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Lesgarcia0829
DHA1.pptxCritical Discourse Historical Approach
CDHA
Adapted from Martin Reisigl (2017)
General characteristics and research interests of the Discourse-Historical Approach
The Discourse-Historical Approach does not just look at the historical dimension of dis- courses, but is – more extensively – concerned with the following areas of discourse studies:
discourse and discrimination (e.g., racism, ethnicism, nationalism, xenophobia, islamo- phobia, sexism);
language barriers in various social institutions (such as hospitals, court rooms, authorities, academic language, media);
discourse and politics/policy/polity (e.g., politics of the past/political commemoration, nation-building, European Union, migration, asylum, multilingualism, language policy, populism);
discourse and identity (e.g., national and supranational/European identity, linguistic identity);
discourse and history (e.g., National Socialism, fascism, commemoration, history of dis- course studies);
discourse in the media (both classical print media and new social media);
organisational communication (e.g., in institutions of the European Union);
discourse and ecology (climate change).
CDA & CDHA
Commonalities:
They pay attention to multi-modal macro- as well as micro-phenomena, to intertextual and interdiscursive relationships, as well as to social, historical, political, economic, psychological and other factors relating to the verbal and non-verbal phenomena of communication.
The function of language….
CDA & CDHA Differences
CDHA:
Emphasizes history and links past word usage to its current use
The concept of rhetoric is more comprehensive than the one suggested by other CDA approaches (e.g., Fairclough and van Dijk), and it is not pejorative.
In DHA,“rhetoric” argumentation is central.
The argumentation analysis is more important than in other CDA approaches: more concerned with the analysis of the content of argumentation schemes
Political critique?
To judge the status quo, e.g., a specific discourse or (dis)order of discourse, against the background of an alternative (ideal) state and preferred values, norms, standards or criteria with respect to shortcomings or contradictions.
Truth in DHA
(theoretical) truth,
(expressive) truthfulness:
Lying both violates theoretical and expressive truth
normative rightness:
discourses evolving around the question of what should be done or shouldn’t be done,
comprehensibilty.
Truth is often questionable in political discourses about the past, in discourses about national identities, e.g., referring to national stereotypes; causes and consequences of climate change.
Discourse in DHA
A tool that creates and constitutes and contributes to social order.
Helps to organise, (re)produce and transform social relationships (including power relations) and social positions, institutions, knowledge and ideologies, identities and subjects, etc.
Discourse(s) develop around social problems. The problems become starting points of argumentation. Argumentation is both a verbal (partly also visual) and cognitive pattern of problem-solving (see Kopperschmidt 2000: 32, 45, 59f.; Reisigl 2014b: 70).
These patterns surround claims of truth and/or claims of normative rightness. The claims are dealt with from different perspectives. Thus, a discourse involves multiple perspectives.
Discourse undergoes historical change relating to social change. Historical change deserves special attention in the DHA.
Discursive Strategies
| How are persons, objects, phenomena events, processes and actions named and referred to linguistically in the discourse in question? | nomination | discursive construction of social actors discursive construction of objects, phenomena, events |
| What characteristics or qualities are attributed to social actors, objects, phenomena, events, processes and actions mentioned in the discourse? | predication | discursive characterization of social actors, objects, phenomena, events processes and actions (e.g., positively or negatively) |
| Table 3.1 DHA |
Discursive Strategies
| What arguments are employed in discourse? | argumentation | persuading addressees of the validity of specific claims of truth and normative rightness |
| From what perspective are these nominations, attributions, arguments expressed? | perspectivisation | positioning the speaker’s or writer’s point of view and expressing involvement or distance |
| Table 3.1 DHA |
Context in CDS
Context can be broken down into a macro-, meso- and micro-dimension. The Discourse- Historical Approach distinguishes among four dimensions of “context”:
The immediate, language internal co-text and co-discourse in regards to thematic, syntactic and lexical coherence, connotations, implications, presuppositions and local interactive processes.
The intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between utterances, texts, genres and discourses (e.g., with respect to discourse representation, allusions, evocations) is a further contextual research dimension.
Social factors and institutional frames of a specific context of situation include: degree of formality, place, time, occasion, addressees, interactive and political roles, political and ideological orientation, gender, age, profession, level of education, ethnic, regional, national, religious identities, etc.
On a meso- and macro-level, the broader sociopolitical and historical context is integrated into the analysis. At this point, fields of action and the history of the discursive event as well as of discourse topics are looked at.
DHA: 3 ways
Three ways of doing a discourse-historical analysis can be distinguished:
A discourse fragment is taken as a starting point, and its history is reconstructed by relating the present to the past
A series/sequence of thematically or/and functionally connected discourse fragments is taken as a starting point; their historical interrelationships are reconstructed within a specific period. In this manner, discourse elements can be related to each within a particular period of the past, e.g., a period of some months, years, decades, etc.
A critical analysis of how different social actors, e.g., politicians in contrast to historians, talk, write, sing, etc. about the past, and in the comparison of the different semiotic representations with respect to claims of truth, normative rightness and truthfulness
