chomskyan or any other framework of descriptive linguistics

cannot answer this question. As Terry Eagleton has stated:

Language cannot be, for Saussure, as it can be for Volosinov and Bakhtin, a

terrain of ideological struggle. Such recognition could involve, precisely, the

displacement and rearticulating of formal linguistic difference at the level of

other theoretical practices. If the dictionary informs us that the opposite of

capitalism is totalitarianism; we will need more than the Course of General

Linguistics to illuminate that particular diacritical formation.

(1980: 165)
 31

The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a branch of discourse analysis that

goes beyond the description of language use to an explanation of haw and why

particular discourses are produced (for instance how and to what ends totalitarianism

came to be understood as the antonym of capitalism). The CDA believes that the

choice of certain formal structures cannot be kept distinct from the sociocultural

designs that they are made to serve.

Fowler et al., (1979) and Kress and Hodge (1979) first used the concept

'critical' for doing linguistics. Influenced by Volosinov's Marxism and the

Philosophy of Language (1929), they argue that language does not merely reflect

social processes and structures but affirms, consolidates and in this way reproduces

existing social relations/structures. Improving on this, Fairclough (1992) says that

doing discourse analysis is not merely cataloguing the discourse markers that help the

text hang together hor is it listing the features that make up a text. Discourse analysis

must have a firm social agenda. It ought to unmask the social meanings that get coded

in the use of language. In this line he attempts to articulate a vision of doing discourse.

that is at once ...

. . . socially constituted and socially constitutive, against the backdrop of socio-

cultural and political forces.

(1992:66)

Fairclough and other critical discourse/language analysts like Dijk (1993,

1996), Wodak (1989), Hodge and Kress (1988), Fowler (1991) Brogger (1992), Teo

(2000), Wodak and Meyer (2001) see language use as a 'form of social practice'
 32

rather than as a purely 'individual activity'. Fairclough in particular explains,

'discourse is real and extended instanc~s of social interaction which take a linguistic

form of text and talk'. It is not only a product or a reflection of social processes, but is

itself seen to contribute towards the production or reproduction of these processes

through ideologies. For these linguists language is 'a mode of action as well as a

mode of representation'. They believe that there' is a dialectical relation between

discourse and social structures. The symbolic practices shape and are shaped by social

practices. Unlike some conventional sociolinguists and non-critical discourse analysts,

the critical language practitioners do not subscribe to the notion of a reified language

and SOciety but an active social language. Further they argue that language is not a

simple reflection or expression of material reality. Instead, observe that the reality is

grasped through language as consciousness is shaped through signs which are

socially, not arbitrarily, produced. Hodge and Kress argue that language is not
\

arbitrary. There are no words prior to an experience. The experience requires a sign

for expression. Production of the signifier and its signified happen simultaneously in

dialectical relations. Signifier and the signified of a sign cause each other. Therefore,

signs are socially produced through a struggle. Similarly, they argue that parole is a

practice not only in the sense of just representing the world, but also in the sense of

constituting and constructing the world in meaning. Fairclough and Wodak (1997)

explain this in the following way:

Discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially constituted: it constitutes

situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and the

relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive in the

 33

sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the status quo, and in the sense that

it contributes to transforming it.

(1997:258)

2.9.1.Why critical?

The word critical is a key theoretical concept in CDA, which needs some

explanation here. The word signals two things simultaneously. Firstly, it signals a

departure from the purely descriptive goals and methods of non-critical discourse

analysis which, as noted above, suffer from an inherent weakness of explanatory

power. Secondly, the word critical also signifies the need for analysts to unpack the

ideological underpinnings of discourse that have become so naturalised over time that

we begin to treat them as common, acceptable and natural features of discourse.

Connerton (1976), a sociologist of the Frankfurt School, elucidated the word critique
\

in the following way:

Critique denotes reflection on a system of constraints, which are humanly

produced; distorting pressures to which individuals, or a group of individuals,

or the human race as a whole succumbs in their process of self -formation ....

Criticism is brought to bear on objects of experience whose 'objectivity' is

called into question; criticism supposes that there is a degree of inbuilt

deformity, which masquerades as reality. It seeks to remove this distortion and

there by to make possible the liberation of what has been distorted. Hence it

entails a conception of emancipation.

+

(Quoted in Fowler, 1991 :5)

 34

The first paragraph is related to the social determination of ideology, and the

constraining role of language in socialization. The second paragraph is related to the

central preoccupation of CDA, with the theory and practice of representation. CDA

insists that all representation is mediated, shaped by the ideological priorities of the

society. These representations are so naturalized over time that we begin to treat them

as common, acceptable and natural features of that society. Adopting critical goals to

linguistic practice would enable us to "elucidate such naturalizations, and make clear

social determinations and effects of discourse which are characteristically opaque to

participants" (Fairclough, 1985:739).

2.9.2. Philosophical background to CDA

Though CDA is ' ... yet underdeveloped' (van Dijk, 1993:283), or a 'young

discipline' (Teo, 2doo: 11), its roots can be traced as far back as Marx, whose ideas on
social theory and organisation have had a tremendous impact on the later day

theoreticians. For instance, Gramsci (1979) and Althusser (1971) have both stressed

the significance of ideology and power for modem societies to constitute, sustain and

reinforce their social structures and relations of power. The social theories of these

philosophers have considerably influenced the work of discourse analysts like Fowler,

Kress, Hodge, van Dijk, Fairclough, Wodak and Teo who share a common

understanding of the centrality of signifying practices (such as language) as a means

of social construction. That is, as a pre-eminent manifestation of this socially

constitutive ideology, language becomes the primary instrument through which

ideology is transmitted, enacted and reproduced. Althusser (1971) in particular has

stressed the covert role of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) such as media,
 35

family, school etc. in spreading the ideology of the dominant group as well as the

state. ISAs undertake this activity by deploying symbolic practices. Apart from other

signitying systems and cultural practices such as rituals, food habits, festivals,

clothing and manners, ideologies find their clearest articulation in and through

language. In this connection Teo (2000:11) says that by analyzing the linguistic

structures and discourse strategies, in the light of their interactional and wider social

contexts, we can unlock and make transparent the kind of socio-cultural ideologies

that have become entrenched and naturalized over time in discourse.

2.10. Conclusion

Thus, the non-critical approaches to discourse analysis paid their attention at

describing, and cataloguing the talk and text at the expense of interpreting and
\
explaining how and why such realisations come to be produced. CDA on the other

hand moves from this surface attentiveness to recognition of the crucial role played by

deeper, larger social forces that exist in a dialectical relationship with the discourse.

Language is the predominant social practice through which ideology and relations of

power are negotiated. The following chapter undertakes a detailed discussion of the

concepts of ideology, hegemony, power, subjectivity, interpel/ation etc. which are

central to the way discourse is understood within the scope of the present study.