Critical Discourse Analysis

In Power and Social Change, Richard Healy and Sandra Hinson explore the term power in social change between the world and people. The topic about power was interesting because there are two distinct perspective of power. The most common view of power is power-over. The less common view is power-within. In organizing for social justice, it is important to realize that using power-within will lead to successful achievement to instigate compliance of demands listed by the minorities. Furthermore, there are three criteria of power implement in organizing for social justice, which are direct political involvement, organizational infrastructure, and ideology with worldview. Each criterion plays an important role to the success of establishing a

The main focus of the article is Blumenfelds’ primary premise, “Within each of the numerous forms of oppression, members of the target

Privilege and oppression provides a framework for understanding how institutional structures and ideologies shapes individual experiences. Privilege and oppression also explains “how power operates in society” which led to the formation of “a dominant group and a marginalized group” (Launius and Hassel, Threshold Concepts, 72-73). “Oppression can be defined as prejudice and discrimination directed toward a group and perpetuated by the ideologies and practices of multiple social institutions” (Launius and Hassel, Threshold Concepts, 73). While, privilege refers to the “benefits, advantages, and power that accrue to members of a dominant group as a result of the oppression of marginalized group”,

For the purpose of this assignment I will consider how I have already started to develop as a ‘Critical Practitioner’. By this statement I would put forward how I am being ‘open minded’, use a ‘reflective approach’ that takes account of ‘different perspectives, experiences and assumptions’ (Glaister cited in the reader pg 8). I will discuss how my practice has developed and has been influenced by K315 course materials such as Barnett’s three domains of critical practice, action, reflexivity and analysis (Barnett

The authors Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Audre Lorde consistently discuss the topic of oppression by a governing power and use the techniques of logos to demonstrate the effects of oppression on the society as a whole. Lorde and Stanton develop similar ideas of

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?

Structure and agency are two theoretical terms used to explain the capacity at which we as people are able to be individuals, and to what extent those influences limit our individuality. Structure refers to the ways in which a society is organized. Agency refers to the behaviors and actions of the individuals within the social structure. Agency is limited by the structure due to cultural barriers and inequalities within the structure. In this essay, I will present an overview of why critical theorists are concerned with those inequalities, and I will further identify the problems within the system contributing to the unequal access to the public sphere, relating specifically to class and gender inequalities.

Disciplinary domain of power focuses on how some people lifted on a pedestal while others are oppressed by authority figures. It has always interested me why this is. Why do people or organizations treat certain people better than others? What is the cause that this should happen in a society? In reading the chapter on this form of intersectionality gave a clearer understanding of this puzzling yet very still really in society question.

In Allan G. Johnson’s, “What It has to Do with Us,” he writes that doing something about oppression and privilege requires talking about it. He believes that individualism does not help the fight against oppression and privilege. Individualistic thinking leads to trying to find someone to blame, and it hides privilege. The solution is not looking at oppression and privilege in an individualistic way, but looking at the system and see how both the system and individual people participate in it (Johnson 67). In order to do this, there must be an “understand[ing of the] dynamic between people and systems of privilege” (Johnson 68). Johnson defines this dynamic being between the way participating in systems shapes us and in how participating in a social systems, we allow it to happen (Johnson 68). He writes that by existing in social life, we are socialized to learn how to participate in social life, and “develop a sense of personal identity” (Johnson 68). This being how society or we perceive ourselves. The relation between people and systems “produces patterns of social life”

Systemic oppression requires great scrutiny in order to critically analyze the elements that underlie the complex and impactful process. Furthermore, it is imperative to examine its relation with the governing ideology of the white dominated capitalist society of North America. Through this framework, racism is transformed into an implicit, or symbolic form, which functions outside the parameters of legality and condemnation (Bona-Silva, 1997); ), generating a paradigm where explicitly racist attitudes are fostered and are allowed to surface into society. Consequently, racism enforces the deprivation of status and power of visible minorities, allowing the power and privilege of the dominant group to remain unchallenged (Chaney & Robertson,

Specifically, I believe that discourse to be a specific reaction to the panopticism faced by black citizens and enforced by the criminal justice system. By internalizing other societal disparities, by supporting prosecutorial excess, and by ignoring systemic forces in their conceptions of racial progress, respectability proponents defend existing power relations and operations. Resultantly, the carceral archipelago is buttressed, expanded, and normalized through a “carceral continuum” that integrates prisons and ghettos, disciplines persons, and limits anti-racist progress. Moreover, this presentation of choices (i.e., to be either respectability or not), if there can be a choice for against state power in a polity, represents a presentation of nonchoices; either avenue will subject an individual to state power. To better explicate my point, I will revisit Foucault’s arguments about discipline and power, synopsize respectability politics, link respectability politics to Foucauldian discipline, and confront the paradoxes

Critical theory, on the other hand, as propounded by Robert Cox is a rejoinder to Neo-realism. According to Mark Rupert, Neo-Realism “only describes patterns in the operation of power among States without inquiring as to the social relations through which that power is produced.” Critical theory assumes that power is not given in the form of accumulated material capabilities; in fact, it is a product of social processes. Robert Cox adopted a method of “historical structures” in which “state power ceases to be sole explanatory factor and becomes part of what is to be explained”.

A world of system designed to keep people in unjust and unequal positions is held in place by several interrelated expression of "power over": political power, economic power, physical force, and ideological power (Bishop, 1994: 36). So, we can say power is defined as a possession of control, authority or influence over others. In terms of power of dominant groups over subordinate groups, we define power as domination of one group of people over another in major important spheres of life. Power inequities have been in existence throughout the history of humanity and the ways of manifestation evolved from extreme overt oppression to subtle, covert oppression. Three major forms of power inequalities discussed in this paper are

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.

One major link includes the fight between an oppressed group and their persecutors. Whether it’s the proletariat and the bourgeois in “The Communist Manifesto,” or the inequality of genders in “The Second Sex,” or the flight of the African Americans in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In all of these texts we are shown how easy it is for one group to abuse their power and create unfair rules and regulations only imposed on the more inferior members of society. Each group of oppressor thrives off of alienating, and subjugating their inferiors.