Chapter 4: Methodological Issues
Chapter 4
Methodological Issues
Introductory remarks
This chapter intends to address a number of questions and issues related to research
methods – mainly representing “the data collection and data analysis procedures”
(Creswell, 2003: 3) – as well as justifying the selection of those methods.
More
specifically, Chapter 4 will investigate the approaches and procedures employed in the
creation and analysis of the corpus data of Aljazeera and the BBC news reports produced
in Arabic and English, respectively.
Discussion in section 4.1 will illustrate the purpose behind using corpus data in the field
of communication and translation before identifying in section 4.2 the methodological
approach employed in collecting and analyzing the data concerned. Section 4.3 will
investigate the techniques, strategies and criteria applied in the process of data gathering
as well as providing an elaboration on the data under examination in terms of size.
Section 4.4 will highlight the data analysis procedures, including the analytical methods,
categories and objects employed. It should be outlined at the outset that in any research,
as Alasuutari (1995: 42) notes, “the method has to be in harmony with the theoretical
framework of the study […] The theoretical framework determines what kind of data to
collect and what method to use in analyzing them”. In relation to the research to hand,
the methods, techniques and strategies adopted, as will be demonstrated in the discussion
to come, were chosen and developed in the light of the concepts dealt with in Chapters 2
and 3, chiefly associated with communication, media, and translation, as well as genre,
discourse and ideology.
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4.1
Using corpus data in communication studies
As been mentioned previously, this project involves the examination of corpus data of
Aljazeera and the BBC news reports. In fact, a corpus-based approach has been pursued
in the research conducted in a wide range of fields and disciplines, including branches of
linguistics, stylistics and literary studies, teaching and learning, as well as social and
communication studies. In this latter field, as McEnery and Wilson (1996), Hunston
(2002), Baker (2006), as well as McEnery et al (2006) stress, corpus data can be used for
studying ideologies, providing an insight into the nature and process of translation, as
well as exploring culture and discourses. For many analysts and researchers working in a
variety of areas such as linguistics or stylistics, corpus data are used on a wide scale
since, as Tognini-Bonelli puts it (2001: 65), “[t]he theoretical statements are fully
consistent with, and reflect directly, the evidence provided by the corpus”. That is, one
reason behind depending on a corpus-based approach is manifested in the attempt by
researchers to use their data as ‘evidence’ for the purpose of proving theories and
hypotheses. Social-communication studies, however, assign a different reason or purpose
for relying on corpus data: corpus in researching is not so much used in order to prove
certain theoretical concepts; instead, as Alasuutari maintains, data can be used to
‘explain’ these concepts:
[T]he idea is not so much to prove one’s existing hypotheses […] The intention is
to look at societal phenomena from fresh, unprejudiced, yet well-founded points
of view […] The aim in the analysis is to provide an explanation for a
phenomenon whose existence does not need to be empirically proved.
(Alasuutari, 1995: 145-147)
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In a similar sense, the data of a corpus-based approach carried out in socialcommunication research, including the one to hand, is employed not so much for testing
the validity of a particular theory, but rather for offering explanations of notions and
conceptions, and for making these notions intelligible in concrete examples and
occurrences. This account of the use of data in researching challenges and problematizes
features such as representativeness and generalizability.
Representativeness and generalizability are key concepts in corpus linguistics. As
Kennedy (1998: 68) notes, “a corpus is ‘representative’ in the sense that findings based
on an analysis of it can be generalized to the language as a whole or as a specified part of
it”.
The concepts of representativeness and generalization have been perceived as
principal characteristics of any corpus data by linguists in general and corpus linguists in
particular who are interested in conducting statistical studies on a whole variety of
language rather than on individual texts. According to McEnery and Wilson (1997), as
well as Tashakkori and Teddlie (1998), analyzing every single utterance in that variety is
an impractical, impossible and unending task; therefore, a smaller sample of the variety
can be built instead. In building a corpus, it is necessary to consider representativeness
as a major criterion in the sampling process; in other words, to ensure that a sample is
maximally representative of the language population under examination so that, in a
statistical sense, what is found for the sample also holds for and reproduces the
characteristics of the general population. The argument suggested previously that in
communication research, unlike linguistic studies, the intention is to explain a
phenomenon rather than to observe statistically a particular feature begs questions
regarding whether representativeness and generalization need to be prerequisite aspects
of the data used in social studies:
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The very notion of generalizability implies the assumption that, instead of trying
to explain a unique event or phenomenon, the results of the study should apply to
other cases as well. This does not necessarily have to be the case […] This
obviously renders irrelevant the issue of generalizability. (Alasuutari, 1995: 145)
In other words, the requirements of representativeness of samples and generalizability of
results tend to be invalid or even unwarranted for the data used in projects carried out in
the field of culture and communication, including the project to hand.
In this respect,
one needs to stress that the findings of this study are not generalizable since “the findings
based on a particular corpus only tell us what is true in that corpus” (McEnery et al.,
2006: 121). In a similar sense, the findings of the data analyzed will not be generalized
on all Aljazeera and the BBC news reports. The findings of the analysis are datarestricted: they are valid for the reports under examination only and will not be extended
beyond the particular data in question.
4.2
Methodological approach employed in this study
In social-communication studies, the quantitative and qualitative approaches constitute
two central methods of research which, according to Tashakkori and Teddlie (1998), have
been mainly developed by positivism as well as constructivism, respectively. The
quantitative approach, as Alasuutari (1995) points out, was introduced in the 1930s and
became well-established in social research in the 1950s. Beginning in the 1960s, the
traditional dominance of quantitative methods, as highlighted by Punch (1998), was
challenged. The challenge accompanied a major growth of interest in using qualitative
methods. This has led accordingly to the emergence of two distinctive research
approaches of inquiry: the quantitative and the qualitative. While the former involves
numbers as well as systematic relations between those numbers, and rests on
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measurements and statistics, the latter assumes a non-numeric character where the data
analyzed take the form of texts or even images and other audiovisual material.
Each of the two methods of inquiry, namely the quantitative and the qualitative carries
different features, characteristics and applications in different fields of research. In a
research project such as this one, where the focus of study is chiefly placed upon news
construction and translational processes in media communication, it was felt that
qualitative, not quantitative, methods would be employed. In fact, the choice of the
qualitative paradigm was not unwarranted.
The rationale of adopting a qualitative
approach had to do primarily with a number of considerations, which will be addressed in
the following discussion.
First, adopting the qualitative approach relates to the main purpose behind conducting
this study. In this respect, Punch (1998) and Jensen (1991) emphasize the connection
between purpose and approach, suggesting that the choice of any particular approach is
governed by the objective of the corresponding inquiry. Concerning the project to hand,
it had to be ensured that the methodological approach was chosen in harmony with the
aim and theoretical scope of the research. Here, it can be recalled that the main objective
of the inquiry was to explain or explore in concrete terms a number of theoretical
concepts with regard to news construction and translational processes such as discursive
and ideological constructions (cf 3.3), uncertainties in translation (cf 2.2.3), generic
structures (cf 3.1.3), the globalization process (2.3.2), power relations of connectivity (cf
3.2.3.2), and unity in difference (cf 2.1.1), intertextuality (3.2.2), and double-voicedness
(3.2.1). Since this objective was not statistical but rather interpretive and explanatory in
nature, it was decided that the qualitative approach was more appropriate and adequate
than the quantitative one for the present study, given that, as Punch (1998: 16) maintains,
confirmatory studies which seek to test assumptions and aim at proving existing
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hypotheses rely on quantitative methods, while projects which are concerned with
exploring and interpreting a certain topic or phenomenon, and have the explanation of
concepts and theories as their major objective behind analyzing particular data adopt
qualitative methods.
Another consideration which has led to the choice of qualitative and not quantitative
methods in this project was associated with the fact that the former, unlike the latter,
examine the data as inextricably integrated with its socio-cultural environment.
Quantitative research, on the contrary, “treats language as a self-contained object,
abstracting text from its context” (Baker, 2006: 7). The fact that the qualitative approach
enjoys the merit of taking contextual, cultural and social factors into consideration in data
examination is a major reason which makes a qualitative approach to data more
appropriate and adequate than a quantitative examination for projects and studies carried
out in such fields as those of communication, media and translation, as well as for
exploring such entities and concepts as those of genres, discourses and ideologies. In
these studies, the investigation of communicative structures and meanings embedded in
data material cannot be efficiently pursued without observing the socio-cultural aspects
of the corresponding context, since context, as stated previously in section 3.2.5.1, coordinates meaning processes in society and determines the semantic values of
communicative and discursive representations; hence the importance of relying on
qualitative methods rather than quantitative methods in this project where
communicational constructions and processes constitute its principal areas of
investigation.
A third consideration for approaching the data concerned qualitatively rather than
quantitatively is related to the possibility by means of qualitative methods to examine
common, rare and even absent features, a major characteristic not provided by
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quantitative methods. As McEnery and Wilson (1996: 62-63) point out, the quantitative
approach tends to “sideline rare occurrences” since “to ensure that certain statistical
significance tests […] provide reliable results, it is essential that specific minimum
frequencies are obtained”, whereas in the qualitative approach “rare phenomena receive,
or at least ought to receive, the same attention as more frequent phenomena”. This means
that, in qualitative research, no attempt is made to assign frequencies to certain
occurrences which are identified in the data. In fact, one of the advantages of the
qualitative approach is the potential it demonstrates for recognizing and examining all
common, rare, and even, as one may suggest, absent features. The quantitative approach,
on the contrary, fails to deal with rare occurrences; this is also true for absent features.
The inability of quantitative analysis to realize rare occurrences adequately also implies
the total impossibility by means of statistically-oriented methods to explore instances
where a particular feature is conspicuous by its absence.
In fact, failing to detect
absences stands as a key limitation of the quantitative approach, particularly when
applied in communication studies, since, very often, in the investigation of discourses and
ideologies, as Fairclough (1995) asserts, rare occurrences and absences are just as
expressive, informative and meaningful as those which are typical. This clearly means
that, in such cases or studies – including this project – qualitative ways of researching
prove to be more adequate and useful than quantitative ones, owing to the former’s
ability to highlight what is absent as opposed to what is present.
Given the three considerations mentioned above, a qualitative approach was undertaken
in this project for the collection and analysis of the corpus data concerned: two stages the
methodological procedures of which will be discussed in the following sections and
subsections of 4.3 and 4.4.
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4.3
Data collection procedures
In the current project, as in any other qualitative inquiry, the process of corpus
compilation incorporated three major methodological steps and procedures, including
sampling, designing the corpus, as well as obtaining permission (Creswell, 2003), each of
which is elaborated below.
4.3.1
Data sampling
This study depended on what is referred to as ‘purposive’ or ‘non-random’ sampling
procedures: a major characteristic of the qualitative approach in which careful thought
and early planning of the structure and content of the corpus required were made. In
gathering the required data, qualitative studies, including this one, rely on ‘purposive’
sampling in which selecting the data is carried out according to previously determined
criteria, and where a small number of units is observed (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998:
73-74), unlike statistical projects or quantitative studies in which random sampling is
employed on a wide scale, and where “samples are typically larger than in qualitative
studies” (Punch, 1998: 242).
Adopting purposive sampling involved the need to identify in advance a set of criteria
which the samples to be collected had to fulfil in order for them to be included in the
data. Therefore, several criteria or ‘decisions’ relayed by Bell (1991) for gathering a
corpus of media material have been observed in relation to three main areas, namely
genre, outlets and outputs:
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1. The genres are the particular kind of media content in which you are interested
– news, classified advertising, game shows […] 2. The media outlets are the
publication, television channels or radio stations which carry the content. 3.
‘Outputs’ are what the media outlets produce […] and the time period to be
covered. (Bell, 1991: 12)
In the research concerned, the first two areas, namely the genre of the data to be selected
and the outlets producing these data have been considered in response to the theory: the
genre had to be that of ‘the news’, and the outlets of Aljazeera and the BBC networks,
both tackled in the theoretical discussion above. The third area – the output – involves
two elements identified above by Bell as the product of media networks, and the time
period this product covers. Decisions in relation to the first element – ‘product’ – were
associated with the content of the data; that is, with the topic or topics tackled in the news
reports of Aljazeera and the BBC. In fact, it was decided to keep the topic of the data
specific and constant in all the reports to be gathered so that this, as one may maintain,
would avoid the influence, or at least reduce as much as possible the influence of the
topic on the analysis of the data. In this regard, the topic selected was related to Turkey’s
accession negotiations with the European Union. This topic was not chosen at random:
the rationale was that the issue of Turkey’s EU entry is relevant to the cultural contexts of
both Aljazeera and the BBC, since it involves both the Middle East and Europe. As for
the second element of the ‘output’, namely the time period of the data, this element was
considered in relation to the topic of the news to be collected. In this respect, it was
observed that the time scale of these reports would range between 2002 and 2005, given
that this period has witnessed the most intensified talks between Turkey and the EU
regarding the entry bid. Although the talks did not officially begin until October 2005,
this previous period (2002-2005) was quite an essential part of the talks. In fact, October
2005 marks only the official not the actual start of the negotiations between Turkey and
the European Union.
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Having set the criteria for the corpus data, the next step was to collect the data and design
the corpus required according to those criteria.
4.3.2
Design of corpus
This section illustrates the techniques which were selected for building the corpus
required, and elaborates the steps which were taken in the data gathering process, as well
as accounting for the data collected in terms of size.
4.3.2.1
Data collection techniques
In qualitative studies, as Jankowski and Wester (1991) suggest, data collection involves
four main techniques: (1) interviewing (where the researcher conducts face-to-face
interviews with participants), (2) observing (in which the researcher takes fieldnotes on
the activities of individuals at the research site), (3) gathering audio-visual material
(where data takes the form of photographs, videotapes, or any forms of sound), as well as
(4) collecting text documents (these can be news reports, official memos, or even
personal journals and letters). As far as this project is concerned, the last two techniques
of data gathering were found to be most relevant to the study conducted, since they
provide appropriate methods for collecting the news material of Aljazeera and the BBC
which produce both audio-visual news in programmes presented on television (and radio
in the case of the BBC), and electronic (internet) news reports published on their
websites. Faced with these two options or techniques (3 and 4), it was decided that the
data would be gathered according to the latter by collecting internet news reports. The
choice of technique no. 4 and not that of no. 3 was not unwarranted: the rationale was to
do with the mode in which the news was produced – ‘the written’ in the latter was
preferred over ‘the spoken’ in the former, given the key interface between the written
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mode and the translation, as well as the difficulties usually associated with spoken, audiovisual news material: spoken data, which is in this case news broadcast, needs to be
transcribed by hand, a task which has proved to be highly demanding for a number of
reasons: spoken texts, as Baker (2006) notes, can sometimes be unclear; there can be
overlapping dialogue, and the audio-visual file needs to be stopped and rewound
continually. There is also a range of additional information that may or may not be
required, including ‘prosodic information’ such as volume, speed and stress as well as
‘paralinguistic information’ (laughter, coughing, etc.). Pauses and overlap may need to
be transcribed too.
There may also be problems involved in accurately rendering
different types of accents or other phonetic variations, which can add to the complexity of
spoken data. Given all these problems associated with spoken data and, most important,
the appropriateness of the written to translation, it was decided that it would be a more
adequate option for the study to hand to avoid the spoken and choose written internet
data, since owing to the proliferation of internet use, written data of news items are much
easier to obtain than spoken ones; they already exist in electronic format and can be
found on websites or internet archives.
Decisions on the data collection method were followed by taking a number of steps for
gathering the corpus concerned.
4.3.2.2
Data gathering
In any process of data gathering, the point of departure for the researcher is to consider
the aim behind employing these data. As Kennedy (1998: 70) notes, “the optimal design
of a corpus is highly dependent on the purpose for which it is intended to be used”. In
relation to the project to hand, as can be recalled, the data are used to explain how
generic, discursive and ideological structures are constructed in the news, and how they
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can be translated between the two different language cultures of Arabic and English; in
other words, the purpose is a comparative one, that is, involving a comparative approach
to the construction and translation of Aljazeera and the BBC media material, and
accordingly entails the creation of “comparable corpora” – “two (or more) corpora in
different languages […] designed along the same lines”, and “contain the same
proportions” (Hunston, 2002: 15). Thus, the corpus to be created for this study needed to
be bilingual and to include two parts of approximately the same size: (1) the Arabic data
of Aljazeera, and (2) the English data of the BBC. It was also necessary to bear in mind
that both parts had to match each other in terms of sampling criteria; that is, the Arabic
and English media materials of Aljazeera and the BBC needed both to be internet news
reports, tackling the same issue of Turkey’s EU entry, and ranging between the years
2002 and 2005. In order to ensure that a maximum degree of comparability be reached,
it was decided that both sets of data be gathered in line with each other. The collection
process was therefore carried out between August 2005 and July 2006, with an electronic
data gathering on the websites of Aljazeera and the BBC. The process involved two
major procedures: searching as well as saving.
Searching for the data included looking for reports on the websites concerned by entering
key words related to the topic selected – ‘Turkey’, ‘European Union’, and ‘talks’ for the
BBC and ‘‫( ’تركيا‬Turkey), ‘‫( ’االتحاد األوروبي‬European Union), and ‘‫’محادثات االنضمام‬
(membership talks) for Aljazeera. The search resulted in the appearance of a wide
variety of media material and news reports; only those fully complying with the data
criteria (previously identified in section 4.3.1 as news reports produced between 2002 and
2005 by Aljazeera and the BBC in relation to Turkey’s EU entry talks) were included in
the corpus. The reports selected were downloaded and saved electronically by using the
HTML (as demonstrated in the appendices). This format was chosen for encoding and
saving the reports since, unlike other formats such as text files which strip much of the
layout of the internet page saved, the HTML, in addition to being quite an accessible
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format, retains certain features such as interactive forms, embedded images, and
annotations which indicate formatting such as lists, headings and paragraphs. These
features were retained in the data because, even if they were not to be used as material for
analysis, they were thought to be useful in containing information which may not be
included in the text itself so that they would, together with the text, create a relatively full
and broad picture of the corresponding news reports as a whole, and accordingly help
provide a better understanding of Aljazeera and the BBC news construction.
4.3.2.3
Size of corpus
The process of data gathering resulted in the collection of a final set of 20 Arabic and
English news reports of Aljazeera and the BBC (10 in each language), including a total
number of approximately 6000 words. Here, it can be noticed that the data are relatively
small in size, if compared with corpora used in linguistics and corpus linguistics. In these
fields, corpora, as Baker (2006: 1-2) states, represent “large bodies of naturally occurring
language data stored on computers […] corpora are generally large (consisting of
thousands or even millions of words)”. Even though the data to hand are not as large as
those employed in the fields of linguistics, they can still be considered a corpus since,
according to McEnery and Wilson (1996: 21), “any collection of more than one text can
be called a corpus”. Despite the fact that the corpus under examination is small in size, it
does not mean that it is less appropriate or efficient for analysis than some large corpora.
As McEnery and Wilson put it (ibid: 171), “corpora must not be large just because they
can. Small, specialized corpora may be perfectly good for some applications”. In this
regard, one can argue that the data concerned is in fact quite adequate and ‘perfectly
good’ for the analysis conducted in this research, owing to a number of considerations.
First of all, as the intention behind employing the data concerned is to explain or explore
particular theoretical concepts and notions rather than to make quantitative or statistical
claims (cf 4.1), large broad data seemed to be unnecessary in this project.
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Secondly, given that this thesis is more theoretically focused than analysis-oriented, a
small corpus was observed to be more appropriate than a large one since, as Kennedy
(1998) stresses, the optimal size of the corpus is highly dependent upon the scope of the
analytical study in a particular project.
Thirdly, in research projects conducted in such fields as those of communication and
discourse studies, including this project, the corpus size is not actually all-important for
the researcher; what is more important is whether the data contain sufficient examples for
exploring a particular concept or set of concepts. In other words, ‘quality’ not ‘quantity’,
as Baker notes, stands as the major characteristic of data in discourse studies:
One consideration when building a specialized corpus in order to investigate the
discursive construction of a particular subject is perhaps not so much the size of
the corpus, but how often we would expect to find that subject mentioned within
it […] we may want to be more selective in choosing our texts, meaning that the
quality or content of the data takes equal or more precedence over issues of
quantity. (Baker, 2006: 28-29)
On this view, it is quite possible to carry out an analysis on small amounts of data as long
as they provide enough material which satisfactorily illustrates and explores the concepts
tackled.
In this research, the small size did not disqualify the corpus used, since
sufficient examples could be found and derived to cover and elaborate different concepts
and notions.
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Finally, small corpora are usually more desirable than huge or very broad ones for
practical considerations. In Hunston’s terms (2002: 26), “a small corpus is not just
sufficient but also necessary” owing to “the difficulties of processing large amounts of
information”. Thus, data of small size were thought to be more manageable in this
research so that one could avoid any possible complications or problems which might
have emerged had a large corpus been used.
4.3.3
Permission
Permission was not sought from the media networks of Aljazeera and the BBC to refer to
their internet news reports, as the reports under study are available on the websites of
these networks and access to their news material is permitted to the public.
Having investigated the methodological procedures, criteria and techniques involved in
the process of data creation, one can now present the methods and strategies applied in
the analytical study of these data.
4.4
Data analysis procedures
In this research, the analytical examination of the data obtained has comprised a
repertoire of procedures which involved employing a plurality of analytic categories,
methods, and objects each of which will be illustrated in the coming discussion.
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4.4.1
Methods of analysis
In the present project, it was observed that the methods to be applied in the analytical
study be derived from the domain of discourse analysis since this domain, as Barsky
(2008) stresses, concentrates largely but not exclusively on examining communicative
events, translational processes and ideological constructions within their social,
institutional, cultural, and political contexts; all constituting the core elements of
investigation in this research.
Discourse analysis (DA) began to develop in the late 1960s and 1970s, chiefly in the
domains of humanities and social sciences, and has been adopted since then in a wide
range of fields and areas including linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, as
well as communication studies and translation studies. Discourse analysis is a multidisciplinary enterprise: it incorporates a number of trends, approaches and
methodologies, each of which defines a particular set of analytic methods and tools.
According to van Dijk (1997a: 24), the domain of DA distinguishes two broad branches:
one offers non-linguistic orientations to and ‘philosophical’ strategies for analysis, and
the other is more ‘empirical’ and works with tangible data. Two of the most salient
approaches within each branch are ‘Foucaultian’ discourse analysis (Williams, 1999) and
critical discourse analysis (CDA), respectively.
The discussion to come in sections
4.4.1.1 and 4.4.1.2 will elaborate on both approaches and will identify in section 4.4.1.3
the methods that have been adopted in the analysis concerned.
4.4.1.1
The Foucaultian approach
‘Foucaultian discourse analysis’, as Williams (1999) refers to it, was inspired by the
French philosopher Michel Foucault. In terms of theory, Foucault’s conceptualization of
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discourse, power and knowledge (previously tackled in the section and the subsections of
3.2.3) has proved to be highly influential in the terrain of discourse studies. In terms of
methodology, as Haugaard (2002: 182) argues, Foucault takes two different orientations
to his study of discourse: there is a distinction between his ‘archaeological work’ and
‘genealogical work’. In the former, and specifically in Madness and Civilization (1961),
The Order of Things (1966), and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), his analysis of
discourse falls into his study of knowledge and epistemic structures and his examination
of the history of systems of thought. In the latter, including Discipline and Punish: the
Birth of the Prison (1977), Power/Knowledge (1980), and The History of Sexuality
(1979), Foucault is concerned primarily with analyzing the formation of discourses, and
the forms of power exercised in discursive practices, as well as the interrelation of power
and knowledge. In these two analyses – the archaeology and the genealogy – Foucault’s
methodological tools are identified by Deleuze and outlined by Williams in the following
terms:
Foucault’s ‘instruments of analysis’ is divisible into two parts (Deleuze, 1972:
41).
The first method is essentially synchronic and revolves around the
interrelationship of elements […] The second method, with which the first
interlocks, derives from Nietzsche, and is essentially diachronic, beginning with
the present in a search for historical continuities. (Williams, 1999: 77)
Put differently, Foucault, as far as the analytic tools are concerned, uses synchronic and
diachronic methods for conducting his archaeological and genealogical analyses of
discourses; in other words, these tools are ‘epistemological’ (Wodak and Weiss, 2005).
This ‘Foucaultian methodology’ or ‘instruments of analysis’, as one may suggest, has its
strengths and weaknesses. In this respect, Williams (1999: 76) highlights a main merit in
the Foucaultian approach: it succeeds in showing that “discourse analysis is much more
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than pure and simple linguistic analysis”; however, as he argues, it carries a major
limitation by failing to develop “a coherent method of discourse analysis in the usual
sense”.
In other words, the principal contribution of the Foucaultian approach to
discourse studies in terms of methodology does not lie much in providing a well-defined
set of analytic techniques and strategies, but rather in demonstrating that discourse
analysis is not restricted or reduced to the mere description of linguistic features. In fact,
this approach attempts to raise the level of analysis above the linguistic level, and to
uncover the embeddness of ideology and power relations in social practices; as it does so,
it tends, as Chilton (2005: 19) maintains, to exclude completely the study of language in
analyzing discourse. Social scientists and analysts adopting the Foucaultian tradition
generally pay little or even no attention to the linguistic features; their analysis is of a
rather ‘abstract’ sort which is not anchored in the close investigation of particular texts.
In addition to the Foucaultian approach, another trend has also proved to be highly
influential in the area of discourse studies, namely critical discourse analysis.
4.4.1.2
Critical discourse analysis
This approach to discourse analysis emerged in the early 1990s and has been developed
by a number of researchers including Ruth Wodak, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen,
and most prominently Norman Fairclough and Teun A. van Dijk. In her account of
critical discourse analysis, Wodak (2001) states that it is, by its nature, a multidisciplinary trend which is derived from the post-structuralist works of Michel Foucault;
it has been further influenced by the Russian theorists Mikhail M. Bakhtin and Valentin
N. Volosinov as well as Western Marxist figures and movements including Antonio
Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and the Frankfurt School. The CDA has also incorporated
analytical methods and tools from a variety of approaches: French Discourse Analysis,
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Critical Linguistics, and Social Semiotics are some of these.
The methodological
techniques and strategies of the CDA have been widely adopted in different areas of
analyses, including those carried out in the domains of politics, sociology, cultural
studies, communication and mass media research, as well as translation studies.
Critical discourse analysis, according to van Dijk (1997a), represents an ‘empirical’
approach: it is concerned with conducting ‘concrete’ analyses by dealing with ‘actual
language use’. In fact, as Fairclough (2003: 2) notes, the CDA, unlike the Foucaultian
trend (cf 4.4.1.1), is one version of discourse analysis which is ‘textually-oriented’; that
is, it undertakes the detailed examination of extended instances of social interaction
which take a linguistic form for the purpose of exploring ideologies as sets of attitudes,
beliefs and viewpoints (cf section 3.3). Being textually-oriented, according to Fairclough
and Wodak (1997: 271), does not render the CDA a mere linguistic analysis of sentence
or of other text units, nor does it reduce discourse analysis to linguistic analysis, since the
focus of study is not upon language or the use of language in and for themselves, but
upon the linguistic or textual character of social and cultural processes and ideological
structures. Text analysis, in other words, is considered to be one form and a valuable
component of social analysis.
In the above approximation to critical discourse analysis, one can encounter, as
Fairclough (1995) states, a practically usable framework of multi-dimensional nature: the
CDA represents a ‘synthesis’ which draws together the three major aspects of text and
language, discourses and ideologies, as well as social and cultural components. Given
these three dimensions, and by adopting the CDA, the textual analysis of communicative
structures and ideologies is conducted with a particular consideration of the socio-cultural
factors surrounding the data under study. As an analytical method, critical discourse
analysis, as van Dijk (1997b: 6) points out, brings ‘the macro level of analysis’ together
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with ‘the micro level of analysis’; in other words, it develops a connection between the
abstract concepts of ideologies, culture, and communication to the tangible properties of
texts. In fact, the integration of the three elements of the textual, the ideological and the
social within the analytic framework of the CDA stems from the distinctive relationship
these elements demonstrate. Analysts and researches working in the CDA, as Titscher et
al. (2000: 149-152) stress, perceive language in texts as a significant form of social
activity which serves the communication of beliefs and ideologies in society. Therefore,
from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, studying the linguistic material of
particular data as engaging in their surrounding cultural context facilitates the
investigation of the ideological structures embedded in these data.
After introducing the Foucaultian approach and the CDA within the domain of discourse
analysis, one can now highlight which analytical method has been followed in the
analysis of Aljazeera and the BBC news reports under examination.
4.4.1.3
Analytic method employed in this study
In the project to hand, a method of textually-oriented analysis inspired by the insights of
the CDA was adopted to explore the ideological meanings, attitudes and viewpoints
involved in the corpus data with a strong orientation to the contexts of the language
cultures of Arabic and English, and where such macro notions as power, globalization,
uncertainty, intertextuality, double-voicedness and translation (all tackled in Chapters 2
and 3) are studied in relation to the micro properties of the text data – modality, speech
reporting techniques, deixis and lexical selections, for instance.
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In fact, the rationale behind employing this method rather than that used in the
Foucaultian tradition is closely bound up with the former’s consideration of the language
factor. To elaborate further, the Foucaultian method of analysis, one may argue, attempts
to ignore completely the study of language in analyzing discourse (as indicated earlier in
section 4.4.1.1), and here lies one limitation in the Foucaultian trend, particularly when
applied in translation studies.
In other words, in research analyses (including the one
conducted in this project) which undertake the investigation of translation issues, the
Foucaultian methods prove to be inadequate since in these analyses the examination of
language is an essential necessity owing to the undeniable fact that translation is an
operation which involves language use (Perez, 2003: 2), hence the need to employ
methods and tools which enable the analysis to involve but not to be reduced to the study
of language per se. Such tools and methods can be provided with the analytical approach
of critical discourse analysis.
Another methodological reason for employing such a textually-oriented method as the
CDA has to do primarily with the inextricable connection between language in texts on
the one hand, and society and ideology on the other. To develop this idea further, it can
be emphasized that language, as Fairclough (2003) stresses, has a social character; it
represents an irreducible part of social interaction. As instances of language use, for van
Dijk (1997a), texts are conceptualized as important forms of social practice and as
elements of communicative events.
This enables them to be ‘context-sensitive’ (ibid.
18), that is, significant barometers which can capture socio-cultural phenomena, relations
and structures.
Texts, according to Fairclough (1995: 96), designate “the language
‘product’ of discursive processes”; they stand as ‘social spaces’ for the constitution of
knowledges and ideologies. By the same token, Grant (2007: 204) emphasizes that texts
operate as communicative constructs within discourses; they are “manifest instantiations
of […] knowledge systems”. In a similar sense, every instance of language use can be
ideologically invested as it incorporates constructions of realities, beliefs and attitudes.
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Given this social nature of texts as manifestations of ideological and communicative
representations, it can be suggested after van Dijk (1998) that analysis of language in
texts is an essential strategy in the analysis of ideologies in social research, including the
project under examination.
As the section and the subsections of 4.4.1 have considered ‘how’ Aljazeera and the BBC
news reports were studied (following a textually-oriented analysis), the next section will
shed light on ‘what’ this analysis used as its objects.
4.4.2
Objects of analysis
This section attempts to identify the character of the textual material analyzed for the
purpose of investigating the construction and translation of ideologies in the corpus data
to hand.
Typically in textually-oriented analytic approaches, the exploration of
ideologies, as van Dijk (1998: 200) indicates, is pursued by examining a collectivity of
properties or ‘structures’ involved in the build-up of texts. These structures stand as the
‘objects’ of any textual analysis and can take a variety of forms: they may have
paraverbal, visual, phonological, rhetorical, pragmatic, as well as semantic and syntactic
nature. Analysis of these structures is an essential procedure in the analysis of ideologies,
since ideological representations, according to van Dijk (1998), are mapped on to such
structures; they impinge on text properties during their communicative manifestations.
This ideological mapping is seldom direct.
It takes place through specific beliefs,
evaluations, and viewpoints. In other words, the opinions, attitudes and belief systems
constituting ideologies find their expression in different text structures.
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For the purpose of conducting ideological analysis, it needs to be stressed, according to
van Dijk, that:
In any practical sense there is no such thing as a ‘complete’ discourse analysis: a
‘full’ analysis of a short passage might take months and fill hundreds of pages.
Complete discourse analysis of a large corpus of text or talk is therefore totally
out of question. (Van Dijk, 2001: 99)
In other words, this means that examining ideologies for practical reasons does not need
to be carried out by investigating all text structures. Hence, one must make choices and
select particular properties for analysis. On this view, two forms of text structures were
selected for the sake of the present study, namely the ‘lexical/semantic’ and the
‘grammatical/syntactic’.
In fact, as van Dijk (1998: 205) points out, semantic and
syntactic analyses are “the most obvious (and still fruitful) component in ideological
discourse analysis” since, he continues to argue (ibid. 207), such “structures are able to
‘signify’ social positions, group perspective and interests in the description of events,
people and actions”, they, in other words, “code for ideological positions”. In a similar
sense, behind the lexical and syntactic formulations employed there is inevitably a prior
ideological perception of reality.
It follows, therefore, that the analysis of these
formulations is enriched by the analysis of various sets of perspectives, positions and
viewpoints, that is, by the analysis of ideologies. In relation to the data presented here,
ideological analysis was carried out by analyzing the ideological views and attitudes
expressed by a plurality of lexical and grammatical choices used in Aljazeera and the
BBC journalistic reports.
These choices have encompassed a variety of semantic
structures, such as lexical selections, antonyms and metaphoric expressions, as well as
syntactic features including deixis, modality and speech reporting techniques (all
elaborated on while being observed at work in the data analysis in Chapter 5). The
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choices mentioned are value-laden and ideologically charged properties as they designate
attitudinal meanings and viewpoints.
Analysis of these semantic and syntactic properties in the data concerned was actually
preceded by the process of identifying a group of ‘categories’ within the analytical study.
4.4.3
Analytic categories
One major methodological procedure in the present analysis involved the creation of a
number of categories according to which the examination of data could be conducted. As
Huberman and Miles state:
Qualitative studies ultimately aim to […] explain (at some level) a pattern of
relationships, which can be done only with a set of conceptually specified
analytical categories. (Huberman and Miles, 1994: 431)
Put differently, the development of a typology of categories represents a key requirement
for the implementation of data analysis in qualitative analysis. In this project, three main
categories for analysis were considered: genre, discourse and ideology. The choice of
these categories in particular was far from being random, as it came in response to the
theoretical part of the respective project.
As can be recalled, genre, discourse and
ideology have constituted the core elements of the conceptual discussions raised in the
theoretical study (Chapter 3) from where they have been derived and employed in the
corresponding analytical study to be explored in concrete examples and occurrences.
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As these categories were observed, the analysis was accordingly divided into two main
sections: (1) genre and (2) discourse and ideology. Here, one needs to point out that it
has been decided to incorporate discourse and ideology in one and the same section since,
as has been stressed earlier in section 3.3.1, ideology finds its expression and
(re)production in discourse (van Dijk, 1998).
The expression, construction and
manifestation of ideologies in discourses entail that these two categories are inherently
related, hence the importance of analyzing them inseparably.
Once the categories and sections of the analytical study were identified, the Arabic and
English news reports comprising the data were analyzed according to these categories.
However, this does not mean that every report had to be examined in terms of each
category, since, as outlined in section 4.3.2.3, the ‘quality’ not the ‘quantity’ of samples
(Baker, 2006) is what essentially matters in discourse and media studies. Therefore, only
a number of samples (news reports) in both languages were studied in each section or
category given, that these samples provided sufficient examples for exploring a particular
concept or set of concepts in the respective category.
4.5
Concluding remarks
This chapter was concerned with constructing a methodological framework for the
exploration and translation of communicative components in Aljazeera and the BBC
news reports.
The discussion focused chiefly on the procedures, methods, and
approaches adopted in gathering and analyzing the data samples to hand. These methods
have been established in response to the nature of this project: studying communicative
structures and translational processes can be adequately achieved by applying a
qualitative approach which is interpretive and explanatory in nature, thus corresponding
to the aim of the present study, and which enables examining the data in relation to their
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socio-cultural contexts as well as detecting not only occurrences but also absences, all
essential to the analysis of communicative components including generic, discursive and
ideological entities.
Following the qualitative approach, the data collection stage included mainly gathering a
‘comparable corpus’ which contained ‘text media material’ of Aljazeera and the BBC
news reports in electronic form. The compilation of these reports was carried out by
depending on the ‘text document collection’ technique, and adopting ‘purposive’ or ‘nonrandom’ sampling procedures with a pre-determined set of criteria which incorporated
three main areas: genre, outlets and outputs. The genre had to be that of the news, the
outlets needed to be those of Aljazeera and the BBC, and the output had to tackle
Turkey’s accession talks with the EU held between 2002 and 2005.
As for the data analysis stage, an initial procedure of setting the categories of genre,
discourse and ideology was undertaken, and a textually-oriented discourse analysis
method inspired by the insights of the CDA was applied for investigating the construction
and translation of communicative representations in the corpus data by studying a
plurality of ‘analytic objects’ which encompassed lexical/semantic as well as
grammatical/syntactic structures.
In fact, the methodological framework considered in this chapter was intended to be
incorporated with the theoretical and analytical studies carried out in the project
concerned: the methods and approaches were developed in accordance with the concepts
and theories discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 to be operationalized in Chapter 5 for the
investigation of communicative structures in Aljazeera and the BBC news reports.
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