National open university of nigeria school of arts and social sciences
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| Self-assessed Exercises (i) Discuss extensively what you understand by the term Critical Discourse Analysis. ii) In what way is Critical Discourse Analysis different from Discourse Analysis 3.5 Conducting Critical Discourse Analysis Research Conducting a research in CDA is not exactly like conducting a research in other disciplines. One thing that should always be behind the mind of a CDA researcher is that a text, either spoken or written is not neutral. What the CDA researcher seeks to unveil is the ideology behind every text. A researcher doing a CDA research is also concerned with the way social power is used in interactions. Generally, the research is concerned with the way social power is abused to reflect dominance, manipulation, discrimination and every form of inequality. They are also concerned with how the dominated resist dominance linguistically. The enactment and resistance of power is central to any research in CDA. Data collection in CDA research follows the ethnographic methods - the use of tape recorder and participant observation. For spoken discourse, the tape recorder is used to collect utterances, which will later be transcribed for the purpose of the research. It is 109 important for the researcher to observe the interaction. This will enable them to take observational notes, which would normally help in the interpretation of the data. CDA researchers always focus on areas such as feminist discourse, which they have observed reflects gender inequality. One of the key areas to focus on are power differences in everyday conversation between interactants of different gender, verbal sexual harassment, stereotype and sexual representations of women in male-dominated discourse, gender inequalities in bureaucratic and professional talk, the representation of women in the press, and so forth. Another area is political discourse. Scholars have observed that political discourse, such as campaigns, parliamentary debates, speeches are full of expressions that show the enactment, reproduction and legitimization of power and domination. Interactions that reflect inter-ethnic relations are also studied. Scholars, such as Teun van Dijk have done a lot of empirical work on discourse and racism showing how discourse shows one form of resentment or another against racially or ethnically defined Others. Other discourse genres that have been studied from a critical point of view are medical discourse, courtroom exchange, education and science, and corporate texts. Data for any CDA study is subjected to critical analysis looking beyond the words used to see how the text reflects power dynamics in the society. The researcher, using the utterances looks at the context that produces the text. The context includes the historical dimension and the cultural practices that are typically associated with that form of social action. Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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