The aim of this course is to introduce students to the foundations of Critical Discourse Analysis and specifically the Fairclough method.
This is an introductory course, no prior knowledge is expected. The course will orient students in how to conduct textual observation and analysis, including some basic socio-linguistic analysis.
This course will be run in one session per day running over over 5 days.
The course hours are 9.30 am - 12.00 pm each day
Dr. April Biccum is a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Politics and International Relations. She received an MA in Critical theory and Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations from Nottingham University. April’s research is framed by the global politics of knowledge and communication with a combined focus on how the categories Empire/Imperialism and Global Citizenship are used, theorised and operationalised in both the public and scholarly domain. April has published in International Political Sociology, Third World Quarterly, Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and her book Global Citizenship and the Legacy of Empire is available in paperback on Routledge. April is co-convenor of the Interpretation Method Critique Research Network at the Australian National University and co-founder of the Interpretive Methods Research Group at the Australian Political Studies Association. Both group have the aim of raising the profile of Interpretivist and Critical methodologies in the social sciences with a specific focus undergraduate and graduate student capacity building in this area.
The aim of this course is to introduce students to Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough method). The course will provide an introduction to the various analytical approaches to Discourse as well an overview of the foundations of CDA in critical social theory, hermeneutics, social constructivism, and socio-linguistics before introducing students to the conceptual framework and analytical tools of CDA drawn from the work of Norman Fairclough. The course will situate CDA within the interpretivist mode of inquiry and draw student attention to the differences between CDA and qualitative content analysis and corpus linguistics and quantitative text analysis. Students will be instructed in the advantages of a qualitative socio-linguistic approach and how to make and defend methodological choices when using text as data.
The course will be focused on training student observation on language, meaning and communication in your chosen field-site or object of study. It will provide applied training in Genre, Surface Text and Context Analysis as well as training in applying the concepts: intertextuality, interdiscursivity, recontextualization and multimodality. The course will also indicate to students the pathways for developing your analysis to a more advanced level.
Day 1:
An introduction to:
- Hermeneutics versus content analysis and quantitative text analysis;
- Different frameworks for discourse analysis;
- Introduce socio linguistics and the Fairclough approach;
- Practice in textual observation
Day 2
- an introduction to surface text analysis;
- sharpening your language observation skills;
- working with text samples
Day 3
An introduction to relational text analysis and how to operationalise:
- Intertextuality;
- Interdiscursivity;
- Textual chains;
- How to construct a corpus
Day 4
Language observation is often intimidating for non-linguists. Now that we have some familiarity with Fairclough’s framework, day 4 provide students with opportunities to assess and sharpen language observation skills and the social scientific inferences that can be made from socio-linguistic analysis. Day four will advance your understanding of genre and the importance of genre as a variable in discourse analysis.
- An introduction to genre analysis.
- Further hands-on practice and instruction on textual observation and analysis
Day 5
Advancing CDA
- An introduction to multimodal discourse analysis.
- When and how to make methodological choices between different approaches (qualitative or quantitative);
- Guidance on how to advance your skills
This course will run online using Zoom.
Students will be given reading for each day which explains and demonstrates different aspects of Fairclough’s framework. Fairclough’s framework is designed to operationalize socio-linguistic analysis for non-linguists. Students will be given hands on instruction and practice in textual observation and socio-linguistic inference. Students will be supplied with several text samples to work with and are also invited to supply to the instructor texts that they are working with in their research.
This is an introductory course, no prior knowledge is expected. The course will orient students in how to conduct textual observation and analysis, including some basic socio-linguistic analysis.
Angermuller, J., et al., Eds. (2014). The Discourse Studies Reader: Main currents in theory and analysis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Fairclough (1992) “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis” Linguistics and Education
Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) Political Discourse Analysis: A method for advanced students. Routledge.
Fairclough, I. and N. Fairclough (2012). Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students. London, Routledge.
Fairclough, N (1993) “Critical Discourse Analysis and the marketisation of public discourse: the universities” Discourse and Society. 4(2): 133-168
Fairclough, N (2001) Language and Power.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Fairclough, N. (2000). New Labour, New Language. London, Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2003) Analyzing Discourse.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Text Analysis for Social Research. London, Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2006). Language and Globalisation. London, Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2013). "Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Policy Studies." Critical Policy Studies 7(3): 177-197.
Jorgensen, M. and L. Phillips (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London, Sage.
Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen (2001) Multimodal Discourse: the modes of media and contemporary communication.
