Critical Discourse Analysis

Discourse communities are all around us—we all belong to a discourse community. A discourse community is a body of persons who share common and unique modes of communication or discourse (“Discourse Community”). In order for a community to identify as a discourse community, the community must possess six defining qualities that categorize it as a discourse community. As defined by John Swales, a researcher and professor of linguistics, discourse communities “have a broadly set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback, one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, an acquired lexis, and a threshold level of members with a

The concept of discourse is the key to understanding a social constructionist approach to childhood. A discourse is an independent set of interrelated ideas held by a particular ideology or worldview. The social constructionist approach tries to describe the different ways in which knowledge of children and childhoods are constructed.

In the first weeks of ENGL 1301, we have discussed the usage and importance of understanding rhetorical skills. Ethos, logos and pathos appeals are useful in many situations in life, but it was until I understood them completely and managed to use them wisely that I realized they helped me to enter a discourse community. In order to be accepted into a community, a person must be able to learn how the community works and must be able to commit to it. Everyone joins a discourse community in a point in their lives so it’s really important to master and acknowledge ethos, logos and pathos appeals. In this essay, I will prove that I entered the discourse community of swimming by gaining knowledge, establishing credibility and understating the rest

A discourse community is said to be resistant to internal criticism and self-scrutiny because all ideas that severely contrast the values and beliefs within the community are defined as being on the outside, as demonstrated in the texts. “The Discourse itself defines what counts as acceptable criticism” (Gee 162). All of the articles use similar rhetorical strategies by describing a problem in shared thinking; the common conception that the

Foucault (1977) uses discourse to relate to how language can be used to construct ideas and thoughts about groups. Discourses and language can therefore help construct or reduce oppression (Thompson, 2006). If a group has power, they have the ‘ability and opportunity to fulfil or obstruct personal, relational, or collective needs’ (Prilleltensky, 2008). If the dominant discourse of a less powerful group is positive, the group with power may help that group fulfil their needs. If the dominant discourse of a less powerful group is negative, such as with UASC, the powerful group may obstruct them in fulfilling their needs, and therefore will cause oppression.

The heuristic that is used for this research guide to identify a discourse communities is the six characteristics that John Swales identifies in “The

Life is like a massive highway that have infinite routes anyone can choose take to reach some type of designated goal. Those various routes lead to distinct exits, where one can discover a group or groups that share similarities dealing with viewpoints, beliefs, or understanding towards a particular goal. These groups can be identified as discourse communities. According to, “The Concept of Discourse Community,” in the textbook, Writing About Writing, John Swales stressed that in order to be classified as a discourse community the group has to have all six defining characteristics. Swales emphasized, “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, utilities and hence processes one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, acquires specific lexis, and has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise” (Swales, 221-222). Keeping this key detail in mind, there is numerous type of discourse out there.

1. What is the discourse community you are studying? The discourse community that I chose was bearded dragons and other animals of similar characteristics. a. What academic majors, departments, and disciplines is it related to?

A discourse community is a group of people who share common interest, values and aim to reach the same goals. For example, this English 1301 course where we’ve been assigned to write a paper with the same goal and ideas in mind. A class where we all discuss our views and passions and relate them to English and composition. I am excited to share with you what I have learned so far and the skills that I have acquired in this stimulating English course that has managed to spark my interest in writing after many years of cranking out meaningless papers with no personality or style. In this paper, I explain to you, my classmates, the process I went through in joining my discourse community, showing you just how intense and difficult it is to meet

The second level grammatical-rhetorical analysis aims to investigate the relationship between grammatical choice and rhetorical function in written English for science and technology. Discourse analysis as interaction represents the third level of language description. Most importantly, interactional analysis outlines the concept of interpretation of discourse by the reader or listener. Discourse analysis appears to have steadily moved from surface-level analysis to a deeper description of language use. However, in the context of language teaching for specific purposes, applied discourse analysis seems to represent a rather narrow description of language in use and is inadequate in its explanation. In order to introduce a thick description of language in use, it is necessary to combine socio-cultural and psycholinguistic aspects of text-construction and interpretation with linguistic insights to answer the question: why are specific discourse-genres written and used by the specialist communities the way they are? Genre analysis as an insightful description of English for specific purpose texts has become a useful and powerful tool to arrive at significant form-function correlations which can be utilized for a number of applied linguistic purposes.

What is a discourse community? According to John Swales, a respected written communication analyst, a discourse community is described as a group of people that have the same goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. In addition, “A discourse operates within conventions defined by communities, be they academic disciplines or social groups” (Swales, 119). This is not be confused with a speech community, “a community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech” (Swales 121). In determining whether or not a group is a discourse community, there are several certain rules, rather a list of criteria, in which

Gee Throughout the journal, “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” by James Paul Gee, he explains the concept of Discourse as “’saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combination’ that are ‘ways of being in the world’” (Gee 274). I found Gee’s view of a Discourse to be too broad of a concept. By stating that everything is a Discourse, then there is no disconnect from everyday occurrences.

Discourses are the “social and cultural practices through which individuals and groups use language to establish their identities…they provide ways of being, thinking, acting and using language so that people can identify themselves in social and cultural networks” Discourses affect peoples views on all things, for example, two different

According to Fairclough (1989, 1995), Critical Discourse Analysis is used to analyze communicative events by analyzing the relationship between three dimensions, including the micro dimension, the meso dimension, and the macro dimension.

This work is about critical discourse analysis of the speeches of Quaid-e-azam. While doing a critical discourse analysis Fairclough’s three dimensional model is used for the present study. Fairclough’s three dimensional model involves Text, process of interpretation and process of production. So in order to fulfill the criteria of three dimensional model six speeches of Quaid-e-azam are selected in which the language of the speeches investigates to see how the text is delivered by the speaker and how it is perceived by the listeners in that particular context. It aims to explore the hidden ideologies and power relations as well as discursive strategies by using the principles of CDA.