CDA AND SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

CDA with its historical and dialectical view of language and society will be used as a theoretical framework and a method (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, Fairclough 2004, 2003, 200266) in order to analyze discourses67(representations of social practices from a specific perspective) and genres (interaction in its textualized form)

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I also draw upon Fairclough’s (2001, 2000, 2000a, 1995, 1999, 1992b, 1989) earlier work, although his approach has undergone change.

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In addition to the rather confusing spread of the term discourse, Fairclough developed further subcategorical meanings: discourse as an abstract noun is used for language use conceived as part of social practices Discourse as a countable noun refers to ways of signifying or representing experience from a particular perspective, such as in the discourse of Thatcherism. He refers to genres, discourses and styles that are drawn upon in actual discourse as discourse types and“to the ‘discourse practices’ of particular institutions, organizations or societies (in contrast to ‘discursive practice’ as one analytically distinguishable dimension of discourse)”(1992: 4-5).

in academic publications in the field of IBC in the context of wider social and educational change. This dual application of CDA is based on an understanding of social scientific research as always conceptually and theoretically driven (as outlined in the preceding chapters), i.e. research objects are unavoidably approached (and construed) through methodologies that follow from implicit or explicit theoretical assumptions. Authors writing from a CDA perspective therefore try to avoid both “theoreticism – ‘theory for its own sake’ - and methodologism – seeing methods as a theory-free means of achieving results” (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 16) by developing both simultaneously in a reflexive manner. The term method is therefore not employed here in the sense of a unique set of tools for linguistic analysis. The specific CDA approach adopted here (Fairclough 2003) generally proceeds from the

description and analysis (already in part interpretive) of what happens in a text to an

interpretation and explanation of these findings in relation to the immediate situational and the wider social and institutional context the text occurs in, their semiotic counterpart, the order of discourse, and back in a hermeneutical circle while drawing on a variety of methodological resources. Researchers might develop new conceptual and analytical tools in order to refine the analysis and do justice to the specificity and complexity of the objects under investigation (Titscher, Wodak and Vetter 2000: 11, see also Fairclough 1992: 125).

The CDA-approach developed by Fairclough is methodologically informed, above all, by a functional systemic form of linguistic analysis developed by Halliday (1985, 1994) and Halliday and Hasan (1985), Eggins (1994) and Thompson (1996). Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL) classifies and interprets linguistic features in relation to their meaning making function in specific contexts and thereby draws

“attention to what language ‘does’” (Poynton 2000: 36). Language is viewed as a system of phonological, lexico-grammatical, semantic and textual/ organizational resources which are chosen and assembled in order to achieve different effects in the respective social context (Halliday 2000: xvi). Choices between linguistics resources are hence regarded as significant and meaningful (otherwise there would be no point in having alternatives) and related to the social circumstances speakers and writers encounter, the communicative intentions they bring to the situation and those they develop therein. Language in use is thus

… a continuous process of semantic choice, a movement through the network of meaning potential, with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further set. (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 10)

Hallidayan linguistics takes semantics as its base and regards descriptive categories as particular to each language in question. It is argued that three types of process or so- called meta-functions (interpersonal, experiental and textual68) go on simultaneously in a given text. These are on the one hand understood as being universal but at the same time as being realised in a variety of ways (Halliday 2000: xxxvi). Conversely, the same linguistic forms can have different communicative effects depending ultimately on the con- and co-text they are employed in, the meaning they are

endowed with and the available alternatives. Fairclough (2003) speaks similarly of the

texturing of a specific text, i.e. the production of cohesion through elements such as for example connectives, repetition, argumentative structure, references etc. but also draws attention to the incoherencies and contradictions that still prevail as well as to the unsaid and silenced aspects in specific instances of representations (often hiding places for ideological presuppositions). He describes the ideational function as

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The term interpersonal refers to the semantic metafunction of negotiating social relations in the text,

experiential stands for the representation of events either in relation to their physical, mental or social aspects and the textual metafunction designates, in metaphorical terms taken from the textile industry, the “weaving together of the experiential and the interpersonal strands of meaning” in the actual text (Poynton 2000: 31).

referring to the way the world is represented (for example through transitivity

including processes and participation) and differentiates the interpersonal dimension further into the enactment and representation of social identities and social relations, that is the way the (ideal) reader and the writer are construed and related to one another (potentially expressed for example through mood, i.e. through for example the choice between declarative sentences, questions and commands, the choice of

pronouns (e.g. we versus they) or modality (through, for instance, the use of modal verbs) showing commitment to a statement) among others. In order to answer to the first two set of research questions (related to the representation of globalization, the present and absent actors and processes, the evaluation of these processes and the legitimation of educational goals derived from these interpretations, the specific theoretical tools (culture, otherness and language) employed) I will draw apart from Fairclough’s (2003) and Fairclough and Thomas (2004) work on representations of neoliberal discourse as well as on van Leeuwen’s work (1996, 1995) who, departing from Halliday’s theory, developed a semantic categorization of different types of social actions and actors and their typical grammatical realization.

An SFL framework, however, does not coincide in all conceptual and methodological aspects with a CDA-perspective. While both frameworks include a variety of different approaches represented by different individuals or groups of academics, the relation between micro-textual and macro-social aspects of a given communicative instance are generally viewed differently. SFL leans, as Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 143) argue, strongly towards textually orientated analysis lacking a satisfactory social theoretical background. The concepts used in order to relate texts to context - for instance field (what is happening), tenor (who is taking part in terms of roles and

status), mode (the channel) and register (the specific linguistic choices and textual realisations dictated by social setting and purpose) - are based on a fairly static view of social interaction where agents instantiate the social through language instead of reworking the resources they draw upon in a creative way. The CDA view adopted here conceptualizes the interrelationship between micro and macro in a complex fashion on the basis of the stratified ontology outlined in the preceding subchapter. It regards hybridity and mixing of discourses and genres69 as normal features of language in use and has developed several concepts in order to operationalize this perspective more concretely.

2.2.2. THE CONCEPTS OF GENRE, GENRE CHAIN AND ORDER OF