4.3 Methods of data production
4.3.7 Methods of data analysis
The specific methods followed by feminist CDA are diverse and extensive, but the general essence is the fact that it relies on traditional linguistic approaches such as critical linguistics of CDA (Lehtonen, 2007). In this case, feminist CDA was based on the methods presented by Fairclough (2001) and Machin and Mayr’s (2012) representational framework in analysing both textual and visual data. I adopted the main principles of CDA presented by these authors and interpret them from the perspective of feminist CDA. A subtle or slight degree of difference was the strong gendered lens based on principles of feminist CDA in using the analytical tools.
Importantly, both CDA and feminist CDA maintain that all social practice is tied to specific historical contexts and is the means by which existing social relations are reproduced or contested and different interests are served. Questions pertaining to interests relate discourse to relations of power: How is the text positioned or positioning? Whose interests are served by this positioning? Whose interests are negated? What are the consequences of this positioning?
In addition to using Fairclough (2001) as well as Machin and Mayr’s (2012) representational framework, the following basic steps for using CDA as outlined by Huckin (1997) guided my
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initial analysis. Firstly, I read the chapters selected in the textbook in an uncritical manner.
Then I reread the chapters in a critical manner by raising questions about them and establishing how they could be constructed differently. In the next step, I looked for the perspective being presented, which is referred to as framing the details into a coherent whole. Finally, I closely analysed sentences, phrases and words, looking for (among other things) language that conveyed power relations, insinuations, and tone – three linguistic elements between which CDA particularly seeks to identify connections.
Explanation:
Why is it this way?
Interpretation:
What does it all mean?
(Processing Analysis)
Description: What does it look like? (Text Analysis – Huckin’s framework)
Figure 4.1: Dimensions of discourse and discourse analysis: A description of CDA (Fairclough, 2001, p. 98).
Conditions of production and interpretation
Process of production and interpretation
Text Discourse
Practice Socio-
cultural Practice
Situational Institutional Societal
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The above diagram describes Fairclough’s (2001) belief that language is an irreducible part of social life. This is the main part of his framework. The dialectic relation between language and social reality is realised through social events (texts), social practices (orders of discourse) and social structures (Fairclough, 2001). Fairclough attempts to uncover ideological and power patterns in texts. I adopted his method of analysis because he is the only CDA scholar who defines the relationship between power and language (social power and ideology) (Fairclough, 2001). Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional framework used for analysis of text and discourse in this study are: 1) linguistic description of the formal properties of the text; 2) interpretation of the relationship between the discursive processes/interaction and the text, where text is the end product of a process of text production and a resource in the process of text interpretation; and lastly, 3) explanation of the relationship between discourse and social and cultural reality.
Importantly for this study, Fairclough’s (1989) three-dimensional framework analysis goes beyond the ‘whatness’ of the text description towards the ‘how’ and ‘whyness’ of text interpretation and explanation. There are certain underlying assumptions behind selections of discourse, which is important to expose in my study. These assumptions are never value-free and innocent; rather, they are ideologically driven and motivated. By studying the forms of the language using Fairclough’s three dimensions I can discover the social processes and the specific ideology embedded in the texts. This leads to exploration of power relations and more specifically gender relations. As Fairclough (2001, p. 87) correctly argues, textbooks have a
“hidden agenda” of producing dominant hegemonic and ideological assumptions.
The description phase of Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis of texts will be done using a specific framework adapted from Machin and Mayr (2012), selected because of the benefits it offers in categorising choices made within discourse via socio-semantic rather than lexico- grammatical meaning. For Machin and Mayr (2012) social actors are influenced by the policies and decisions of powerful organisations, which either include or exclude them from the centres of power.
Fairclough explains the principal ways in which social actors can be represented in discourse, closely relating his concepts to gender representations. In this view, CDA offers a lens on impact of power structures on production and/or reproduction of knowledge and its effect on the identity and subjectivity of members of the community/society at large. This is a method to analyse language and discourse in relation to production, reproduction, dissemination and
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interpretation of knowledge, in line with researchers’ goals. As Machin and Mayr (2012, p. 6) state:
[Discourses] not only represent what is going on, they also evaluate it, ascribe purpose to it, justify it, and so on, and in many texts these aspects of representation become far more important than the representation of the social practice itself.
Machin and Mayr’s (2012) framework consists of the main sections identified below, which I will use in my analysis. Using the CDA protocol (Table 4.1) qualitatively, I hope to reveal the ideological, gendered positioning hidden in the Business Studies texts.
Table 4.1: Selected categories from the Social Actor Network and their representative meaning (Machin & Mayr, 2012)
CDA PROTOCOL ADAPTED FROM THE WORK OF MACHIN AND MAYR (2012)
Representation Underpinned by two systems of representations:
Mental representations: Ideas and concepts we carry around in our heads about a particular gender.
Systems of representations: Not individual concepts but different ways of organising, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them.
Personification / objectification Personification means that human qualities and abilities are assigned to abstract or inanimate objects. This can obscure actual agents.
Honorifics The way people are represented through what
they do can be achieved using ‘functional honorifics’. These are terms that suggest a degree of seniority or a role that requires respect. In short, it signals the importance of a social actor or specialisation (e.g. President, Lord, Sir).
Aggregation When participants are quantified and treated like statistics.
Synecdoche Where the part represents the whole. This has the important function of allowing the author to avoid being specific.
Modality The tone of the text conveyed by the use of
modal verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Modality can also be associated with hedging terms, such as ‘I think’, ‘kind of’, ‘sort of’, ‘seems’ or
‘often’.
Epistemic modality: To do with the author’s judgement of the truth of any proposition. In other words, epistemic modals show how
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certain the authors are that something will happen, or is the case (e.g. “I think this might be the correct procedure”).
Deontic modality: To do with influencing people and events. Deontic mode is about how we compel and instruct others (e.g.
“Students must do the activity”).
Dynamic modality: This is related to possibility and ability, but is not subjective in the manner of the first two modalities (e.g.
“You can do your homework”). Here the author is not so much expressing her/his judgement or attempting to influence others, but indicating ability to complete an action or the likelihood of events.
‘Taken for granted’ words and assumptions
Using certain words that take certain ideas for granted. A reader is therefore unlikely to question what is known to be common knowledge. This is presented as having no alternative and obscuring what could have been stated, and assigning a meaning without exploring any other meanings, because people are products of their cultures, experiences and society. Assumptions are statements that imply that the meaning of what is written is taken as true or is sure to happen, although there is no factual proof of this.
Register Single words can suggest that words that are
spoken ring true.
Omissions/lexical absences or suppression Leaving out certain things; a silence on pertinent issues. Omissions are identified through the exclusion and suppression of information that can be motivated politically or socially.
Nominalisation Changing a verb into a noun often used to generalise an issue. Nominalisations are also used to connote and imply a meaning through metaphors and figures of speech. Investigating metaphorical metaphors can be an effective tool in researching and identifying a particular ideology of a social system, as we use
metaphors in our daily lives to explain events or things to others and ourselves.
Embellishments Using diagrams and sketches to get the reader’s attention. These can also be used to imply that the content is scientific, thereby adding weight to their arguments.
Foregrounding, backgrounding Using keywords to emphasise certain concepts.
A writer can use titles and keywords to stress the importance of certain ideas by placing them in a prominent place textually to influence the reader. This is called foregrounding, but if there is minimal mention of a concept, it is called backgrounding.
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Presupposition Using words that take certain things for granted, as if there is no alternative.
Pronouns versus noun: the ‘us’ and ‘them’
division
Pronouns like ‘us’, ‘them ’and ‘we’ are used to align us alongside or against particular ideas.
Text producers can evoke their own ideas as being our ideas, or create a collective ‘other’
that is in opposition to these shared ideas.
Nomination or functionalisation Participants can be nominated in terms of whom they are or functionalised by being depicted in terms of what they do. Functionalisation connotes legitimacy.
Impersonalisation Impersonalisation is used to give extra weight to a particular sentence (e.g. “Business wants staff to stop striking”). It is not a particular person but a whole institution that requires something.
Agents are concealed.
Overlexicalization The availability of many words for one concept, and it indicates the prominence of the concept in a community's beliefs and intellectual interests.
Although the CDA protocol is extensive, it gives me an opportunity to interrogate aspects of gender representations portrayed in the four selected school textbooks. Each category is not going to be an independent theme but rather used interchangeably in analysis of my data. Each category has a specific gender focus, which means that the themes identified in my analysis will have a rich, nuanced interpretation and explanation. The above protocol together with Fairclough’s (2001) model will uncover the ideological and hegemonic discursive formations at work within texts.