Discourse analysis

About: Discourse analysis is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16055 publications have been published within this topic receiving 515384 citations. The topic is also known as: DA & discourse studies.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract: The label Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used by a significant number of scholars with a diverse set of concerns in a number of disciplines. It is well-exemplified by the editorial statement of the journal Discourse and Society, which defines its envisaged domain of enquiry as follows: “the reproduction of sexism and racism through discourse; the legitimation of power; the manufacture of consent; the role of politics, education and the media; the discursive reproduction of dominance relation between groups; the imbalances in international communication and information.” While some practitioners of Critical Discourse Analysis might want to amend this list here or there, the set of concerns sketched here well describes the field of CDA. The only comment I would make, a comment crucial for many practitioners of CDA, is to insist that these phenomena are to be found in the most unremarkable and everyday of texts—and not only in texts which declare their special status in some way. This scope, and the overtly political agenda, serves to set CDA off on the one hand from other kinds of discourse analysis, and from textlinguistics (as well as from pragmatics and sociolinguistics) on the other.

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion

Abstract: This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.

Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse

Abstract: Our profession's recent focus on the social construction of knowledge and the roles that discourse and community play in this construction have made some of us aware of disturbing characteristics in our classrooms. We now notice, for instance, that the traditional forums comprising these classrooms-group discussions, lectures, teacher-student conferences, written assignments-generally support a traditional hegemony in which teachers determine appropriate and inappropriate discourse. We notice, further, that this political arrangement encourages intellectual accommodation in students, discourages intellectual resistance, and hence may seriously limit students' understanding of, and effective use of, language. As a result, we have begun to recognize the need for non-traditional forums for academic exchange, forums that allow interaction patterns disruptive of a teacher-centered hegemony. These forums should encourage students to use language to resist as well as to accommodate and should enable individuals to create internally persuasive discourse as well as to adopt discourse validated by external authority. In creating such non-traditional forums to supplement the work now going on in our classrooms, we tacitly argue for the importance of discourse in learning, the importance of students talking and writing to one another as well as to the teacher as they attempt to come to terms with the theories and concepts raised in their courses. This particular kind of learning does not take place often enough within the forums characteristic of our traditional classrooms, where interaction-at least the approved kind of interaction-is all too often dyadic, emphasizing the role of the all-knowing teacher discussing a topic with quiet, attentive students who may respond to the teacher but not directly to one another. Socrates tells Phaedrus that this is the ideal learning situation: "lucidity and completeness and serious importance belong only to those lessons on justice and honor and goodness

Introduction: Morality in Discourse.

Abstract: (1998). Introduction: Morality in Discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 31, No. 3-4, pp. 279-294.