In this section, I begin by explaining why Fairclough’s ‘Dialectical Relational’ is the perspective of CDA approach most appropriate for this study. Based on this preference, a detailed analysis of the approach’s three levels of analysis follows. Once these levels of analysis are explained, a critique of this classification is carried out.
I select a ‘Dialectical Relational’ perspective because of its relevant points of strength. In other perspectives such as media discourse, the ‘linguistic and sociolinguistic’ analysis “does not attempt to show systematic linkages between language and sociocultural context”.124 The CDA ‘semiotic analysis’ perspective does not “systematically attend to detailed properties of
123 Tuen A. van Djik, ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis', Discourse & Society, 4-2 (1993), 249-283 (252).Wodak and De Cillia,
for example, published the first official school materials dealing with post-war anti-Semitism in Austria. These materials are now used in schools and by teachers who want to discuss the different ranges and variations of anti-Semitic discourse in their classrooms. Van Djik also analysed the Dutch schoolbooks in terms of their potential racist implications. This led to the production of new school materials; in Lilie Chouliaraki and Norman Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1999), p. 1.
124 Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse (London: Edward Arnol, 1995), p. 21. See Allan Bell, ‘Language style as Audience Design’, Language in Society, 13-2 (1984), 145-204.
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the texture of texts”125, while the focus on the CDA ‘conversation analysis’ pays relatively little attention to elements of representation and associated linguistic features.126 Avoiding these pitfalls, Fairclough’s ‘Dialectical Relational’ approach is inclusive of other perspectives that Fairclough sought to develop as ‘desiderata for a critical analysis of media discourse’.127
Nevertheless, this all-inclusiveness has not complicated analysis of the discursive process. This process is still “relatively straightforward” to grasp theoretically according to John Richardson, who already adopted Fairclough’s approach, and concludes that “I feel most satisfied” with it.128 Scholars such as Ruth Wodak, Michael Meyer, Bryan Jenner, and Stefan Titscher trace this ‘straightforwardness’ to the dialectical ‘focus on language’ use and the ‘wider social cultural structures’, and to the three-dimensional attributes of discourse as detailed below: text, discursive practice, and social practice.129 Others find that Fairclough’s theoretical delineations and assumptions are more difficult to apply due to the ‘circular and reinforcing’ nature of discourse under CDA.130 It appears like a “spinning roundabout, difficult to jump onto; how do we distinguish cause and effect when effects become causes?”131 Admitting the validity of these criticisms, I make the case throughout the thesis that my purpose is to disentangle this process of re/constructing discourse, rather than reaching conclusions about cause and effect. The second emphasis of mine, which also helps to avoid this circularity of discourse analysis, is to invert the point of departure of my analysis. This thesis focuses on the role of ‘the state’ in shaping the 1973 War discourse; therefore, moving from the state to society means that the analysis is less circular and more relational. Such analysis accords even more with the assumption that discourse does
125 Ibid, p. 25. See John Hartley, Understanding News (Abingdon Oxon, UK: Routledge, 1982).
126 Fairclough, Media Discourse, p. 23. See Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge: Polity, 1984).
127 Coincidently or not as it corresponds with eight assumptions of CDA, Fairclough identified eight points in his ‘desiderata’ in which he
stressed that analysis of texts should be conceived ‘multifunctionally’. See Fairclough, Media Discourse, pp. 33-34.
128 Richardson, p. 37.
129 Titscher and others, pp. 149-150. 130 Richardson, p. 37.
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ideological work, as mentioned above.132 Still, section five of this chapter is dedicated in general to these criticisms of CDA as an overall approach. Below is a summary of the three dimensions identified by Fairclough as levels of analysis: Texts (a micro level), discourse practices (a macro level), socio-political practices (a ‘macro’ macro level). The three levels indicated by Fairclough include textual analysis, discourse analysis, and social practice.
The first level is concerned with the manner in which dominant themes are established in text. These concerns include interactional control (who controls or even polices the interaction in such examples as a newspaper interview on the 1973 War ), grammar (which dimensions of grammar are used and how they are ‘patterned’ in a certain process and favoured in a certain way), theme (what is the dominant theme/s in the text and what is the reasoning behind the choice of these thematic structures), word meaning (which ‘key words’ are emphasised in the text, and what is the ‘meaning potential’ of these words), and metaphors (which metaphors are used in the discourse sample, and what factors determine their choice).
The second level, discourse analysis, is relevant to questions of interdiscursivity (which genre/s of discourse can be identified in the whole text) and intertextuality (how far the text borrows from other texts, are these discourse representations direct or indirect, and is the represented discourse clearly demarcated), coherence (how the text is heterogeneous, ambivalent, or well connected, and how the text stands up to ‘resistant readings’), and conditions of discourse practice (which conditions affect the production of the text under study, and who are the agents in control).
132 The assumption is based on a Marxist development of ideology as an ‘upside-down’ version of reality imposed by the elites and those in
power (the ruling classes) during social interaction. See James Paul Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 3rd ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 2008).
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Finally, the last level - that of social practice - is interested in why and how the discourse practice is as it is, and of the effects of discourse practice upon social practice. This level includes orders of discourse (what are the orders of discourse that dictate the relationship between social and discursive practices), social matrix of discourse (what are the ‘hegemonic’ relations and structures which constitute the matrix of discourse), and ideological and political effects of discourse (what are systems of knowledge and beliefs affecting the case study).133 Since the study focuses on the role of the state in shaping and reshaping the dominant discourse, the third level is called ‘socio-political practices’, much to allow the research to add what is ‘political’ in this discoursing process, such as the ‘authoritarianism’ of rule of both Mubarak and Sadat, and the continuity and discontinuity of the rule workings, either between both leaders, or in relation with previous regimes, as explained in Chapters Five and Six.
By making this classification, Fairclough attempted to “bring together three analytical traditions, each of which is dispensable for discourse analysis”.134 These traditions are close textual linguistic analysis within linguistics, macro sciological tradition of analytical social relations and structures, and micro sociological interpretivist tradition of seeking social practice as something which people produce.135 However, these dimensions still overlap considerably and even confusingly.136 For example, a clear line can be drawn between text analysis and discourse practices, since elements in each one of them can overlap, such as ‘intertextual chains’ and ‘manifest intertextuality’. Furthermore, space dedicated to each
133 These three levels are drawn from Fairclough. Since I adopt CDA’s approach from Fairclough’s perspective, some terms were taken
verbatim at the discretion that they are his. See Discourse and Social Change, pp. 234-238
134 Ibid, p. 72. 135 Ibid.
136 Widdowson contended that “we are also in the dark as to how these modes or systems relate to the ‘elements; or ‘parts’ of ‘orders of
discourse’ which Fairclough has earlier distinguished as being of the following types: genres, styles, activity types, discourses… ”; Henry G. Widdowson, “Norman Fairclough: “Discourse and Social Change (Book Review)”, Applied Linguistics, 4, 16 (1995), 510-516 (p. 512).
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element is circumstantial, i.e. it is related to circumstances that can benefit from an emphasis on one element against the other for certain purposes.
Due to these criticisms, I do not demarcate these three levels equally in the thesis, since analysis of the text will involve some discursive and social analysis, and vice-versa. For example, Chapters Five and Six include some elements of textual analysis as part of the ‘national narrative’, such as texts in books published by the state, along with media texts produced at the time. Furthermore, at the level of text, not every element of this framework will be mentioned for the sake of space. As Fairclough himself admitted, these elements represent a “large-scale map of the terrain” after which a “selective analytical focuses which seem especially fruitful”.137 Furthermore, due to this overlapping, the divide would be between text analysis and socio-political practices’ analysis, where each is dedicated one chapter for each of the two eras under analysis. This division is meant to enhance the journey of the researcher into examining patterns without redundancies in analysis or examples, a path adopted by most other discourse researchers.138