E303B - UNIT 20
Critical discourse analysis (CDA):
· This approach has been developed by linguists with an interest in the rhetorical potential of texts – the potential of texts to influence societal beliefs, values and expectations.
· It is an approach concerned with the ways in which texts may influence public opinion in relation, for example, to politics, international relations, the economy, religion and the environment.
· Moreover, it is an approach concerned with the potential of texts to shape a society’s more basic beliefs and assumptions about the way the world is and the way it ought to be.
· Much of the research within this critical framework has been directed towards those texts which have the most obvious potential for influencing social attitudes – mass media journalism and the speeches and statements of political leaders. (In exploring the persuasive strategies employed in the texts of politicians and political parties, or the role of the mass media in shaping community attitudes and beliefs).
· This is why the critical approach has been applied to texts from a great diversity of fields including expert and popular science, advertising, public administration, history, economics, education policy, and various types of literature including popular children’s fiction.
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CRITICAL LINGUISTIC APPROACH: SOME KEY CLAIMS AND ASSUMPTIONS
**Ideology**
· At the heart of the critical linguistic approach is the notion of ideology. It is generally used to refer to the notion of world view or value system. It refers to the fact that all speakers and writers necessarily operate with assumptions, beliefs and expectations about the way the world is, and the way it ought to be.
(E.g.: The assumptions and beliefs by which the members of any community develop views)
- what is right and wrong or good and bad
- what is normal or natural human behaviour and what is abnormal or aberrant
- what are the appropriate roles for human individuals to perform according to such factors as their age, gender and education
- what it means to be an integral member of that community
- what it means to be an outsider or an alien.
· These sets of socially-based assumptions and beliefs are termed ideologies and, accordingly, all texts can be seen as ideological in that they are shaped by, reflect, and hence potentially perpetuate, such value systems or ways of thinking .
· Much of critical linguistic work is directed towards relating specific lexicogrammatical features to these underlying world views (or ideologies). Each particular view of the world is most firmly based in what is assumed by the people holding that view to be common knowledge or common sense.
· There are some researchers within critical linguists who reserve the terms ‘ideology’ and ‘ideological’ for a particular type of world view or value system which they see as acting to support or perpetuate social inequality, exploitation, discrimination or oppression.
ما من عبد مسلم يدعو لأخيه بظهر الغيب إلا قال الملك ولك بمثل.
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