Critical discourse analysis - SLCC English 2030, Exams of English

Download Critical discourse analysis - SLCC English 2030 and more Exams English in PDF only on Docsity! 122 WOHKING WITH SPOKEN DISCOURSE 5 To encourage readers to approach this activitysystematically andwithoutpreconceptions about what they are'supposed to find', there are no 'answers'provided in this chapter. However, Chapter 10 includes some observations on the uses of oh and well" and frustrated readers who do not have a teacher to help them will find a full account of discourse markers' functions in English in Schiffrin ( 1987). ) Hidden agendas? Critical discourse analysis The approaches examined in Chapters 7 and 8, CA and interactional sociolinguistics, were developed to analyse interactive talk. They are not generally applied, nor are they readily applicable, to the analysis of written texts. The approach examined in this chapter, by contrast) criticai discourse analysis or CDA, can in principle be applied to both talk and text. Indeed, it is very much a 'textual' approach, which has most often been applied either to writing or to certain kinds ofspeech: analysts tend to work with 'institutional' rather than 'ordinary' talk, and many are particularly inter- ested in the language of the media. These preferences reflect CDA's concern with the 'hidden agenda' ofdiscourse, its ideological dimension. This is an approach to discourse analysis in which the nvo senses ofthe term discourse discussed in Chapter I (the linguist's sense and the critical social theorist's sense) are equaliy relevant. The purpose of analysis is to show how discourse in its frrst sense (language in use) also functions as discourse in its second sense (a form ofsocial practice that'constructs the objects ofrvhich it purports to speak'). Institutions, including the media, are important sites for the operation of discourse in its second, ideologically significant sense, and that is rvhy institutional and/or mediated discourse features so prominentlyin the work of CDA practitioners. As I explained in Chapter 4, the 'critical' in 'critical discourse analysis' refers to a way of understanding the social world drawn from critical theory. Within that paradigm reality is understoo d as constructed, shaped by various social forces. These, however, are frequently'naturaiized'- in everyday discourse, as opposed to critical discussions of it, reality is presented not as the outcome of social practices that might be questioned or challenged, but as simply'the way things are'. Naturalization obscures the fact that'the way things are'is not inevitable or unchangeable. It both results from particular actions and serves particular interests. Many of the arrange- ments that currently regulate global trade, for example, are more congenial to rich people and rich countries than to poor people and poor countries, and they are particularly congenial to large multinational corporations. But that is not how the processes of economic 'globalization' are usuaily represented by mainstream commentators in politics, business and the media. Even r,vhen globalization is not presented as self-evidentiy a good thing, it is qpicallypresented as an inevitable thing, with which governments, workers and consumers worldwide will have to learn to cope rvhether they like it or not. ) Abstractions such as 'globalization' are to a significant degree grasped, ./-ie real and noticeable to us, by their representation in langua{e.l Reaiiw ('how thines 124 wol WITH SPOKEN DISCOURSE are in the world') is the most general'object' of which discourse 'pulports to speak', and the central claim of CDA is that the way certain realities get talked or written about - that is, the choices speakers and writers make in doing it - are not just random but ideologically patterned. These choices do much of the rvork of naturalizing particular social arrangements which serv'e particular intelests, so that in time they may come to seem like the only possible or rational arrangements. However, the u'ord choice here does not necessarily imply a deiiberate decision, or a conspilacy, to represent the rvorld in misleading or self-interested rvays. From the standpoint ofthe language systeffi achoice has been made (this'rvord or this sentence rather than that word or that sentence), but from the standpoint of most ianguage-users on most occasions, choice is not consciously an issue. Rather it appears obvious that this, and not that, is the most natural and neutral way to describe a given phenomenon' DISCOURSE AND TFIE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY The Glasgow lr{edia Group, who are sociologists rather than linguists but rvho approach some aspects of language in quite similar wa1's to CDA practitionels, provide a good illustration of naturalization through language in their early work on the media reporting of industrial disputes (Giasgow Media Group 1980; Eldridge 1995). In a sample of ner.vs reports dealilg with disputes over pay and conditions in the workplace, they noticed a consistent pattern in the words that wele used to describe actions taken by workers and labour unions on one hand and empioyers oI managers on the other. The rvorkers were described as 'demanding' more money or bettel conditions, and 'threatening' to walk out if their 'demands''rvere not met; the employers were described as 'offering' terms and as 'appealing' to v'orkers to accept their'offers'. It would be possible to describe an industrial dispute by reversing this pattern, saying for instance: 'the rvorkers offered to leturn to rvork in exchange fol a 5 per cent pay rise, but employers demandedthat they settle f<tt 2per cent'. I suspect, hon ever, that most readers will find this rvay of putting the matter iess 'natural' and less 'neutral'than the alternative. Attributing'offers' to workers and 'dernands' to employers rvill strike many people as overtlv ideological, a clear sign that the speaker is on the side of the workers. Taiking about workels' 'demands', hon'ever, will not necessarily be seen as an ideological gesture of support for the emplo.vers. It just seems like the obvious r,vay to talk about an industrial dispute. (One piece of supPorting eviclence for this argument is that the Glasgolv N{edia Group found the pattern in Britisii television news reporting, r,vhich is subject to a strict requirement of political neutrality or balance: the BBC, for instance, evidently did not see its choice ofrvords as .biased'.) But as the Glasgorv lv{edia Group pointed out, words Iike'demand' and 'threaten' carry overtones of aggression and menace, ryhereas r,r'ords like'offer'and 'appeal' suggest a more reasonable, conciliatory stance. The linguistic pattern found in news reporting thus naturalizes a r.ierv of industrial disputes as arising from the unreasonable and aggressive behaviour of rvorkers. News reporters do not say explicitly that 'workers are responsible for industrial chaos', but their wa,vs of describing realiq' implicitiy carry that meaning. T cRrrrcAL Drscoui lrunr-tsrs I In news reporting, only one discursive construction of lealitv is pr-esented to the audience. In other kinds of discourse, by contrast, addressees are presented with competing constructions of realiq-. A case in point is.judicial discourse. When a rr'itness is examined in a courtroom, or a suspect is interrogated by police of6cers, the overt purpose ofthe interaction is to establish rvho did r.hat to whom and rvith what intentions. This is accomplished largely through discourse: the alleged criminal act is not usually available for direct scrutiny, so judicial decisions regarding rvho did rtfiat and why have to be based on the accounts people give after the fact. But since judicial proceedings are adversarial, and there are conflicting interests at stake, the accbunts given by different people n'ill often represent the 'same' events in different wavs. The question this raises for critical discourse analysts is whether and hon'a speaker's linguistic choices contribute to the judgement of their accolrnt as more oi less credible than competing accounts. The Canadian researcher Susan Ehrlich (1998) has examined this question rn relation to a universiry disciplinary hearing and a subsequent court case dealing with a complaint of sexual assault. Two women undergraduates had brought charges against the same man, also a student, whom they previously kne*'as a casual acquain- tance. In each case (the incidents took place two da1-s apart), the complainant reported that she had invited the man back to her room, u,here he had then subjected her to unwanted sexual acts in spite ofher clear unwillingness and repeated protests. As in many proceedings dealing with sexual assault and rape, particulariy rvhen the alleged attacker is knorr.'n to the victim, the defence put forward by the accused ('Matt') was that the women consented to have sex. The proceedings thus turned on t$'o competing constructions of realiry: the complainants' account, in which they rvere forced to engage in sexual acts, and N1att's account, in which they engaged in those acts voluntarily. Whereas the Glasgorv N{edia Group's anal,vsis of industrial dispute reporting focused on lexical (.vocabrslary) choices, Ehrlich's analysis of the judicial proceedrngs focuses onrhe grammaticalresources used to construct a certain sequence ofevents as consensual sex rather than assault. N{att and his representatives frequently choose grammatical constructions whose effect is to downplay agency (the capacily to act freely and autonomously). They avoid describing actions for which N{att was allegedly responsible using grammatical constructions in rvhich he is the agent of an action and the complainant's body or clothing is the object (e.g. 'I kissed her' or 'I took off her srveater'). Instead they frequentiy choose grammatical constructions h.hich imply shared responsibiiity and thus mutual consent, such as 'we u'ere fooiing around' (a formula A{att repeats several times) and 'rve started kissing'. Sometimes Matt or his lawyer uses 'agentless' constructions in which respon.sibiliry is expiicitly attributed to no one. The larryer asks, for instance: 'I take it that the sweater was renovedl' Forrnulating this question in the passive leaves it unclear whether lv{att removed the woman's s\\'eater or rr.hether she removed it herself. The complainants by contrast choose sentence structures that foreground Matt's agency: 'he took my shirt off and . . . he unclasped my bra . . . and he pulled my pants down'. N{att does not deny that the events referred to here actually occurred, nor that he participated in them, but by using reciprocal and agentless constructions to describe actions like kissing, touching 130 or universir.y students as'customers'- then one of the things it has to do is instruct them in their new roles and relationships by changing the rvay it addresses them. Not only does this put them in the position of 'customers' in particular exchanges, arguably it has the more generai effect ofencouraging them to think about hospitals or universities in a'consumerist' frame, while discouraging the use of an older, 'public ser-vice' frame. From this point of view, the emergence of new kinds of discourse is not oniy a consequence of social change, but also an instrument of social change. Norman Fairclough has argued (see especially Fairclough r99Z) that a number ofgeneral tendencies representing social change can be discerned in contemporary institutional discourse. One of these, which goes along with the adoption of the capitalist free market as a model for all kinds of transactions, is a tendency for discourse genres which were once primarily 'inf<rrmational' to become more 'promotional'- they are no longer designed simply to 'tell', but also to ,sell. One salient rvay in which the shift is expressed is through the incorporation into non-commerciai genres of features from the genre of commercial advertising. An example Fairclough has examined by comparing earlier and later texts is the British university prospectus. Recent prospectuses have much in common with advertising brochures in their appearance and the language they use: the reader deciding where to study is now positioned as a 'customer', for whose business the university must compete by drawing attention to its 'selling points'. Earlier prospectuses read very differently. They inform readers about the courses on offer, the admissions requirements, and so on, but pay less attention to framing this information in ways designed to appeal to the reader as a consumer. Another notable development is the incorporation of 'therapeutic' discourse (the kind oftalk found in therapy or counselling contexts) into genres which have no therapeutic function, such as job selection and appraisal interviews. Interviewees may be invited to talk about their personal attributes and feelings, strengths and weaknesses, and so on, as ifthe goal ofthe encounter were selfiunderstanding and self-development, and as if interviewees were like clients interacting with helping professionals rather than subordinates being judged by their superiors. This kind of borrowing from one genre of discourse to another is sometimes discussed in CDA using the notion of intertextuality, which is itself a term borrowed from the study of literature and other forms of artistic production. Most works of art are not 'original' in the sense ofbeing totally unlike and unrelated to any other works of art; rather they are full of allusions to and echoes of the works that Preceded them. These ailusions create'intertextual' (between texts) relationships: in alluding to other texts, an author can transfer something of those texts' qualities and their cultural signiflcance into his or her own tert.r Simiiariy, the informational document which alludes to advertising in its use oflanguage (and other features, such as layout and graphic illustration) creates a sort ofintertext or generic hybrid. It is neither purely an advertisement nor purely a digest of information, but has some of the qualities - and some of the meaning - of both. A very general development to which Fairclough has called attention is a shift ar,vay fror pal and impersonal modes of address, which affects both rvriting and speech. Iri ...,t, Fairclough suggests that there is a general tendency for institutional discourse, both written and spoken, to make intertextual reference to the kind of discourse that is least'institutional': ordinary casual conversation. Consider, for example, a telephone conversation in which I recently participated (I did not tape-record it, but wrote it down immediately afterwards. Underlining indicates emphatic stress): Caller: hi this is Robcrta from fname of a local newspaper] how're vou doin today DC: fine thanks but the person you want isn't here The purpose of this call was to sell the person whose house I .rvas staying in a subscription to the local newspaper. It was, in other words, a business (sales) call, and has some of the features one would expect in a business call (for instance, the caller states her affiiiation to the newspaper in her first turn). The exchange also, however, has some features that are more llpical of a personal call made by one friend or acquaintance to another. The caller uses oniy her first name, and she chooses a greeting formula typical ofcasual conversation (hi). Moreover, instead of introducing her business at the earliest opportunity, she finishes her first turn by uttering a formulaic enquiry ('how're yeu doin today'). In the part of the US where the exchange took place, 'how are you doing?' is as likely to be a greeting as a 'genuine' enquiry, but either way it is the first part of an adjacency pair, which requires the addressee to take the floor and produce an appropriate response. so Roberta's uttering this formula both involves me in the exchange and defers the point at which she ivrll have a chance to move into the actual business ofthe call. Just as in a conversation between friends, we are apparently in no hurry to get to the point here. In fact, Roberta and I are totai strangers, but her way of addressing me implies that she knows and cares about me. Had it not been for the mention of the newspaper she works for I might even have thought that I actualiy did know her, and racked my brains trying to remember rvho she was. Of course, the mention of the newspaper gave the game away: as my contri- bution to the exchange shows, I knew that this was a sales call by the end of the opening turn. I was not confused by Roberta's incorporation of conversational features like first naming and informal pronunciation (hov're, doin), orbyher failure to state her business upfront, because lhese have become ubiquitous strategies in sales and service encounters. They exemplify an aspect of the more general 'conversationaiization' of discourse which Norman Fairclough has dubbed 'synthetic personalization'. As Fairclough explains it: One finds techniques for efficiently and nonchalantl,v'handling' people rvherever one iooks in the public institutions of the modern world. EqualJy, one finds rvhat I shall refer to as synthetic personalisation, a compensatory tendency to give the impression oftreatingeachofthepeople'handled'eflmasseasanindividual.Exarnpleswo"!,]be air travel (,have a nice day!), restauants (Welcome to Wirnpy!) and the sirr d conversation (e.g- chat shows) and bonhomiewhichlitter the media. (1989: 62r / 13 13.2 wOR] tlWttU SnOXeN DTSCOURSE ) Institutional encounters tend to differ from ordinary conversation between acquainted persons (see Chapter 7), because the participants'talk is designed to accomplish institutional goals rather than to carry on a personal relationship between individuais. However, Roberta in the example above simulates personal conversation in her call to me, a stranger, because she believes, or has been instructed by her ernployer, that constructing personal rapport u.'ith a prospective customer is an effective rvay of accomplishing her institutional goal, which is to sell. I am more likely to buy, the theory goes, if i feel i am being treated as an individual, &1 an individual. If the seller can draw me into quasi-personal conversation using formulas like 'how're you doin today' which oblige me to respond similarly, I will find it more dif6cult to rebuff her at a later staee. What are the linguistic markers of sl.nthetic personalization in discourse? One is the frequent use of names, especially first names, and another the use of pronouns I and you. There is a preference for informal styles and registers, which connote a higher degree of intimacy or soiidariry than more formal ones. These strategies could be analysed as examples ofpositive poiiteness - that is, the kind ofpoliteness that says 'I iike you' rather than the kind that says 'I don't mean to impose on you' (see Chapter 6), and po.sitive politeness in general is extensiveiy used in synthetically personalized talk. Roberta, for instance, does not make use of a negative politeness strategywhich is sometimes used in sales talk, where the salesperson apologizes for taking up.the customer's time or asks if s/he may have a moment of their time. Rather she says 'horv are you doing today', a move that invites me to take up her time by replying. In research on the reguiation of spoken discourse in service workplaces (described in Cameron 2000a, 2000b), I found a variety ofpositive politeness strategies being incorporated into scripts, routines and rules for speaking to customers, with the aim ofpersonalizing interaction. For instance, workers may be advised to create rapport by shorving empathy (that is, the abiiiry to feel u,ith as rveii as for another) using minimal responses and 'mirroring' statements. One insurance company tells employees who deal with claims relating to traffic accidents that they should respond to the customer's account of what happened by saying things like 'that must have been very distressing for you'. In other contexts, it is suggested that employees should tell the customer lvho has a problem or a complaint: 'I know exactly what you mean' or 'the same thing happened to me', responses which use the positive poiiteness strategy of 'ciaiming common ground'. Empathy can aiso be displayed in the nuances ofintonation and voice quality. One text on the subject of'customer care' advises: 'lf a customer comes across as cold and diffident, convince yourself that beneath the surface is a lvarm, caring, loving human being. Try to reach that suppressed warmth by injecting emotional warmth into your own words.' It is not entirely clear what ideological meaning should be ascribed to the tendency for institutional talk to borrorv features of 'ordinary' conversation. It could be argued that this is a manifestation in discourse of the commitment that now exists in contemporary lvestern societies to conducting social relations on a basis of equality and solidarity rather than status and social distance. On this view, institutions are adjusting to, or playing their part in, a generai shift away from the formal and hierarchical relations of the past, 'lvhich are no longer felt to cRrrrcAL DlscouR !lr_vsrs be appropriate, or tolerabie, in a modern democracy. It could also be argued, horver.er, that conversationalizing institutional encounters tends to ml,stify the real nature of those encounters: it reinforces the widespread belief that socier,v is becoming more egaiitarian, and so obscures the continued existence of hierarchy and inequality. The boss who addresses employees in a friendly, informal conversational style is stili, in fact, their boss. The intervierv befween a job candidate and a prospective employer, or a client and a social rvorker, or a student and a teacher, may resemble a casual chat, but it is not a casual chat: one party is being judge,J, the other is doing the judging, and their encounter will have material consequences for the less powerful participant. One side-effect of conversationaiization is to foreground the issue of sinceritl, in institutional and public discourse. when institutional encounters become person- alized, and when institutional representatives are routinelv encouraged to project positive feelings towards the strangers they deal with, the question arises of r.vhether the feelings they express are'sincere'. someone rvho greets you with a courteous 'good morning' does not lay claim to much in the rvay of sincerely felt emotion, but a greeting like Roberta's 'how're s doin today?' may prompt the customer to formulate the unspoken question, 'what's it to you?'. IrIany customers on the receiring end of sprtheticaily personalized talk complain about its patent insinceriq', rvhile for the producers ofthis kind oftalk, the work invoh'ed in creating an in:pression of sincere concern for the custorner can be a source ofstress (see cameron 2000a). Sales and service talk are not the only kinds ofinstitutional discourse in which sincerity is an issue, The critical media discourse analyst Ir,{artin Montgomery (1999) remarks on the increasing emphasis on sincerity in more formal kinds of public discourse too. The case he discusses in detail is the reception of\rarious public tributes to Princess Diana following her death in a car accident in 1997. Many commentators praised the sinceriry of a tribute paid on television by the British prime I"{inister Tony Blair, rvhile a television tribute paid by the Queen was felt to lack a certain authenticiw and emotional depth by comparison.a one commentator noted that although the Queen was 'clearly moved' she was also 'very composed'. A member of the pubric asked to comment bv a reporter assessed the speech as 'very good', but then said: 'i hope it's true that she feels it you knor.v and these are her o.rnn u,ords and nobody else's' (Montgomery 1999: 15-16). It appears then thar the eueen,s tribute 'lvas received as a performance, rvhich left some room for doubt as to whether she was expressing her true feelings in her orvn words. Tony Blair's tribute evoked no such doubts; but this cannot be because Blair was not 'performing', for it is very unlikely that a prime minister addressing the nation on such an occasion rvould not have thought in advance about what he was going to say. As Montgomery notes, horvever, the use ofsincerity as a criterion for judging public speech demands a kind of performance that conceals its own status as a performance. Rather like the Pentecostalists whose discourse we examined in chapter 5, who claimed that their inten-entions rvere inspired by the workings of the Holy spirit, 'sincere' speakers are understood to be moved by their feelings at a particular moment. If they are obr"iously performing - rvhich implies planning or calcularion - their sinceriry may be called into question. 134 The value placed on sincerity in public speaking, lv{ontgomery argues, is largely a product of the rise of television, an 'intimate' medium which gives viewer access to the emotions of those who address them (for instance, by showing facial expressions in close-up). If Tony Blair's tribute was judged 'more sincere' than the Queen's, that may be because Blair, whose public persona was formed in the age of teievision, is more skilled in meeting the demand for an intimate, personalized and apparently spontaneous form ofaddress on camera. By contrast, the Queen acquired her public speaking skills before television became such a dominant medium. She belongs to a tradition in which formal public speech was judged mainly on the criteria of appropriateness or 'decorum'. A'decorous' public speaker utters those sentiments which it is conventional to express in a given situation, but does not set out to create intimacy with the audience or engage in displays of spontaneous feeling. In this tradition of public speaking, it is more important to observe social convention than to express individual emotion. In her tribute to Diana, the Queen did mention feelings of shock ar-rd grief, but her speech was delivered in a decorous ('composed') manner which did not convey the same strength of feeling as Blair's performance. ACTIVITY: 'SPEAKING SINCERELY' ABOUT THE DEATH OF PRINCESS DIANA This activify focuses on the spoken discourse characteristics that distinguished Blair's tribute to Princess Diana as an exemplar of sincerity in public discourse. In line with the general preoccupations of critical discourse analysis, it also asks what kind of ideological work is being done by the choices Blair makes in his speech. The transcript is reproduced from Martin Montgomery's article (1999: 6) and the comment$ that foilow it are also based largely on Montgomery's analysis. AGTIVITY Read the transcript below and consider the following questions. You should complete this activity before you read the discussion that follows it. .1 How and to what extent does Tony Blair's speech exemplifv 'conversationalization', importing characteristics of casual, unplanned conversation into a more formal/ institutional speech event? 2 What features of the speech are suggestive of a more 'rhetorical', highly planned and/or formal kind of discourse? 3 How is emotion displayed in the speech? 4 ln the light of your answers to the questions above, what do you think people were responding to in the speech when they characterized Tony Blair as 'sincere'? 5 Tony Blair is not just reacting to Diana's death as a private individual but also addressing the nation as a political leader. How is that signalled in the way he consiructs his tribute, and what ; ideological effect? CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Transcript Transcription conventions: (2.5) pause measured in seconds (.) hearable pause less thar 0.2 seconds, / tone unit boundary - tonic syllable (syllable carrying a tone, i.e. pitch movement),' prominent (stressed) but non-tonic syllable BBC: Prime minister can we please have your reaction to the news BLAIR: (2.5) I feel like / everyone 'else in tlis 'country todalr t (0.3) | ggrerly / (0.7) / rleyastated / (3.3) / our'thoughts and grgycrs are / with / (.) princess Di'ana's family i ( 1.0) in partieular / her two / ( 1.5) sons / the two boys / (.2.5) lottr 'hearts go out to thln / (3.5) / we'are today / (2.2) a sation/ (0.8) / in Erilain / in a'state of shock / (1.5) / in mourning/ (0.5) ln I (t.Z) g'ief (1.3) / that is so deeply painfirl for us I @.0) I she / (f .2) / was a wonderful / (1.3) / and a'warm human leing / (3.5) [sercral lines omitted] / you know uh / (0.3) / how difficult things/ were for her / (.) from 'time to time / ( 1.1) / I'm 'sure we can only guess at / but (2.7) l the peofu l (.) I everywherc I (.) /not just / here in Britain/ cverywhere I (I.3) lthey 'kept faithwith Princess Diana l(1.0) / theyliked her / theyloved her I (2.4) lthey regalded her / (0.6) /as'one of the pgqple / (3.0) / she was / the 'people's princsss / (4.0) / and that's how she win / (1.5) / stay / 'how she will reqail / (2.3) lin our hearts / (.) / and in our memories t (1.0) I for wer / (3.0) Martin Montgomery suggests that the most obviously'conversational'feature of the speech transcribed above is its lack of fluency. It is a markedly hesitant performance, containing many long pauses; furthermore, the pauses occur, as they would in casual unplanned speech, not only at major boundaries but also benveen smaller units of discourse. Blair's delivery thus iacks the degree of fluency we generally associate with planned performance, and this contributes to the impression that he is in the grip of strong emotions. That impression is reinforced by Blair's explicit references to emotional states, which are described in such 'extreme' terms as 'utterly devastated', 'in a state of shock', 'so deeply painful'. The Queen's tribute - made in a live television broadcast, but on the eve of the funeral rather than immediately after the announcement of the news - gives a very different impression from Tony Blair's, as the foliowing extract illustrates (Montgomery 1999: 14,transcription conventions as above): QUEEN: / I hope that / tomorrow / we can all / wherever we are i (1.0) / join in expressing our gie:fi (.) at Diana's loss I (1.0) land gratitude / (.) for her all too short life I (2.2) I itis a chance / (0.5) / to show / to the whole world / (0.5) i the British / nation / un:itgd I in gie! I (.) and respssr''r.5i )