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Applying CDA

  • /
  • The old course /
  • Assessment (2020 exams)/
  • Paper 1/
  • Skills/
  • Applying CDA

The field of critical discourse analysis (CDA) offers useful tools for Paper 1. Critical discourse analysis is concerned with the description and interpretation of discourse in context. Essentially, if we ask the right questions in the right order, we can critically analyze a text. Most good commentaries attempt to answer three essential questions:

  1. What's being said (i.e. content, theme, ideas)?
  2. How is it being said (i.e. stylistic devices, structural features)?
  3. So what (i.e. for what ends, purposes)?

While these questions are good starting points, they can lead to superficial responses. In this lesson we will ask questions that go beyond the basics and explore the connections between author, reader and context, applying CDA. 

Critical discourse analysis (CDA)

Study the table below and look for evidence from the text to fill in the right column. This activity has been adapted from Brian Paltridge's book Discourse Analysis (2006) and T. Huckin's Functional Approaches to Written Text: Classroom Applications. (1997)

 Applying CDA

Framing: what is the angle or perspective of the writer or speaker? This is called the 'framing' of the text because it asks you to look at how the frame influences how we 'see' the text. Think about how different frames change the way a painting looks. Different color frames will pull out different colors, making us notice some things before others. Different materials (wood, gold, paper) will make us interpret the painting with different values. This text evokes a certain 'police vs. protesters' frame that many people are familiar with. 
Foregrounding: What concepts and issues are emphasized? What is the subject of the text or the object of concern? Who is at the foreground of the text?  The protesting and the protesters are at the foreground. The act of arresting them is in the foreground. One almost focuses on the 'cat-and-mouse' chase between police and protesters The Department of Energy (DOE) also plays a role in the foreground.
Background: What concepts and issues are played down in the text?  The nuclear testing is downplayed and placed in the background. The environmental and political impacts of nuclear testing are not explored in this news article.
Audience: Is the intended audience expected to share the views of the text? What is the audience's relation to the author and subject of the text? The audience is expected to share the views of the DOE. These protesters are supposed to be arrested and dealt with according to law. There is not much room for sympathy for their cause.
 
Topicalization: What is put at the front of each sentence to show what it is about? Many sentences start with the demonstrators as the subject of the sentence. The officials have the agency - they arrest, or let people out, and the protestors' actions are aggressive, such as kicking. 

Agent-patient relations: Who has the most authority or power in the sentence? In the case of the passive voice, who is being left out? What degree of formality is there in the text? What words indicate a degree of certainty or attitude? 

 The police are being left out in the passive sentence, "More than 700 people were arrested." They are also the object of the subject's kicking, "Some of the demonstrators were a bit more aggressive, kicking at the guards."

700 arrested at protest in Nevada
Housten Chronicle
6 January 1991

MERCURY, Nev. - More than 700 people were arrested Saturday during an anti-nuclear, anti-Persian Gulf buildup protest at the Nevada Test Site, officials said.

Thousands turned out for the demonstration. Those arrested on misdemeanor trespass charges were taken to holding pens, then transported by bus to Beatty, 54 miles north of the remote nuclear proving ground.

An Energy Department spokesman estimated a crowd of 2,200 to 2,500. A sponsor of the protest, American Peace Test, said the crowd was 3,000 to 4,000.

The DOE spokesman, Darwin Morgan, said more than 700 people were arrested and would be released on their own recognizance.

"Some of the demonstrators were a bit more aggressive, kicking at the guards when they were brought out of the pens," Morgan said.

The demonstrators rallied near the entrance to the site, then crossed a cattle guard on a road leading to this tiny community, which provides support facilities for the testing program.

Others crawled across fences and fanned out into the desert, where dozens of security guards and members of the Nye County Sheriff's office waited to arrest them.

Bill Walker, a spokesman for the Las Vegas-based American Peace Test, said the protest was in opposition to "military policies that have brought the U.S. to the brink of war in the Saudi desert" and in support of a proposed United Nations ban on nuclear testing.

British and U.S. nuclear weapons are tested at the Nevada site, which is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.