Two fundamental concepts that CDA employs in the analysis of language and power are text and discourse. Text is a familiar term in linguistics. In its broadest sense, text
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can be conceived as a social or cultural product. In this view, text is not merely a linguistic product, made up of words or sentences, but, as Halliday expresses it, a ‘unit of meaning’ which serves a social function and which has social significance for those who produce it as well as those who hear, read, see or otherwise experience and interpret it (Halliday 1978, 108-9; Halliday and Hasan 1985, 10). The present study is mostly concerned with the linguistic form of text, and in particular with written texts (see Widdowson 1995a, 160-4 for this view of text). However, it also considers texts which incorporate both a written and a visual element, such as the student cartoons examined in chapters four and six. For the most part, the study is concerned with the analysis of texts of sentence length and above, although it also deals with smaller texts (individual words) and with larger texts (paragraphs, newspaper articles, chapters and sub-sections). These texts are considered in their wider contexts, both their wider textual context as well as their broader social, cultural and political context.
Following Halliday, this study defines text as a process in the sense that it is a continuous process of meaning-making, defined by the choices that text producers (speakers and writers) make from the overall linguistic system (Halliday 1978, 139-40; Halliday and Hasan 1985, 10-11) and the ways in which readers or listeners interpret these choices (see below). This insight draws on Saussure’s distinction between langue
(the language system) and parole (the use of language). Saussure held that meaning came from the system of language (langue), which was responsible for structuring speakers’ experience of the world (Macdonell 1986, 8-9).4 In producing instances of language use (parole), manifested in texts (in their linguistic form), speakers make choices from this linguistic system. This is often referred to in terms of ‘representation’ (see Fowler 1987, 482-3; Wilson 2001, 401).5 Not all choices are the same: speakers and writers may represent similar phenomena in different ways. A basic assumption of both the Hallidayan model and of CDA, as well as sociolinguistics more generally, is that the linguistic choices that speakers and writers make when they use language are socially, culturally and politically determined (see Widdowson 1995b, 514; Fowler
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See also Widdowson 1995b, 514 and Kress 1985a, 30 for a discussion of Saussure in the context of CDA.
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Wilson defines representation as ‘how language is employed in different ways to represent what we can … believe and perhaps think’. The universalist perspective on representation holds that the way we think determines what we are able to say (or write) and the ways in which we are able to say (or write) it. The relativist position, on the other hand, maintains that our experience of the world, and the ways in which we are able to think about it, is mediated by language. The corollary of the relativist position is that controlling what people are able to say and the ways in which they are able to say it, enables control over thought (Wilson 2000, 401).
1987, 482-3). One of the stated aims of CDA is to reveal the underlying reasons for the particular representations or choices that speakers and writers make from this language system (Fowler 1987, 482-3; see also below).6
Discourse is also a term familiar to linguistics. The term discourse, however, is also used in other social sciences. This has led to some confusion about its meaning, particularly in CDA, which seeks to combine a linguistic view of discourse with more socially and politically oriented perspectives.7 In many branches of linguistics, discourse is defined as a unit of text larger than a sentence (see Pennycook 1994, 116 and 117-120; Widdowson 1995, 160-4). Such a definition is of limited use in a theory of language which seeks to explore its social and political aspects. A more useful conception of discourse is that offered by Foucault, who suggests that discourse is an abstract system of ‘rules’ which determine what can be said about a particular topic and how, when, by whom and to whom it can be said (Foucault 1972). In this view, discourse describes a way of speaking and thinking about a particular domain of social experience. Discourse is derived from the social structure (with its particular configurations of power relations) and is often, though not exclusively, realised in text (Pennycook 1994, 128 and 130-1; see also Kress 1985b, 27). Kress sums up Foucault’s view of discourse in the following way:
Discourses are systematically-organised sets of statements which give expression to the meanings and values of an institution. Beyond that, they define, describe and delimit what it is possible to say (and by extension – what it is possible to do or not to do) with respect to the area of concern of that institution… A discourse provides a set of possible statements about a given area and organises and gives structure to the manner in which a particular topic, object, process is to be talked about. In that it provides descriptions, rules, permissions and prohibitions of social and individual actions (Kress 1985a, 6- 7).8
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Fowler notes that ‘Critical linguistics insists that all representation is mediated, moulded by the value- systems that are ingrained in the medium (language in this case) used for representation; it challenges common sense by pointing out that something could have been represented some other way, with a very different significance. This is not, in fact, simply a question of ‘distortion’ or ‘bias’: there is not necessarily any true reality that can be unveiled by critical practice, there are simply relatively varying representations’ (Fowler 1987, 483).
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The combination of linguistic definitions of discourse with more socially and politically oriented perspectives in CDA is both a strength and a weakness. As Widdowson points out, Fairclough’s model (set out in Fairclough 1992) raises questions about ‘…how far it is possible to combine theories without compromising them. It raises too the question of compatibility between …abstract theoretical models and descriptive practice’ (Widdowson 1995b, 516).
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Some practitioners of CDA, most notably Norman Fairclough, have drawn on the work of Foucault in formulating a critical view of discourse and discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992; Fairclough 1995; see also Kress 1985a; Kress 1985b). Yet there are some important differences between the way in which Fairclough uses the term discourse and the way in which Foucault saw discourse. Fairclough defines
Foucault’s position thus provides us with a number of important insights about the nature of discourse and its effects on individuals. Foucault’s view of discourse is a relativist one, in which language is seen as mediating our experience of the world, and as determining the ways in which we are able to think about it (see fn 5). Thus, for Foucault, by producing ways of speaking about the world, discourse also provides a way of thinking about the world. Moreover, since the ways in which we speak and think about the world also influence what we do, discourse provides a set of parameters for the ways in which individuals and groups are able to act in their capacity as social subjects (see also van Dijk 2001, 357-8; Hodge and Kress 1988, 3).9
Shifting the focus from the nature of discourse and its effects on individuals to the place of discourse in the social structure, we gain further insights from Foucault’s work.10 Foucault’s method of discourse analysis is an historical one, based on his view that discourses are socially and historically constructed. In this view, discourses are constructed from combinations of both prior and contemporary discourses which are in turn derived from the conditions of past and present social structures. As a result, any one discourse is defined by its relation to both past discourses and to the discourses which are its contemporaries (Fairclough 1992, 39-40).11 The total set of discourses in a particular society or institution is called an ‘order of discourse’ (Fairclough 1992, 43). An order of discourse describes the relationships between discourses, including specifying which discourses are privileged in which particular fields and how these discourses relate to less privileged alternatives. As Kress expresses it:
discourse (as an abstract noun) as ‘spoken or written language use’ (although it can also refer to non- verbal types of communication, etc) and ‘language use conceived as social practice’ (Fairclough 1995, 131 and 135; see also Pennycook 1994, 121). Yet he also distinguishes discourse as a count noun (discourses), which he defines as ‘ways of signifying areas of experience from a particular perspective’ (Fairclough 1995, 132 and 135). While the latter definition approximates Foucault’s view of discourse, the former, as Pennycook rightly points out, defines discourse as an essentially ‘linguistic phenomenon, albeit socially embedded’ (Pennycook 1994, 127; see also Kress 1985b, 27-9 for a discussion of the distinction between text and discourse). For Foucault, however, discourse was not itself a linguistic phenomenon but, as suggested above, an abstract system (Fairclough’s second definition of discourse) which is realised in texts (as instances of language use). A similar use of the term discourse in both a linguistic sense and in a Foucauldian sense (‘racist discourse’) is also evident in van Dijk’s socio- cognitive approach (see for example van Dijk 1993b). To the extent that the term ‘discourse’ refers in Fairclough and van Dijk’s work to ‘socially embedded language use’, then it seems to represent somewhat of a conceptual ‘doubling-up’ of the definition of text as ‘product’ and ‘process’ offered by Halliday (see above).
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Hodge and Kress suggest that ‘[i]deological complexes are constructed in order to constrain behaviour by structuring the versions of reality on which social action is based, in particular ways’ (1988, 3).
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But see Fairclough (1992) on the shifts in Foucault’s view of discourse throughout his work.
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This view is similar to ideas about intertextuality developed by Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin (see below).
Discourses do not exist in isolation but within a larger system of sometimes opposing, contradictory, contending, or merely different discourses … [The] dynamic relations between these [discourses] … ensure continuous shifts and movement, progression or withdrawal in certain areas (Kress 1985a, 7).
This idea of discourses as competing is a central one for the concerns of this thesis. Kress suggests that:
Within any social group there are a number of discourses, because a number of significant institutions operate within any one social group. Hence any group will be using a number of discourses offering alternative or contradictory accounts of reality. That is, even though any one discourse accounts for the area of its relevance, there are overlapping areas of interest where differing accounts are offered, which are contested by several discourses (1985a 11).
In later work on power, Foucault saw discourse itself as both a site of and a stake in struggles of power (see also below):
Discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination but is the thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized (1984, 109).
It is this notion of discourses as ‘competing’ for discursive supremacy which underpins the characterisation of state and student discourses in this thesis as ‘warring words’.12
Foucault’s view of discourse is useful for pointing out the ways in which discourse sets certain parameters for what we are able to say and write about the world and how we are able to do so. However, as Fairclough points out, this view is an overly constitutive one (Fairclough 1992, 60-1). Foucault’s concept of ‘orders of discourse’ does allow for opposition, contestation and difference between discourses and suggests that discourse is in fact a key stake in power. This contestation is manifested in the contradictory ways in which texts are produced. Yet Foucault’s perspective, like that of the early critical linguists, does not allow sufficient scope for the creative processes of text interpretation, in which readers and listeners may interpret texts in a variety of compliant or resistant ways.
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Seidel suggests similarly that: ‘…discourse of any kind … is a site of struggle. It is a terrain, a dynamic linguistic, and, above all, semantic space in which social meanings are produced or challenged (Seidel 1985, 44).
What, then, is the relationship between text and discourse? It was suggested above that for Foucault, discourse is often, though not exclusively, realised through text, or, to use his term, statements. Kress argues that this fact means that ‘certain syntactic forms will necessarily correlate with certain discourses’ (1985b, 28):
The systematic organisation of content in discourse, drawing on and deriving from the prior classification of this material in an ideological system, leads to the systematic selection of linguistic categories and features in a text (Kress 1985b, 30).
The relationship between text and discourse, however, is a complex one since different and even conflicting discourses may be realised in a particular text (Kress 1985b, 27 and 29; see also Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 227).
Given this relationship, what is the place of text-based analysis in discourse analysis? In The archaeology of knowledge (1972), Foucault acknowledged that linguistic analysis was one method for the analysis of discourse, although discourse analysis could not be reduced to linguistic analysis (Fairclough 1992, 40; Foucault 1972, 108).13 In his own work on discourse, however, Foucault was more concerned with specifying the social and historical processes by which particular discourses came into being (Fairclough 1992, 40). Fairclough has suggested that this emphasis on macro-level social and historical processes is one of the main weaknesses of Foucault’s approach and one of the ways in which the focus on text analysis in critical discourse analysis approaches can strengthen Foucault’s method of discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992, 57-8). Since discourse is realised in text, a close analysis of the features of a text can provide an insight into the structures of the discourse which inform it as well as the larger social system, including the power relations, from which the discourse is derived.
Yet in analysing the linguistic features of a text, we must be careful to avoid a view of the text as encoding social meanings, which can then be ‘read-off’ by the analyst. This view, which was an underlying assumption of early critical linguistics (Fowler et al 1979; Hodge and Kress 1979), has received some strong criticism. This criticism has focused on the role of readers and listeners in actively interpreting the texts they read
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A text-based analysis of discourse is thus not incompatible with Foucault’s view. Foucault argues that discourse determines what statements are possible about a particular area as well as how, when, by whom and to whom such statements can be made. While Foucault’s concern was with macro-level social and historical processes, there is no reason why discourse analysis cannot also be concerned with specifying the properties of the statement (text) which is ‘the elementary unit of discourse’ (Foucault 1972, 80).
and hear and, in doing so, constructing their own, often divergent, social meanings (see for example Fowler 1987, 488; Fairclough 1992, 60-1). As a result of these criticisms, subsequent formulations have emphasised the fact that texts as products represent only part of the process of social meaning making; as processes, texts (in their linguistic form) are subject to active processes of interpretation on the part of listeners and readers. Widdowson, for example, suggests that texts record the meanings of the text producer, which are directed at an idealised anticipated audience. During the process of text interpretation, ‘real’ readers engage in an active process of meaning-making (Widdowson 1995a, 164). In recognition of this, there has been an increased emphasis in critical discourse analysis on the role of listeners and readers in interpreting texts. Fowler, for example, suggests that:
Texts construct ‘reading positions’ for readers, that is, they suggest what ideological formations it is appropriate for readers to bring to texts. But the reader, in this theory, is not the passive recipient of fixed meanings: the reader, remember, is discursively equipped prior to the encounter with the text, and reconstructs the text as a system of meanings which may be more or less congruent with the ideology which informs the text (Fowler 1987, 486).
The idea that readers may not interpret texts in the way that writers intend is captured in the notion of ‘resistant readings’ (see Fairclough 1992, 135-6; see also Hacker, Coste, Kamm and Bybee 1991).14 Since all readers approach texts with a variety of different textual experiences and interpretive resources, they may produce a wide range of (fully or partially) compliant or resistant readings (Fairclough 1992, 135-6).
To sum up: discourses produce ways of speaking and thinking about the world. In doing so, they also set parameters for the ways in which individuals and groups are able to act in the world. These particular ways of thinking and speaking about the world (discourses) are derived from the social structure, with its particular configuration of power relations, and so reflect them. Texts encode these ways of thinking and speaking about the world and as such also reflect the social structure. A linguistic analysis of texts can thus provide insights into both the structures of discourse and the larger social
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Wilson argues that: ‘readers interpret texts in terms of their already existing mental schemas. As a result, they are unlikely to change a negative view of a particular issue upon reading or hearing a text which represents this issue in a more positive way’. People ‘may be biased in their mode of interpretation from the start. For such individuals, manipulations of transitivity, or other aspects of structure, may have little effect on interpretation, which is not to say that such structural forms may not have an effect elsewhere’ (Wilson 2001, 406 and 409). See also Widdowson 1995a, Fairclough 1996 and Widdowson 1996 on questions of text interpretation.
system from which these discourses are derived, with the qualification that texts may be interpreted in multiple ways. Discourses are also historically and socially constructed and are defined in relation to other past and present discourses, captured in the notion of an ‘order of discourse’. The relationships between discourses within an order of discourse are often characterised by contestation, which reflects the dynamic power relationships between groups and individuals in a particular society or institution. Change in discourse and in text originates at the level of social structure, in the transformations of power relations. Since discourse is derived from the social structure, these transformations in power relationships have effects on both discourse and on text (see Fairclough 1992, 96-7).