critical discourse analysis

ssean · Post by **ssean** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:50 pm

Just wondering if any of you guys can see the value in critical discourse analysis. It seems to be to presume a political standpoint that not everyone is going to agree with because as advocates of CDA say the whole point of CDA is to make changes. However, I do find examining the power structure inherent in many texts offer an interesting perspective.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 8:31 pm

Lynne Young of Carleton gave us a great course in CDA. I think it is a great way to look at your textbooks to find the politics behind the thinking. There are many different tools you can use to look at texts including many developed by the Systemic Functional Linguistics people that help you sort things out. Lynne did a study on texts in newspapers in Canada that featured Aboriginal subjects and found that they were very different in Europe and Canada. I think her study had an effect on the newspaper reporting here which made a big difference. Students can use the different tools to help them sort out the many types of texts that they have to read and write. Bevery Deriwianka from Australia has great books on how to help students do that. I have also used it to examine my students writing to see where I could find cultural similarities in errors and to help me understand the cultural differences in thinking that effect my teaching.