The Critical Discourse Analysis Approach

The main principles of the application of a critical discourse analysis involve a focus on studying the use of language alongside close consideration of how social relations, identity and power are constructed through written and spoken texts (Fairclough, 1995). This CDA research is “committed to progressive social change” (Fairclough, 2001, p. 230); insofar as it aims to understand how ECEC policy discourse exists as it does in Ireland through the means of analysing the use of language and construction of knowledge within ECEC policy texts. This research has been interested in attempting to understand and thus find the means to move beyond the policy status quo within Irish ECEC policy. The thesis aim is to discover, and attempt to understand, the dominant policy discourses and construction of knowledge about central concepts which shape the ECEC policy area in Ireland, focusing in on how children’s rights are both constructed and obstructed within the truths known about ECEC and how this impacts on a rights based construction of policy. Through the wider analysis, discussion and exploration of the knowledge constructions and dominant discourses in the policy area, this research

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will seek to find a space to consider what might enhance a rights-based approach to ECEC policy making. Thus employing the use of CDA methods in qualitative research from this perspective, has necessitated answering the ‘how’ questions in relation to understanding how specific realities have come into being; how they are reproduced through the policy literature and how language has figured “as an element in social processes” (Fairclough, 2001, p. 229).

The qualitative and critical discourse analysis methods used to gather evidence in this study have consisted of a broad documentary analysis of the informing and background documents which attended to the sociocultural practice and discourse practice levels of Fairclough’s dimensions of discourse model (1995), and the application of the CDA framework to the selected Irish early childhood education and care policy documents and their related genre chains36 which attended to the discourse practice and text levels of the model.

The CDA methodology used in this study has paid considerable attention to the sociocultural and socio-political climate in which these Irish ECEC policy documents were created, alongside a meticulous textual analysis of the language choices and linguistic properties of each individual text, in order to discern what work the language is doing in terms of ideology perpetuation and knowledge construction. This analysis has also aimed to track any distinctive shifts in policy actions or policy thinking perpetrated through the language of policy documents throughout the ten year research sample, which encompasses the period from 1998 to 2008.

36 _{Genre chains in this instance refer to interrelated documents: published consultation documentation,} Dáil debates, press releases and speeches

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An important factor that the research has focused on is to ascertain what knowledge has been constructed about the policy area, within the discourses of ECEC policy, and thus to consider how these knowledge constructions have subsequently become recognised as the accepted truths about ECEC in wider discourse. The tools inherent in the wider CDA approach, where discourses are analysed in relation to their constructions as texts within the wider sociocultural realm, and at the levels of discursive practice, are of the utmost importance. This is emphasised by O’Farrell (2005) where she explains that in Foucault’s discourse theory “knowledge is always shaped by political, social and historical factors – by ‘power’ – in human societies” (O'Farrell, 2005, p. 54) thus it is not enough merely to identify the knowledge constructions themselves as “it is absolutely essential to examine the relationship between knowledge and the factors that produce and constrain it” (ibid.). Consequently, the goal of this research has been to analyse, discuss and evaluate critically the knowledge that is constructed about ECEC within the policy texts, noting any changes or developments within the language of the ECEC policy landscape, in order to reveal the dominant ideological climate within Irish ECEC policy. The research aim being to understand the conceptual construction of ECEC policy, focusing in on how children’s rights are both constructed and obstructed within the truths known about ECEC and how this impacts on a rights based construction of policy.

5.3.1 Reiterating the textual element of a critical discourse analysis

The textual element of the CDA, the textual analysis, has involved the use of linguistic analysis, semiotic analysis37 and interdiscursive analysis38. Fairclough (2009) has

37 _{In the case of this research study, semiotic analysis refers to analysis of the design and presentation of} policy texts and related genre chains within the context of policy text production.

38 _{Interdiscursive analysis means “analysis of which genres, discourses and styles are drawn upon, and} how they are articulated together” (Fairclough, 2009, p. 170)

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identified the three important semiotic aspects of social life which are addressed within a textual analysis, they are genres, “semiotic ways of acting and interacting” (ibid., p. 170); discourses, “semiotic ways of construing aspects of the world” (Fairclough, 2009, p. 170) and styles, “identities or ‘ways of being’, in their semiotic aspect” (ibid.). When conducting the language analysis aspect of the CDA, a thorough textual analysis is required to identify linguistic properties that possess an ideological basis. Thus this CDA has aimed to look at the following linguistic properties within the texts:

• The way a dialogue is structured, the narrative

• The way sentences are linked together, known as clause combination

• The grammar and semantics of clauses including: transitivity, action verbs, voice and modality.

• Words, including: choice of vocabulary, meaning, collocation of, and metaphorical uses of words (Luke, 1997).

This linguistic textual analysis has been, and is always within CDA, conducted alongside a wider and comprehensive “analysis of the discourse practices that produce and interpret the text and an analysis of the social practices that surround text production” (Marston, 2004, p. 47). The point then of the textual analysis is not merely to be concerned with revealing what is ‘in’ a text, because, “what is absent from a text is often just as significant from the perspective of sociocultural analysis” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 5). As texts are the points of entry for investigation of any social problem, the interpretation of texts can be very much a subjective activity; it is also important to note nonetheless that they are also often constituted in ways that espouse the favoured principles of the author or authors, reflecting Knapp and Michaels (1982, 1987) contention that the meaning of a text is always what its author intends it to be.

The policy texts which are of relevance to this study encompassed the ECEC policy documents themselves and published consultation reports, and their related genre chains: Dáil debates, speeches, press releases, and also other information about them

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accessed electronically on the DCYA website and other websites of interest within the sector and wider policy area. The textual analysis, as it has been employed in this thesis, has served to assess the intricate language choices and linguistic properties of the policy texts paying heed to a number of specific areas. This is in order to uncover the knowledge constructed about ECEC policy and the dominant discourses and truths inherent in that text; which are subsequently permeated back into society through wider discourse about the policy area. This is in keeping with the view of Fairclough, where he cites texts as being “sensitive barometers of social processes” (1995, p. 209), within which social control and domination are exercised. He sees the textual analysis aspect of a CDA as an “important political resource” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 209) which can chronicle social change as it is filtered through official texts. This is also in keeping with Foucault’s discourse theory, where he maintained that “it is only in the present that one can make changes. In order to be free, one needs to continually expose what remains alive of the past in the present and relegate it to the past” (O'Farrell, 2005, p. 72). In the realm of a critical discourse analysis, this involves treating language as more than what it seems to be, believing in the need to delve further in order “to reveal the precise mechanisms and modalities of the social and ideological work of language” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 209). Hence a main objective of employing the textual analysis is to assume that there is more to the language of texts than meets the eye. This view has thus positioned critical discourse analysis as a significant tool to investigate the ethos behind ECEC policymaking in Ireland and to assist in considering the development of a rights-based framework for the future.