Critical discourse analysis and its critics

Breeze, Ruth

doi:10.1075/prag.21.4.01bre

Cited by 208 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Critical Discourse Analysis has sometimes been criticised for putting forward only negative representations of texts and ideologies (Breeze, 2013). However such analysis is not only an empowering approach to reveal ways that language may restrict conceptual space, it also provides a discursive opportunity for new possibilities to learn and move on from a deceptive space.…”

Section: The Technology-language-learning Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Hayes

2016

Research, Boundaries, and Policy in Networked Learning

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Networked Learning, e-Learning and Technology Enhanced Learning have each been defined in different ways, as people's understanding about technology in education has developed. Yet each could also be considered as a terminology competing for a contested conceptual space. Theoretically this can be a 'fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to affect and potentially be re-orientated by others ' (Parchoma and Keefer, 2012), as differing perspectives on terminology and subject disciplines yield new understandings. Yet when used in government policy texts to describe connections between humans, learning and technology, terms tend to become fixed in less fertile positions, linguistically. A deceptively spacious policy discourse that suggests people are free to make choices conceals an economically-based assumption that implementing new technologies, in themselves, determines learning. Yet it actually narrows choices open to people as one route is repeatedly in the foreground and humans are not visibly involved in it. An impression that the effective use of technology for endless improvement is inevitable cuts off critical social interactions and new knowledge for multiple understandings of technology in people's lives. This paper explores some findings from a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of UK policy for educational technology during the last 15 years, to help to illuminate the choices made. This is important when through political economy, hierarchical or dominant neoliberal logic promotes a single 'universal model' of technology in education, without reference to a wider social context (Rustin, 2013). Discourse matters, because it can 'mould identities' (Massey, 2013) in narrow, objective economically-based terms which 'colonise discourses of democracy and student-centredness' (Greener and Perriton, 2005:67). This undermines subjective social, political, material and relational (Jones, 2012: 3) contexts for those learning when humans are omitted. Critically confronting these structures is not considered a negative activity. Whilst deterministic discourse for educational technology may leave people unconsciously restricted, I argue that, through a close analysis, it offers a deceptively spacious theoretical tool for debate about the wider social and economic context of educational technology. Methodologically it provides insights about ways technology, language and learning intersect across disciplinary borders (Giroux, 1992), as powerful, mutually constitutive elements, ever-present in networked learning situations. In sharing a replicable approach for linguistic analysis of policy discourse I hope to contribute to visions others have for a broader theoretical underpinning for educational technology, as a developing field of networked knowledge and research (Conole and Oliver, 2002;Andrews, 2011).

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Section: The Technology-language-learning Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Hayes

2016

Research, Boundaries, and Policy in Networked Learning

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“…Indeed, many new forms of CDA have emerged since the rise of functional linguistics (Gee, 2004;Rogers, 2004;Breeze, 2011;Tenorio, 2011). Therefore, the type of CDA that I used was basic.…”

Section: Methodological Reflectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections on applying critical discourse analysis methodologies in analysing South African history textbooks

Maposa¹

2015

Yesterday today

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“…Overviews that reflect explicitly on the role that could or should be accorded to reflexivity in discourse studies are hard to find; whereas the notion of critique has been debated at length under the influence of neo-Marxist, post-Marxist and poststructuralist approaches to discourse-most notably in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Blommaert, 2001;Blommaert et al, 2001;Slembrouck, 2001;Verschueren, 2001;Lemke, 2002;Glynos and Howarth, 2007;Breeze, 2011;Forchtner, 2011;Forchtner and Tominc, 2012). This cannot be said about reflexivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexivity in the transdisciplinary field of critical discourse studies

Zienkowski

2017

Palgrave Commun

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This article outlines an agenda for critical discourse studies that reserves a place of honour for the notion of reflexivity. It draws on four concepts of reflexivity developed in the social sciences: reflexivity as a general feature of interaction and subjectivity; as a methodological praxis; as a property of discursive and non-discursive systems; and as a key feature of late modernity. Reflexivity is considered in terms of acts of interpretive movement. Social actors, organizations and systems throw reflexive loops around themselves, around others, as well as around spatial, temporal, linguistic, cognitive, social and historical dimensions of contextual reality. All social entities engage in the Sisyphean task of fixing social reality, trying to grasp it with a porous and amorphous semiotic net, shaping interpretive reality in the process. Reflexive loops can leave ripples on the surface of language and communication for others to pick up and engage with. Through metadiscursive acts, interlocutors can then engage with the meanings that fix who and what they are in an unequal and power-infused world whose boundaries can only be imagined through interpretive and critical praxis. Reflexivity is a precondition for the articulation of critique and should be considered as a key concept in the field of discourse studies. This paper is published as part of a collection on discourse studies.

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Critical discourse analysis and its critics

Cited by 208 publications

References 43 publications

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Reflections on applying critical discourse analysis methodologies in analysing South African history textbooks

Reflexivity in the transdisciplinary field of critical discourse studies

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