What is discourse analysis and what are the examples of discourse analysis?
Discourse analysis or critical discourse analysis is an approach to studying written or spoken language and how language constructs reality. Discourse analysis aims to understand how language is commonly used in various contexts.
It’s a common qualitative research method in various humanities and social science disciplines including anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.
Discourse is a particular way of how people see the world. A dominant discourse of gender for example usually depicts women as gentle and men as heroic figures.
What Is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis or critical discourse analysis is an approach to studying written or spoken language and how language constructs reality. Discourse analysis aims to understand how language is commonly used in various contexts.
For example, a dominant discourse of gender usually depicts women as gentle and men as heroic figures. A dominant discourse of race will often portray whiteness as the norm, while coloured people are directed as others.
Other similar examples are shown in films and television shows. In films, the ideal female is often framed as silent, submissive, and passive. If this is constantly portrayed in films, we will all come to think that this is how women should behave.
This becomes a representation we think it’s normal for every woman in society. If a woman is not submissive, passive, or silent, we start to think that they are abnormal.
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How is Discourse Analysis Different from Other Methods?
While linguistics focuses only on the rule of language use, discourse analysis on the other hand focuses on the contextual meaning of language.
Discourse analysis concentrates on the social aspect of communication and how people use language to manage conflict, build trust, and achieve certain effects.
There are smaller units of language including sounds words or phrases. However, discourse analysis is only used to study larger units of language.
Discourse analysis is used to study conversations, collections of texts, and texts.
Examples of Discourse Analysis
We will be looking at examples of discourse analysis. Also, we will be looking at some studies and what it examines.
Newspaper Bias
In other to conduct a critical discourse analysis of a newspaper, it requires collecting and arranging several newspaper articles, newspapers from a specific set of publishers within a date range.
After collecting the newspaper articles, the researcher carries out a close observation of the text to examine the frame subjects from a specific ideology or political perspective.
| Study | What it examines |
| Rohingya Muslims in Media- critical discourse of Myanmar and Bangladesh newspaper headlines (Isti’anah, 2018) | The author of the newspaper explores the military attacks on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar in the 2010s. They compare the Myanmar and Bangladesh newspapers. The Myanmar newspapers construct the military as the protagonists whereas the Bangladesh papers construct the Rohingya people as the protagonists. |
| Immigrants and the Western media- A critical discourse analysis of newspaper framing African immigrant parenting in Canada (Alaazi et all 2021) | This is a study that reviewed 37 Canadian newspaper articles that talked about African immigrant parenting. African immigrants are perceived as inferior because of their parenting method compared to Canadian parenting |
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Television Analysis
Discourse analysis is often used to frame devices in advertisements and television shows.
Since advertising is multimodal, several scholars usually mix discourse analytical methodology alongside semiotic methods.
| Study | |
| Ideologies of Arab media and politics- a critical discourse of Al Jazeera debate about the revolution on going in Yemen | This is a study that transcribed debates on Al Jazeera about the Yemeni revolution and discovered an overall bias against the government of Yemen. |
| Soak up the goodness- discourses of Australian childhoods on TV advertisements (Drew 2013) | This is a study that explores how Australian childhood identities are basically constructed in TV advertising. It discovers that national identity is normalized as a thing that children have from the earliest period in their lives. |
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Film Critique
From the few examples of discourse analysis we have discussed so far, this one involves scholars exploring discourse in films in a similar pattern just like they study discourse on television shows.
This may include how sexuality, race, nationalism, social class, and gender is portrayed in films.
An example is the study of Walt Disney films and how they portray feminine and masculine identities that children watch and aspire to be like.
| Study | What it examines |
| Child Rearing and Gender Socialization- a feminist critical discourse analysis of kids popular fictional movies (Baig, Khan and Aslam 2021) | This study clearly shows us how the Disney films, Cinderella and Tarzan construct identities. It depicts women as being kinder and attractive, whereas men are shown as active heroes. |
| Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender Representation of Male and Female Characters in Animation Movies (Alsaraireh, Sarjit and Hajimia, 2020) | This is a study that recognizes the change in how Disney movies construct gender. The study shows how women are active protagonists in the film Frozen but also shows how the feminine identity embraces softness and selflessness. |
Language in Interviews
Besides the examples we have discusses, discourse analysis can also be employed to analyse interview transcripts.
Discourse analysis is a reliable and valuable approach in terms of analysing the framing of the subject through speech.
| Study | What it examines |
| What is the practice of spiritual care? A critical discourse analysis of registered nurses (RN) understanding of spirituality (Cooper et all 2020) | This study reviews transcripts of interviews with several nurses and discovered four methods of framing how they approach spirituality. It also looks at how their spirituality intersects with their work. |
| An Ideological Unveiling: using critical narrative and discourse analysis to examine discursive white teacher identity (Coleman 2018) | This study looks specifically looks at a teacher’s discursive construction of their whiteness. It shows how teacher education needs to make an effort to challenge white students to reassess their whiteness and privilege. |
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Analysing Lessons Plans
We can analyse lesson plans to look at how they construct discourse around student and teacher identities. The written texts are designed to evaluate how teachers and educational bodies in charge value certain ideologies around what to learn and how to learn.
| Study | What it examines |
| Uncovering the ideologies of internationalization in Lesson Plans through critical discourse analysis (Hahn 2018) | Japanese lesson plans seem to be integrating the language of internalization because it has been introduced through government policies in recent years. This study shows how the discourse in Japan is changing. |
| Exploring Canadian Integration through critical discourse analysis of English language lesson plans for immigrants learners (Barker 2021) | This study explores the English language lesson plan for immigrants in Canada. It shows how the lesson plan tend to encourage learners to accept the Canadian language. |
Conclusion
Discourse analysis or critical discourse analysis is an approach to studying written or spoken language and how language constructs reality. Discourse analysis aims to understand how language is commonly used in various contexts.
While linguistics focuses only on the rule of language use, discourse analysis on the other hand focuses on the contextual meaning of language. Discourse analysis concentrates on the social aspect of communication and how people use language to manage conflict, build trust, and achieve certain effects.
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References
- Scribbr: Critical Discourse Analysis | Definition, Guide & Examples
- HelpfulProfessor: 21 Great Examples Of Discourse Analysis
- JSTOR: Discourse Analysis
- ScienceDirect: Critical Discourse Analysis
- C Hart – Critical discourse studies, 2008 – Taylor & Francis: Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: Toward a theoretical framework
- Kappa Omicron Nu FORUM, 2003: Critical discourse analysis: A primer SLT McGregor
- C Develotte, E Rechniewski – The Web Journal of French Media …, 2001: Discourse analysis of newspaper headlines: a methodological framework for research into national representations
