Norman Fairclough

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities:

This paper sets out the authors view of discourse analysis and illustrates the approach with an analysis of discursive aspects of marketization of public discourse in contemporary Britain, specifically in higher education. It includes a condensed theoretical account of critical discourse analysis, a framework for analysing discursive events, and a discussion of discursive practices (including their marketization) in late capitalist society, as well as analysis of samples of the discourse of higher education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research, and as a resource for social struggle.

Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis

This paper is an argument for systematic textual analysis as a part of discourse analysis, and an attempt to stimulate debate on this issue between different approaches to discourse analysis. Two types of textual analysis are distinguished: linguistic analysis and intertextual analysis. On the basis of a reanalysis of data samples in papers published in the first four issues of Discourse & Society, the paper argues that diverse approaches to discourse analysis can be enhanced through systematic use of these two forms of analysis, even those which claim a concern with the content rather than the form of texts. It is suggested that textual analysis needs to be based upon a multifunctional theory of language such as systematic-functional linguistics. Finally, the paper suggests theoretical, methodological, historical and political reasons why textual analysis ought to be more widely recognized as a method in social research.

Peripheral Vision Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies: The Case for Critical Realism

Although studies of organization certainly need to include analysis of discourse, one prominent tendency within current research on organizational discourse limits its value for organizational studies through a commitment to postmodernism and extreme versions of social constructivism. I argue that a version of critical discourse analysis based on a critical realist social ontology is potentially of greater value to organization studies, and I refer in particular to the contribution it can make to research on organizational change.

Language and globalization

Abstract There are six sections in this article. In section 1, I summarize views on discourse as a facet of globalization in the academic literature, and then introduce an approach based upon a version of ‘critical discourse analysis’ (CDA) and ‘cultural political economy.’ In section 2, I discuss different strategies of globalization (and regionalization) emanating from governmental and non-governmental agencies, and the different discourses that constitute elements of these strategies. In section 3, I discuss how processes of globalization impact upon specific spatial ‘entities’ (nation-states, cities, regions, etc.) in terms of the idea of ‘re-scaling,’ i.e., changing relations in processes, relationships, practices, and so forth between local, national, and international (including ‘global’) scales. I focus here upon the national scale in its relation to the global scale and the scale of international regions (in particular, the process of ‘European integration’). In section 4, I deal with the media and mediation. In section 5, I discuss peoples ordinary experience of globalization, and its implications for and effects upon their lives. Section 6 deals with war and terrorism.

Critical and descriptive goals in discourse analysis

Abstract I view social institutions as containing diverse ‘ideological-discursive formations’ (IDFs) associated with different groups within the institution. There is usually one IDF which is clearly dominant. Each IDF is a sort of ‘speech community’ with its own discourse norms but also, embedded within and symbolized by the latter, its own ‘ideological norms’. Institutional subjects are constructed, in accordance with the norms of an IDF, in subject positions whose ideological underpinnings they may be unaware of. A characteristic of a dominant IDF is the capacity to ‘naturalize’ ideologies, i.e. to win acceptance for them as non-ideological ‘common sense’. It is argued that the orderliness of interactions depends in part upon such naturalized ideologies. To ‘denaturalized’ them is the objective of a discourse analysis which adopts ‘critical’ goals. I suggest that denaturalization involves showing how social structures determine properties of discourse, and how discourse in turn determines social structures. This requires a ‘global’ (macro/micro) explanatory framework which contrasts with the non-explanatory or only ‘locally’ explanatory frameworks of ‘descriptive’ work in discourse analysis. I include a critique of features of such work which follow from its limited explanatory goals (its concept of ‘background knowledge’, ‘speaker-goal’ explanatory models, and its neglect of power), and discuss the social conditions under which critical discourse analysis might be an effective practice of intervention, and a significant element in mother tongue education.

Critical Realism and Semiosis

This paper explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis (or the intersubjective production of meaning). It argues that critical realism must integrate semiosis into its account of social relations and social structuration. This goes well beyond the question of whether reasons can be causes to include more basic issues of the performativity of semiosis and the relationship between interpretation (verstehen) and causal explanation (erklA¤ren). The paper then demonstrates how critical realism can integrate semiosis into its accounts of dialectic of structure and agency through an evolutionary approach to structuration. It also demonstrates how critical semiotic analysis (including critical discourse analysis) can benefit from critical realism. In the latter respect we consider the emergence of semiotic effects and extra-semiotic effects from textual practices and give two brief illustrations of how this works from specific texts. The paper concludes with more general recommendations about the articulation of the discursive and extra-discursive aspects of social relations and its implications for critical realism.

Discourse, social theory, and social research: The discourse ofwelfare reform

Recent social theory includes important insights into language which constitute a so far underdeveloped resource for sociolinguistics. But much of this theory stops short – theoretical frameworks and categories which socially locate language are not pushed in the direction of a theorisation of language itself, which limits their operational value in research. Sociolinguistics can draw upon social theory to produce more sophisticated theorisations of language which at the same time constitute contributions to social theory. My aim in this paper is to explore what it means to work in a ‘transdisciplinary’ way. I argue in particular for a transdisciplinary engagement with social theory in which the logic of one theory is put to work in the elaboration of another without the latter being simply reduced to the former. My focus is upon critical discourse analysis (CDA) which I here take to be a part of a broadly conceived sociolinguistics. I shall link this theoretical exploration to a concrete research focus by referring to a discourse analytical study of the current British (‘New’) Labour Government, with particular reference to its ‘reform’ of social welfare. I shall be drawing upon the theoretical framework developed in Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999). I have referred to some of the social theory which I find it particularly fruitful to work with, but the paper is intended to suggest a way of working and is in no sense a closed list of theorists – on the contrary, I believe that we should be open to a wide range of theory.

Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students

In this accessible new textbook, Isabela and Norman Fairclough present their innovative approach to analysing political discourse. Political Discourse Analysis integrates analysis of arguments into critical discourse analysis and political discourse analysis. The book is grounded in a view of politics in which deliberation, decision and action are crucial concepts: politics is about arriving cooperatively at decisions about what to do in the context of disagreement, conflict of interests and values, power inequalities, uncertainty and risk. The first half of the book introduces the authors’ new approach to the analysis and evaluation of practical arguments, while the second half explores how it can be applied by looking at examples such as government reports, parliamentary debates, political speeches and online discussion forums on political issues. Through the analysis of current events, including a particular focus on the economic crisis and political responses to it, the authors provide a systematic and rigorous analytical framework that can be adopted and used for students’ own research. This exciting new text, co-written by bestselling author Norman Fairclough, is essential reading for researchers, upper undergraduate and postgraduate students of discourse analysis, within English language, linguistics, communication studies, politics and other social sciences.

Recontextualizing European higher education policies: the cases of Austria and Romania

This paper explores, in some detail at the European Union scale, processes and relationships of recontextualization between higher education and other EU policy fields, including for instance the recontextualization of ‘competitiveness rhetoric’ and ‘globalization rhetoric’ in HE policy documents. We trace the implementation of the Bologna Process in two EU member states, Austria and Romania, illustrating the effects of these very different socio-political and historical contexts on EU standardization processes through a detailed discourse analytic study of recontextualization processes of policy documents. This paper integrates two approaches in critical discourse analysis, Faircloughs dialectic-relational approach and Wodaks discourse-historical approach, by introducing recontextualization as a salient critical discourse analysis category and explaining its relationship to other categories within a discourse-analytical approach to (or ‘point of entry’ into) trans-disciplinary research on social change.

A reply to Henry Widdowson's 'Discourse analysis: a critical view'

1 certain ways. There are differing positions within CDA,3 but in the notes /hich follow I shall refer only to my own work. One preliminary point to be lade about Widdowson’s article is that its target is confusingly unclear. He efines his ’main purpose’ in the article as to show that the name ’critical iscourse analysis’ is a contradiction in terms because CDA is interpretation, nd therefore not analysis (p. 159). But a large part of the article is taken up with critique of those who fail to distinguish text and discourse. I have always made us distinction in my work, and actually in a way which is roughly similar to Viddowson’s, though with important distinctions I return to. So what are we to iake of this sentence: ’There has been confusion, I have argued, about the ature of discourse (as distinct from text) and about analysis (as distinct from iterpretation) and I have suggested that this confusion is bred of commitment’