The employed CDA Analytical Framework

The documents outlined in Tables 3-3 and 3-4 were analysed with the tools of critical discourse analysis. In this section, I will describe in more detail how these tools were employed in the thesis.

Intertextuality, interdiscursivity and recontextualisation 3.4.2.1

In this thesis I am specifically engaging in what has been called Text or Discourse- Immanent Critique, by exploring “inconsistencies, self-contradictions, paradoxes and dilemmas in the text-internal or discourse-internal structures” (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009: 88). The critical discourse analytic concepts of intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and recontextualisation are meant to provide important conceptual anchors for such an analysis.

The notion of intertextuality is concerned with the link between texts, being manifested through explicit/implicit references to certain texts, topics, main actors and events in the past as well as the present (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). The notion of interdiscursivity of a text, on the other hand, refers to the hybridity and interrelation of discourses (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). Through these notions, therefore, we can explore the relationships between different texts and discourses across time and space. Recontextualisation is defined as “the ‘colonization’ of one field or institution by another, but also as the ‘appropriation’ of ‘external’ discourses, often the incorporation of discourses into strategies pursued by particular groups of social agents within the recontextualizing field” (Fairclough, 2009: 165; emphases in original).

The difference between intertextuality, interdiscursivity and recontextualisation is that the former two manifest themselves in the linkages between different texts and discourses, while the latter shows how these linkages are reinterpreted and transformed to gain new meanings in specific contexts. Accordingly, when studying the former two, the question is how those texts and discourses are related and circulated, while an analysis of recontextualisation investigates how such discourses are transformed in a different context.

63 Representation of social actors 3.4.2.2

I also explore the ways in which individuals are represented in discourses, practices and perceptions. In order to investigate this aspect, I will employ the analytical framework of representation of social actors (Fairclough, 2003; Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; Van Leeuwen, 1996). This concept highlights different representations of linguistic and sociological categories, whereby a linguistic category which highlights the semantic unity of representation is not necessarily shared by the sociological category (Van Leeuwen, 1996).

Moreover, when analysing a representation of a social actor, pronoun (e.g., ‘we’) and noun are important elements to look at as they can indicate the membership of social actors. Grammatical forms such as passivisation – “the conversion of an active clause into a passive clause” (e.g., demonstrators are shot (by police)) – and nominalisation – “the conversion of a clause into a nominal or noun” (e.g., there is a recognition) – are also paid attention to, as those can mystify the agents (i.e., who takes the action) (Fairclough, 1992: 27). Furthermore, I also highlight the exclusion of social actors: suppression, where a specific social actor is not mentioned at all in the text; and backgrounding, where a specific social actor is mentioned “somewhere in the text, but having to be inferred in one or more places” (Fairclough, 2003: 145).

Referential and predicational strategies 3.4.2.3

I then extend my analysis of these categorisations through the analytical framework of referential strategies, which explores the ways in which the categorisation and representation of social actors is constructed (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001: 45). Namely, I compare the linguistic representation of categories in texts – literal meanings – with the sociological representation of the categories in which the meaning has been constructed through particular discourses, practices and perceptions. The categories found were further scrutinised by looking at predicational strategies, paying attention to how these categories are being “specified and characterised with respect to quality, quantity, space, time and so on” (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001: 54). In this phase, my focus is on examining what kind of symbolic values are attached to the identified categories.

Multimodality: pose, objects, actors and actions 3.4.2.4

For multimodal analysis, I investigate photographic images by looking at four elements of the contents of images. Two are from Barthes’s (1977): pose and objects,

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which have been recognised as distinct elements in recent developments of multimodal analysis (Van Leeuwen, 2005). I also employ two other elements from Van Leeuwen (1996, 2005, 2008, 2010): actors and actions. The four elements and their definitions for this analysis are shown below:

1) Actor: the appearance of participants in the image (e.g., race, gender, age, ethnic clothing)

2) Pose: the posture of participants in the image (e.g., body posture, direction of gaze, profile) 3) Object: the appearance of an object in the image

(e.g., layout and selection of furniture)

4) Action: an action which the participant in the image is engaging in (e.g., writing)

To clarify CDA’s analytical process, it should be noted that all the analysis in this thesis was based on original data in Japanese, and not on the translated data16. The excerpts of the governmental and institutional policy documents in this thesis were all translated by author; the contents in brackets in the translated excerpts have not been in the original Japanese documents but added for clarification. Admittedly, translations sometimes sound unnatural in English, but this is to keep with the original Japanese sentence structures. Some translations have been kept in original Japanese expression in Romanised form for the purpose of later discussion – in those cases, the translations are shown in square brackets.

3.5 Ethnographic Data Collection Procedure

In this section I will look at the ethnographic analytical procedure. I conducted fieldwork at Asahi-Hoshuko and family homes intensively between April 2012 and July 2013, for sixteen months. Since the nursery class is held fortnightly, I usually visited the Hoshuko twice a month during this period, amounting to a total of thirty one Hoshuko visits. At the same time, I conducted thirteen home visits at two families: eight times at one family, five times at the other family. Appendix A shows the summary of my fieldwork and the timeline of data collection. Although most of the

16 _{For this reason, original Japanese are shown below the author’s English translation in the analysis and}

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data collection was conducted in this sixteen-month period, I kept in touch with my research participants, and also visited the Hoshuko occasionally: therefore, some of the data I used in this thesis were collected outside the intensive field-work period.

Benefiting from the open nature of ethnography, the research employed multiple methods of data collection: participant observation, interviews, exchange diaries and emails with parents. Field notes were taken for documenting additional data (e.g., ethnographic interview data, observed events) as well as compensate for information loss inherent in other methods (e.g., context descriptions and participants’ non-verbal expressions).

In qualitative studies, multiple methods are often employed for ensuring validity through cross data collection, called triangulation. Triangulation is thus traditionally recognised as one effective way to reduce chances of biased results in qualitative research by confirming equivalent results from different methods and data resources (Gaskell & Bauer, 2000; Richards, 2009). Paradoxically, the concept of triangulation implies that there are cases in which corresponding results show disagreements, and it is debated how researchers should approach the interpretation of such disagreements in their data (Dörnyei, 2007). It is important to clarify that the purpose of employing multiple methods in this thesis was not only for confirming the validity of data through triangulation, but also for taking such disagreements into consideration.