Chapter 5 Exploring reality: a critical realist study
5.5 Data analysis
In the next section, I focus on the method that was used to analyse the data. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was the chosen method of analysis as being potentially able to address the research questions posed in this study by bringing into dialogue the multidisciplinary framework that guided this study.
relevant to academic literacy, which, as I have pointed out, is dominated by competing and conflicting definitions or semiotic interpretations which in turn produce diverse representations of students. These representations obviously produce social dominance and, by logical extension, can serve to include or exclude some students from higher education. In this study I will follow the CDA analytical framework proposed by Fairclough (2001).
Much like Bourdieu‘s habitus, Fairclough saw language as both socially shaped and socially shaping. In its socially shaping capacity, it constitutes social identities, social relations and systems of knowledge and beliefs (Fairclough, 1993). Thus language is more than a means of communication and at a deeper level ‗does certain things‘.
―Social objects and phenomena do not have a straightforward and unproblematic existence independent of our discursively-shaped understandings‖ (Chia, 2000 p.513). This is because social objects are systematically constructed by human agents through processes of differentiating, classifying and labelling (Sheyholislami, 2001 in McGregor, 2003). These processes are semiotic ways of constructing the world and there is a repertoire of systems that people use to do so. These could be linguistic features (small letters discourse)or could include other deeper features of language such as associations induced by the choice of certain words. For instance, choosing to describe African students as either ESL or ‗disadvantaged‘ and conflating such terms with the choice between English Second Language and underpreparedness, likewise the association between such terms and ability to learn are all discursive practices. It is also important to note that although these linguistic choices are not arbitrary, they are purposeful regardless of whether the choices are made consciously or unconsciously (Sheyholislami, 2001 in McGregor, 2003). This according, to Fairclough (1992 p. 4),shows that any instance of language use is simultaneously a piece of text (small discourse), an instance of discursive practice (writers and readers construct phenomena in particular ways) and an instance of social practice (ways of valuing and believing).
Discourse as text recognises that language, written or spoken, is constitutive of social identity, social relations and knowledge and belief systems. In this sense texts become the semiotic dimension of events (Fairclough, 2007 p. 164) in the sense that they are products of a literacy event. I have already indicated that this study engaged
with texts such as (course outlines, students‘ reports, interview excerpts and observational data) to identify the discursive practices that producers of these texts employed. Furthermore, the social conditions that influenced the production of such texts were also brought to the fore in this analysis.
Other approaches that are used to constitute reality include the use of words that frame or position the author of the text in a particular context, encompassing the social relations and social identities (Fairclough, 1995). As an analytical tool, Fairclough‘s CDA prompts the researcher to ask what kinds of representations of the world are being constructed in a text (Hulsse, 1999) and how these constitute identity and the nature of participation or relationships. In this vein, CDA enables the researcher to recognise those abject truths inherent in texts. It does this by analysing their sources and causes, resistance to them, and possibilities for overcoming them (Fairclough, 2007). This implies then that CDA is not only concerned with analysing texts to investigate power relations, dominance and social biases therein, but also with how all these are initiated, maintained, reproduced and transformed within specified contexts (van Dijk, 1988).Thus ―the intertextuality and recontextualisation of competing discourses are closely attended to‖ (Wodak andMeyer, 2007 p. 10).
Drawing from this understanding of CDA, in the analysis stage of this study I coded for the contextualisation of the literacy event. This helped to identify the problem:
namely, how the learning context was constructed, and how the context was inevitably related to the literacy practices – in other words, the experiences of academic literacy evident at the empirical level. This identification required some kind of semiotic interpretation of the ways of thinking and being that are available to the different actors in this context. I also coded for literacy practices –as evident in both the practitioners‘ and the students‘ assumptions of literacy. This took place during the classroom observations as well as during the interviews and pertained to the CR‘s domain of the actual, where focus is on the events (i.e., what happens when these causal mechanisms, evident in the domain of the real, are activated).
Lastly, I also coded for identity (i.e., the representation of students and of academic literacy). To do so, I relied on Gee and Bourdieu‘s understandings of identity as socially constructed. I also adopted Fairclough‘s (2007) notion of orders of discourse which he describes as the semiotic dimension of social practices which constitute
social fields, institutions and organisations. Thus in describing orders of discourse, one focuses on discursive practices that are available in the context.
Following Fairclough (2007) and Gee (1996), I focused on the institutional orders of discourse that bring about certain ways of acting and speaking about academic literacy. I also sought to highlight orders of discourse for textual production that were evident in the teaching and learning of technical communication. To do so, I used the tools of critical discourse analysis as espoused by Gee (2001;1996), in which I identified both the small-letter discourse (i.e., the language [Gee, 1996]) that is used to represent students and academic literacy as evidenced in meeting minutes, course outline and interview data, as well as the capital-letter Discourse (i.e., ways of talking, valuing and using language in a social network [Gee, 1996]) in the Faculty documents, students and academic narratives and in classroom events. The purpose of such an analysis was to highlight the socio-cultural representations present in these discourses and also the ways in which they produce Discourses that maintain hegemony in academic practice. With regard to CR‘s domains of reality, this corresponds with the domain of the real and seeks to foreground the causal mechanisms that generate certain discourses. This analytical framework that I used is summarised in Figure 5-7.
Figure 5-7 Analytical framework
CDA’S analytical framework: identification and diagnosis of the problem, critique of the social order and identification of ways past the problem
Empirical Accounts of technical communication as evidenced in academics’, tutors’ and students’ perceptions drawn from interview data
Actual Events derived from observation of teaching and learning context, minutes from meetings Real Discourses that are used to talk
about students Discourses that are used to talk
about academic literacy Discourses that are used to talk about Engineering
Social understandings of academic literacy drawn from Gee, Bourdieu, Bernstein and Lave and Wenger
This framework of analysis describes the three domains of reality that are identified by critical realists. Data collected at each of these levels was first discussed descriptively in order to understand the participants‘ reality at the different levels as it emerged from the data sources.