Your 3 Tier Toolbox: Adopting, adapting and
building frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis for
interdisciplinary, qualitative research
Dr Darren Kelsey,
Lecturer in Journalism and Discourse Studies
Newcastle University
Darren.Kelsey@ncl.ac.uk
www.JDSjournal.net
www.criticaldiscoursegroup.net
@drkelsinho
@KelsraviNik
@JDSjournal
Today we will…
• Adopt this model for understanding discourse
• Adapt this model for analysing mythology in
newspapers
• Build on and refine this model for analysing
digital media
• CDA used to examine texts and apply theory
Critical Discourse Studies
• Fairclough’s (1995) 3 layered model
• Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach
(DHA)
• Kelsey (2012, 2014a) discourse-mythological
approach (DMA)
• Van Dijk (1998) ideology, discourse and context
• Wodak and Reisigl (2001) recontextualisation
Critical Discourse Studies
• Fairclough attempted to “transcend the division between work inspired by
social theory which tends not to analyse texts, and work which focuses
upon the language of texts but tends not to engage with social theoretical
issues” (2003:2-3).
• “… discourse analysis is not merely the linguistic analysis of texts. I see
discourse analysis as ‘oscillating’ between a focus on specific texts and a
focus on what I call the ‘order of discourse’” (ibid:3).
• CDA focuses “on the ways discourse structures enact, confirm, legitimate,
reproduce, or challenge relations of power and dominance in society” (van
Dijk, 1998:353).
• As Bell and Garrett explain, “CDA is best viewed as a shared perspective
encompassing a range of approaches rather than just one school”
(1998:6).
Fairclough’s 3 layered model
• Best way of explaining
this model to students
• Fairclough covered clearly
• Other terms defined
• Glossary available
• Useful beyond newspapers
Fairclough’s 3 layered model
• Textual analysis
– What is the text? What does it say? What does it mean
and why analyse if further?
• Discursive practice
– How is it produced/consumed? What is the context? How
do discursive dynamics function through the text to create
meaning?
• Social practice
– Broader impact of text/discourse on society and/or
influence of society on the text.
Fairclough’s 3 layered model
• Discursive practices account for the way in
which “authors of texts draw on already
existing discourses and genres to create a text
and … how receivers of texts also apply
available discourses and genres in the
consumption and interpretation of … texts”
(Phillips and Jorgenson, 2002:69).
Fairclough’s 3 layered model
• Social practice expands beyond texts and examines
discourse on a wider social level.
• This addresses questions regarding the social and
political role of discourse: considering anything from
what texts say about the society in which they are
produced to the impact that they might have on
social relations (Fairclough, 1995).
Fairclough’s 3 layered model
• Move from textual (micro) to social (macro)
• By considering discursive and social practices CDA
examines the socio-cultural practices of a text or “the
social and cultural goings-on which the communicative
event is part of” (Fairclough, 1995:57).
• “Language use, discourse, verbal interaction, and
communication belong to the microlevel of the social
order. Power, dominance, and inequality between
social groups are typically terms that belong to a
macrolevel of analysis” (van Dijk, 1998:354)
Some key terms for your toolbox
Power, ideology, social relations (class, gender
race), institutional values and interests…
Interdiscursivity
Intertextuality
Context (and “context models”)
Lexical choices
Indexical meanings
Neologism (e.g. Londonistan)
Presupposition
Metaphors
Modality
And many more…..
Examples for today…
• 1) Newspaper discourse: Ideology and
mythology after July 7th bombings
• 2) Digital technology: Power and surveillance
on social media
• 3) Toolbox group exercises
Case 1: The myth of the blitz
and the July 7th bombings
• Ministry of Information designed a set of messages to uphold
morale when the nation was demoralised under the threat of
invasion from Nazi Germany
• “Business as usual” and “London can take it” became common
slogans of the Blitz spirit propaganda
• Winston Churchill: “We will fight them on the beaches…” (1940)
• British identity: stoic; united; defiant; resilient; tough; humour;
etc.
• Various scholars have revisited the Blitz spirit as a myth….
What is the myth of the Blitz?
Calder, 1991; Ponting, 1990; Heartfield, 2005; Manthorpe, 2006:
Crime rates increased dramatically.
Racial frictions occurred.
Class divides between rich and poor.
The morale of London could not be summed up by one
message and morale varied from city to city across the country.
Media pressure: Churchill ordered Clement Atlee and Lord
Beaverbrook to contact the Daily Mirror and threaten them with
complete censorship of news
Case 1: The myth of the blitz and the
July 7th bombings
• In past and present contexts, it was the ideological
role of this myth that I analyse.
• Use the tools that CDA offers to examine the
construction of a myth from 1940 in newspapers from
2005.
• These tools enable a thorough examination across
large and smaller samples of texts
British newspaper responses to the July 7th bombings
• Discursive themes that referred to the Second World War in
relation to the bombings:
- Business as usual / London can take it
- Business, FTSE and economy
- Royalty and commemoration events
- Nostalgic feelings of loss and injustice
- 'Londonistan’ and multiculturalism
- International relations and Western foreign policy
Tony Parsons – London can take it
• Some discourses of war did not explicitly refer to foreign policy
or the War on Terror but language was problematic.
“07/07 war on Britain: We can take it; if these murderous bastards go on for a
thousand years, the people of our islands will never be cowed” (Mirror,
2005:16-17).
“Let us seek the men who did
this - let us hunt them down
and destroy. But more than
that, let us send out the message
that they famously hung on
the front of a destroyed
shopfront in the London of
the Blitz - business as normal.
Three little words that said:
Up yours, Adolf” (ibid:16-17).
International relations and Western foreign policy
• Senior American sources evoked Blitz myth of unity and defiance:
“Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who was America's hero on
September 11, was visiting London on Thursday and immediately evoked the
spirit of Winston Churchill and the Blitz… “In a strange way, a lot of our
response to September 11 was modelling ourselves on the people of London
during the Second World War” (Sunday Telegraph, 10/07/05:19).
“TERROR IN LONDON, WE’LL TAKE FIGHT TO THE ENEMY, SAYS BUSH … ‘They
[Londoners] have faced brutal enemies before. The city that survived the Nazi
blitz will not yield in the face of thugs and assassins’” (Independent,
12/06/2005:10).
‘‘‘The resilience of Londoners is amazing – all Americans stand by them
resolutely’. The new US ambassador to Britain [Bob Tuttle], in his first interview,
tells Con Coughlin that the transatlantic alliance will prevail in the war
on terror” (Sunday Telegraph, 24/7/05:19).
Paradoxical persuasion: Encourage students to explore what they
don’t expect to see…
• Galloway criticised for blaming bombings on Iraq war.
• Took explicitly critical stance re Blitz myth (in the Mail):
“The spirit of the blitz is often evoked, the stoicism, the ‘London can take
it’ yells to Churchill as he toured the East End. This is a sepia-softened
memory, of course… The people did not all act as one under Hitler's
bombs. The rich booked into West End hotels. Some of them secretly
treated - or wished to - with the Reich… There was looting of bombedout
homes and businesses and fighting over places on the floor of the
Underground (having had to fight to be allowed into the stations in the
first place)” (Mail on Sunday,17/06/2005:27).
• Across 257 articles, Galloway was the only explicit case of this kind
• For more on paradoxical persuasion, see Kelsey (2012a; 2014c)
Case 2: Twitter joke trial
Refining application of toolbox for digital media (Kelsey and
Bennett, 2014)
“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a
bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport
sky high!!”.
Although airport staff who saw the tweet did not view it as a
threat, it was passed on to the authorities before anti-terror
police later charged Chambers for “sending a public electronic
message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene
or menacing character contrary to the Communications Act
2003”
Twitter joke trial
•
•
•
•
Chambers lost high court appeal
Eventually won with celeb and public support
#iamspartacus
Contextual readings of tweet influenced by social
and institutional practices
• Explained via surveillance theory
• Panoptic; synoptic; omnioptic surveillance
• “Synoptic resistance” reflected via social media
Twitter joke trial
• Considering the text (Chambers’ Tweet),
discursive practice (contextual production /
consumption of Tweet) and social practice
(surveillance: theory / culture / society)
• Fairclough’s 3 layers are applicable
• But not so much through analysis of language
• Rather, discourse as discursive / social practice
Twitter joke trial
• Text becomes an interpretive issue of power
• Contextual nuances reflect oppositional readings
of Chambers’ tweet
• Issues concerning ICN and text production
• Power conflicts between public / celebrity
“freedoms” versus authorities / state security
• Complex dynamic of panoptic (Foucault, 2001),
synoptic (Mathiesen, 1997) and omnioptic
(Jurgenson, 2013; Kelsey and Bennet, 2014)
power relations
Summary slide
• Traditional approach to CDA adopted for both
cases
• CDA adapted to incorporate cultural theory
(mythology / surveillance)
• Newspapers and digital media examined
• Now it’s your turn…
• Do it yourself (DIY)…
DIY EXERCISE
•
•
•
•
•
•
Critically analyse the stories / cases provided
Fill the toolbox!
Start basic
Learn to develop analytical skills and concepts
Monitor your knowledge of CDA
Your toolbox will start to fill over time
• Texts and topics:
• Thatcher; Leveson; Immigration; Welfare;
• Easyjet and commercial surveillance
Which tools?
• Newspapers:
– Students usually start with intertextual,
interdiscursive, lexical and indexical items?
• Digital media:
– Context and power
– Think about impact on other social media users
– Encourage innovative, dynamic approaches
• Think macro as well as micro: What do
texts/cases say about broader social relations
(ideology, economics, national identity, power,
gender, class, race, society, etc.).
Please email me with further questions
Thank you for your time….
Dr Darren Kelsey,
Lecturer in Journalism and Discourse Studies
Newcastle University
Darren.Kelsey@ncl.ac.uk
www.JDSjournal.net
www.criticaldiscoursegroup.net
@drkelsinho
@KelsraviNik
@JDSjournal
References
Baines, D. and Kelsey, D. (2013:31) ‘Journalism education after Leveson: Ethics start where regulation ends’ in
Ethical Space, 10(1).
Barthes, R. (1993) Mythologies. London: Vintage
Barthes, R. (1972) Mythologies New York: Hill and Wang
Calder, A. (1991) The Myth of the Blitz London: Pimlico
Calder, A. (1999) The People’s War London: Pimlico
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Essex: Longman
Heartfield, J. (2005) ‘Revisiting the Blitz Spirit: Myths about the Second World War won't help us understand
what is happening today’, July 12th [http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/869/]
Kelsey D. (2012) Pound for pound champions: the myth of the Blitz spirit in British newspaper discourses of the
City and economy after the 7 July bombings. Critical Discourse Studies 9(3), 285-299.
Kelsey, D. (2014a, in press) The myth of the city trickster: storytelling, bankers and ideology in the Mail Online.
Journal of Political Ideologies.
Kelsey, D. and Bennett, L. (2014) Discipline and resistance on social media: Discourse, power and context in the
Paul Chambers ‘Twitter Joke Trial’. Discourse, Context & Media.
Kelsey, D. (2014b, in press) Defining the ‘sick society’: Discourses of class and morality in British, right wing
newspapers during the 2011 England riots. Journal of Capital and Class.
Manthorpe R. (July 1st 2006) Spirit of the Brits, The Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,,1809895,00.html
Ponting, C. (1990) 1940: Myth and Reality Reading: Cox and Wyman
Ponting, C. (1994) Churchill London: Sinclair-Stevenson
Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and discrimination: Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London:
Routledge.
van Dijk, T. (2001) Discourse, Ideology and Context, Folia Linguistica , Volume 35 (1-2), 11-40.
Wodak, R. et al. (1999) The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.