Discourse is always produced by somebody whose identity, as well as the identity of the interpreter, is significant for the proper understanding of the message. On the other hand langue is impersonal that is to say more universal, due to society. Furthermore, discourse always happens in either physical, or linguistic context and within a meaningful fixed time, whereas langue does not refer to anything. Consequently, only discourse may convey messages thanks to langue which is its framework.
Discursive perspective in studies of the mass media has become more modern and less accepted as a complementary or alternative method. Research to classical content analysis of press, is the amount of research. That up using perspective is still too small. Furthermore, the use of such understanding analysis trial media coverage is so varied, as different areas are interdisciplinary study of language and mass communication.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a rapidly developing area of language study. It regards discourse as a form as social practice, and takes consideration of the context of language use to be crucial to discourse. It takes particular interest in the relation between language and power. This method of analysing media texts has been developed from the work of the French intellectual Michel Foucault. His early writings looked at the ways in which language, both spoken and written, represent certain meanings that reflect and reproduce social and political power. Foucault claimed that power and knowledge are interdependent: power entails command over discourse and command over discourse entails power.
Since Norman Fairclough's (one of the founders of Critical Discourse Analysis) ‘Language and Power’ in 1989, Critical Discourse Analysis has been deployed as a method of analysis throughout the humanities and social sciences. It is neither a homogeneous nor necessarily united approach. Nor does it confine itself only to method. The single shared assumption uniting CDA practitioners is that language and power are entirely linked. As pointed out by van Dijk (1993) one of the key objectives of the Critical Discourse Analysis is also the understanding of the nature of power and domination. In his view, power is based on privileged access to social resources, is widely considered as securities, such as wealth, income, position, status, group membership, education and knowledge. However, dominance is defined as the use of social power by elites, institutions or groups, contributing to the emergence of social inequality (including - in political, cultural, class, ethnic, racial, and gender). The task of CDA is then highlighting the role of discourse in the producing domination.
According to ‘Studying the Media’ dictionary, the complete and very well summing everything up definition of Critical Discourse Analysis is:
‘…a means of analysing texts based on linguistics and in recent times the theories of Foucault. Discourse analysis identifies the culturally and socially produced sets of ideas and values that structure texts and representations. It helps to identify abstract and ideological assumptions about the world that may be implicitly contained in particular texts.’
Fairclough developed a three-dimensional framework for studying discourse, where the aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis of discursive events as instances of socio-cultural practice. Particularly, he combines micro, meso and macro-level interpretation. At the micro-level, the analyst, considers the text's syntax, metaphoric structure and certain, metorical devises. The meso-level involved studying the text's production and consumption, focusing on how power relations are enacted. At the macro-level, the analyst is concerned with inter-textual understanding, trying to understand the broad, societal currents that are affecting the text, being studied.
Researches on Critical Discourse Analysis in relation to gender started in early 1970s. Scientists examined two domains of language behaviour such as speech behaviour of men and women on the phonological level, and interactions between men and women in discourse.
Discourse of power and rights of cultural gender is not something set and unchangeable. It varies depending on the discourse, which adopts authority, and since it is not constant, then it is not necessary. Considering gender as a cultural dynamic, it is not something that exists, but what is happening. It is being made by us, in a continuous manner and at the same time represented and affirmed, thus we impose it with the power equal to the discourse of power, becoming the discourse by ourselves.
Judith Butler expresses the significance of the ‘sex’ category in its most varied dimensions in the following way:
‘…as ‘identity’ is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex, gender and sexuality, the very notion of the person is called into question by the cultural emergence of those ‘incoherent’ or ‘discontinuous’ gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined.’ (1990: 170).
Across societies and different environments, power is a great variable that differs and separates women and men from each other. In short, in these societies, men have greater command of the discourse of power than women. Men are able to define the activities that courses status. If women are under-valued in that society, then the activities that they engage and the language used by them will be under-valued. The social solidarity of people doing these activities, regardless of their sex, is expressed through the language used. Women in most cultural contexts are clearly an oppressed group when compared with men as a group. It follows that almost any sex differences in discourse are interpretable with respect to this clear difference in power between men and women.
In proposing a critical analysis of discourse, as one of the methods of the study area communication of modern societies, one should be aware of deficiencies. First of all, critics may raise the same substructure theoretical methods. It is obvious that critical theory met with criticism in environments of scientists calling for neutrality and objectivity of the sociologist. Discourse analysis is useful in studying the media because it provides the means by which films, television programmes and all other media output can be interpreted and understood.
References:
➢ Beaugrande, R. and Dressler, W. (1981). ‘Introduction to text linguistics.’ London: Longman.
➢ O’Sullivan, T. (2003) ‘Studying the Media: An Introduction’. 3rd Edition. USA: Bloomsbury
➢ Butler, J. (1990) ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity’ New York: Routledge.
Bibliography:
➢ Wodak, R. (1997) ‘Gender and Discourse.’ London: SAGE
➢ ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’ [online]. [Accessed 12th December Fairclough, N. (2003). ‘Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research.’ London: Routledge
➢ 2010]. Available at <http://www.jstor.org/pss/223428>
➢ ‘The Use of The Discourse Analysis’ [online]. [Accessed 12th December 2010]. Available at <http://translate.google.pl/translate?hl=pl&sl=en&tl=pl&u=http://www.york.ac.uk/res/researchintegration/Integrative_Research_Methods/Griffin%2520Discourse%2520Analysis%2520April%25202007.pdf&anno=2>
O ‘Krytyczna analiza dyskursu: refleksje teoretyczno-metodologiczne’ [online]. [Accessed 11th December 2010]. Available at <http://www.qualitativesociologyreview.org/PL/Volume2/PSJ_2_1_Jablonska.pdf>
➢ ‘Critical discourse analysis, intertextuality and the present study’ [online]. [Accessed 12th December 2010]. Available at <http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/1701/5/05chapter4.pdf>