scholarly journals A Critical Discourse Analysis of Radi’s Dramas From behind the Windows and Hamlet with Season Salad Based on Van Leeuwen’s Framework "Representing Social Actions"

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Alireza Khormaee ◽  
Rayeheh Sattarinezhad

Different representations of social actions create distinct types of discourses. Applying van Leeuwen’s 'Social Actions' framework (2008), the present study critically analyzes the power relations between the main characters of Radi’s dramas From behind the Windows and Hamlet with Season Salad. The objective of our study is to account for the differences between the discourse of the dominant and the discourse of the dominated. In order to elucidate such differences we count and analyze the characters’ social (re)actions and, in turn, identify four types of contrasts: cognitive vs. affective and perceptive reactions; material vs. semiotic actions; transactive vs. non-transactive actions; interactive vs. instrumental actions. Two opposing discourses emerge from these contrasts. On the one hand, the dominant characters mostly react cognitively and their actions are often semiotic, transactive, and interactive. On the other hand, the dominated characters’ reactions are often affective and perceptive, while most of their actions are material, non-transactive, and instrumental. As the results show, the author’s linguistic choices underscore the power relations between the dominant and the dominated characters. Building upon the fact that our analysis sheds light on the underlying ideologies and intentions of the author, we tentatively conclude that despite its being predominantly employed in the analysis of political discourses, van Leeuwen’s framework also proves effective in the critical analysis of literary works.

1990 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 84-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunther Kress

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.


Author(s):  
Ahlam Ahmed Mohamed Othman

Corpus-based critical discourse analysis studies have gained momentum in the last decade. Corpus Linguistics allowed critical discourse analysts to avoid bias in data selection and enlarge their samples for more representative findings. Critical Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, gave depth to corpus linguistic analysis by contextualizing it. The present study combines the two approaches to analyze the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords common to John Updike's Terrorist published in 2006 and Jonathan Wright’s translation The Televangelist published in 2016. The results of the corpus-based analysis show that while the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords is negative in Updike’s novel, it is highly positive in the translated novel. The conclusion is that Van Dijk’s proposition of the polarized representation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ holds for Updike’s fundamentalist Islamic discourse which negatively represents Islam and Muslims. However, Van Dijk’s proposition holds only partially for Wright's tolerant Islamic discourse which positively represents Islam and Muslims without misrepresenting the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Nayab Iqbal ◽  
Kaukab Abid Azhar ◽  
Zubair Ahmed Shah

The paper aims at studying the ways power and inequality are enacted in a Pakistani talk show aired on Capital TV on 14th August 2019. The research primarily focused on analyzing turn-taking patterns of the discussion held between the host of the program and three guests. The analysis revealed the unequal distribution of turns implying the unequal distribution of power between the host and guests as well as between the guests. The host of the program through her discourse asserted power as she was the one to control the topic of discussion throughout the program. Her power can be attributed to the power of media. Besides, one of the guest speakers, Jawwad asserted his power through his knowledge. The female speaker did not have enough representation and was not given enough chance to share her views, therefore, it can be concluded that gender was another element that played an important part in forming the power relations in the discussion that was observed.Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse Power Relations, Media Discourse and Talk Shows, Turn-taking


Pragmatics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argiris Archakis

Abstract Racism as a means for accomplishing homogeneity is at the center of this study which draws on Critical Discourse Analysis and focuses on descriptions of racist behaviors included in immigrant students’ school essays. We investigate how the dominant assimilative and homogenizing discourse operates in Greece and how immigrant students position themselves towards this dominant discourse. Our analysis focuses on the ways the immigrant students of our sample construct legitimizing and hybrid resistance identities. We demonstrate that legitimizing identities are found in the vast majority of the essays of our data due to the racist behaviors experienced by immigrant people. On the other hand, the explicit description of such behaviors appears only in few essays. We argue that in these few essays, via referring to racist behaviors of majority people against them, immigrant students manage to build hybrid resistance identities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Ahmed Sahib Jabir Mubarak

The paradox in the offensive humor lies in the assumption that what evokes laughter can be harmful for someone. Linguistically, the offense can be expressed directly and indirectly, additionally, humor, including riddles is one of the most effective ways to show offense or aggression toward someone. Humor, on the other hand, is mostly expressed indirectly. Metaphoric forms are said to be one of the most appealing strategies of humor language. The present study aims at applying a critical metaphor analysis of some randomly selected American offensive humorous riddles related to various aspects of offense like race and nation. In this approach to critical discourse analysis, the cognitive aspect is added for the sake of analyzing figurative forms like metaphor which is considered as an important part of ideology. Thus, critical metaphor analysis covers both social and cognitive aspects. It is concluded that offensive jokes (namely funny riddles) can be used as a tool to measure the aggressiveness towards certain social aspects like race; on the other hand, metaphors afford indications of facets of power, inequality and people ideologies in American society.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (II) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ahsan ◽  
Zahoor Hussain ◽  
Mohammad Arshad

The study examines the image of Islam and Pakistan post 9/11 scenario documented in Pakistani Urdu and English newspapers. Results are deduced by analyzing headlines while applying the CDA model projected by Fairclough (1989, 1995) with respect to vocabulary items, viewpoints, and newspapers' ideologies. The results from the study indicated that these two newspapers heavily rely on some selected lexical items to manipulate and control the belief system of the masses. It was shown from the data that Nawa-iWaqat, an Urdu newspaper, fervently utilized figurative language to influence the perception of its readers. It is seen from the analyzed data that the selection of words made by Urdu newspaper is mainly based on prejudice toward certain prominent social figures, politicians, and even toward world-renowned political figures and events. The collected data from the two newspapers and their critical discourse analysis indicated that daily 'Nawa-i-Waqt' gave abundant, sentimental coverage to the issues concerned. On the other hand, the daily 'Dawn' newspaper gave little but positive coverage to the issues of that time.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Awad AlAfnan

It is widely believed that media texts are shaped by the wider social and cultural structures. Therefore, attaining a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of media reporting entails complete understanding of the social artifacts and the cultural structures. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) models of cohesion, this study examines texture, power and ideology in an electronic news article. The analysis looked into the context to comprehensively examine the text. The analysis revealed that referencing and lexical cohesion are the writer’s preferred model of cohesion throughout the text. It is also apparent that substitution and ellipsis are unexpectedly popular, which reflect a speech-like style. The critical analysis reveals that the article has hidden ideological meanings and is being divided along some ideological lines to reflect the views of those whose interest is being served and those whose interest is being undermined. The writer used foregrounding and lexis to serve his ideology, and backgrounding and sometimes omission to undermine the ideologies of the ‘other’.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Melissa Shih-hui Lin

This paper utilizes critical discourse analysis (CDA) to disclose the relationship between the lexical or textual device choices of the term “China” in the discourse of Czech Sinologists and how they tried to construct the identity of “China” in interviews collected by Professor Olga Lomová and her student Anna Zádrapová from 2010 to 2011.The analysis will focus on how the Czech Sinologists talk about their “China” and evaluate the term “China” in the discourse, within their experiences, and in the context of the social and cultural situation of the time. On the one hand, this paper will discuss the textual devices which convey the term “China” in the interviews of the Czech Sinologists, in the form of linguistic units, such as nouns, adjectives, noun phrases, verbal phrases and so on, and on the other hand, investigate how their identities of “China” are reflected through their choices of lexical or textual devices.Mongolian Journal of International Affairs Vol.19 2014: 153-165


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 377-393
Author(s):  
Daniel Pinto Pajares

El cinismo y el quinismo son actitudes antitéticas que pueden materializarse discursivamente a través del grado de opinión de la modalidad epistémica. En este trabajo proponemos cuatro enunciados arquetípicos que representan múltiples opiniones respecto a la idoneidad o inconveniencia de que el catalán y el castellano acaparen los espacios y usos sociolingüísticos en Cataluña y en las cuales están presentes los componentes cínico y quínico. Estos elementos, que privilegian a una u otra lengua, no aparecen aisladamente, sino que se da una lucha entre ambas actitudes en la que una de ellas matiza la efectividad de la otra. Tomamos la perspectiva del Análisis Crítico del Discurso porque las ideologías que reproducen las relaciones de poder entre las lenguas se manifiestan discursivamente. Mediante esta perspectiva, dividimos los enunciados en segmentos separados ideológicamente y señalamos cuál de ellos se ha de atacar para construir ideologías lingüísticas favorables a la lengua minorizada. Cynicism and kynicism are antithetical attitudes which can discursively materialize through the opinion degree of the epistemic modality. In this paper, we propose four archetypical statements representing several opinions regarding the suitability and inconvenience of Spanish and Catalan languages about how they compete to monopolize sociolinguistic domains and uses in Catalonia. Cynical or kynical components are made clear in these sentences. These elements, which favour one or another language, do not appear in isolation, but there is a struggle between both attitudes in which one of them nuance the effectiveness of the other one. We take the Critical Discourse Analysis since the ideologies which reproduce the power relations between languages reveal themselves discursively. Through this perspective, we divide the sentences into ideologically separated segments and we point out which of them must be attacked to build favourable linguistic ideologies to the minoritized language.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Guilherme Rios

In this paper on literacy in the community, I argue for the gains of research in discourse, particularly Critical Discourse Analysis, in combination with an ethnographic approach. If for one hand Discourse Analysis proposes to be a tool to make clear the ideological investments in textual materiality (Fairclough, 1992), on the other hand such investment is partially raised in social practices and their networks, of which it is a part. From the relation of discourse with other aspects of social practice, such as participant’s systems of values, beliefs and knowledge in the events, upsurges the need to incorporate an ethnographic approach, as much as a mode of knowledge production as a set of techniques implemented to generate data on those aspects of social practice.


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