1. Discourse analysis: forms, methods, applications Mid-week Research Break: 30 Sept 2015 Robert J. Balfour Faculty of Education Sciences, NWU

2. Opening Remarks: some issues There are three forms of discourse analysis (DA). These are: discourse analysis as linguistic method, (a method applied by linguists to understand language structure within a communication theory perspective); critical discourse analysis, (a method used to analyse positioning and localisation: the process by which the writer adapts language to suit a particular form (genre), context (audience, institutional, setting) and purpose. discourse analysis as approach to socio-historical research (a critique of power and power relations as developed by some social theorists or philosophers to read ideology into and out of text).

3. Standard definitions DA was developed in the 18 th Century as a method to understand language use in the speech acts of people, with a view to unmasking intention and meaning. Yule and Brown define discourse analysis as …a way of studying language. It may be regarded as a set of techniques, rather than a theoretically predetermined system for the writing of linguistic ‘rules’. The discourse analyst attempts to discover regularities in his data and to describe them (Yule and Brown, 1983:23). In this definition the focus is on understand meaning creation rather than interpretation (deduction and inference).

4. Discourse analysts use specialist terminology to analyse text: presupposition, implicature, inference, and parts of topic Presupposition refers to information taken for granted. Givon defines presupposition as “what the hearer is likely to accept without challenge” (1979a: 50). Implicature is the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but does not require it. Writing and reading concern processes of decoding or encoding inferences in order to assist comprehension, thus making inference an important part of any approach focused upon texts as linguistic and literary phenomena. Deducting information not explicitly stated in a text requires the use of inference. Inference concerns the logical connectors between phrases or sentences. Topic, enables fragments of discourse to be distinguished from other parts of a text. When we mark student's work for coherence of argument we often refer to the place or absence of the topic, or topic sentence.

5. Criticality and discourse analysis: what happened? With the ideological, physical and political decolonisation of empires, (1940s-1980s) linguistic theory also underwent a change. In the last few decades there has been an acknowledgement that theorisation and research, identified as pursuing a ‘linguistic turn’ or an orientation to discourse within research on schooling, has increased. Scholars suggest that education research lacks ‘more close-grained work on actual textual traces'. This lead to the development of ‘critical discourse analysis’ under the influence of educators such as Paolo Freire who coined the term critical pedagogy.

6. Critical Discourse Analysis’ (CDA): this approach incorporates a scrutiny of the text in relation to the social and historical context. An analysis of the ‘communicative event’ (Fairclough, 1995:56), in this case each document, implies a multifunctional view of text that involves considering the text itself, the discursive practices relating to production, distribution and consumption of the text (‘writing’ and ‘reading’), and relating it to the social, cultural, economic and historical practices and circumstances (Fairclough: 1989).

7. CDA tools enable the reader to unpack context within text Janks draws on Halliday’s grammatical resources (descriptive and analytic) and lists nine aspects for analysis, namely lexicalisation, patterns of transitivity, the use of active and passive voice, the use of nominalisation, choices of mood, choices of modality or polarity, the thematic structure of the text, the information focus, and the cohesion devices (1997: 335). Lexicalisation is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language – that is, of adding items to a language's lexicon. Transitivity: an example of transitive verb in English is the verb to give, which may feature a subject, an indirect object, and a direct object: John gave Mary the book.

8. Genres: who speaks using what words in which contexts…. CDA focuses on the notion of genre since genres constitute regulatory practices that influences not only what language might be used for a specific kind of utterance, speech act, or text, but how it might be used, in what style, tenor, and mode. Genre can be defined as a category of language use that has certain conventions and is organised accordingly. Refer for example to the preacher's reference to text. Or consider the relationship of authority between the preacher and faithful; or the doctor and the patient. In each case what is the role of text? Who administers text?

9. Wording …grouping words beyond grammatical categories to ideological ones ‘Wording’: Attention to the ‘wording’ in documentary research (a post-structural move) acknowledges that words or signs are not simply about conveying messages but are discursive moments and that texts and readings privilege some views of the world and not others. Here attention is given to the lexis, to the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in order to identify patterns of use that emerge. To start with, in the analysis of transcripts wording of the goals/aims is examined in the first instance to establish the subject roles it validates (for teachers and learners, researchers and the researched) or disqualifies.

10. Worlding…the text…moving beyond the words Worlding: By listing all the people, places and actions it is possible to identify patterns and trends that recur and can be contrasted with the patterns that recur in other papers. For it is this ‘worlding’, designated as reality and normalised by repetition, which the reader has to inhabit, at least temporarily, in order to be considered to have succeeded as a literate subject. It is the officially sanctioned realm of adulthood into which the learner might enter by virtue of successfully passing through this rite of passage. Thus, attention to this wording, to enable worlding works ‘to make evident what is so close, so immediate, so intimately linked to us, that because of that we do not perceive it’ (Foucault 1978)..

11. Discourse analysis as a means of revealing hidden relationships and their meanings. For Foucault is concerned with how that which is proposed as ‘truth’ at any historical point is created, sustained and modified…with knowledge as discourse; as ‘an ensemble of rules according to which the true and false are separated and specific rules of power attached to the true’ (Foucault, 1980:132). Within a Foucualdian perspective DA becomes a means of social critique (in the wider ideological sense), and institutionalisation processes associated with knowledge construction, dissemination, and deconstruction. Foucault proposed a series of formation 'processes'.

12. DA as a means for realising the 'rules' for knowledge formations … The formation of objects: The ‘objects’ of knowledge are those that a particular field of interest or discipline acknowledge and recognise as within their field and as targets for investigation. Within the field of education, for example, literacy practices are a recognised object of engagement and investigation, but not in other discursive orders, such as law. The formation of enunciative modalities: A social subject that produces a statement does not exist outside of discourse, but is in effect constituted by the discourse. Statements position both the subjects who produce the statement and those to whom they are addressed. The formation of concepts: The meaning of ‘concepts’ here refers to those sets of categories and elements that a particular discursive formation will deploy in the constitution of that field of interest. Within a discursive formation there is a ‘field of statements’ that has come to be associated with it in the public imagination. The formation of strategies: By identifying the discursive formation of objects, the subject(s) and the concepts as analytic categories, a framework for analysis has been created that enables a field of possibilities or ‘strategies’.

13. Thank you