Análisis crítico del discurso: Políticas educativas en España en el marco de la Unión Europea

En este trabajo daremos forma a una metodología particular dentro del trabajo en teoría social, llamada "Teoría Crítica del Discurso". Esta metodología se inscribe dentro de la discusión abierta en los últimos años acerca de los modos y técnicas de trabajo teórico en las ciencias sociales, y resulta de una combinación entre la Historia Conceptual, la Teoría Crítica y el Análisis Discursivo. Se estudiará especialmente el antecedente de la corriente conocida como Análisis Crítico del Discurso o ACD, de Norman Fairclough y Ruth Wodak, y se pasará revista a los aportes de autores fundamentales de la teoría sociológica crítica a las reflexiones en torno al lenguaje y el discurso, como ser Max Horkheimer, Charles Wright Mills, Herbert Marcuse, Alvin Gouldner y Jürgen Habermas.

My research is a critical examination of technology policy discourse between four organizational groups: Alberta Education, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) and the Alberta School Councils’ Association (ASCA). I adopt a discursive theoretical position, to examine how education policy promotes a way of thinking about technology by endorsing some values over others and is therefore qualitative. One overarching question and a related sub-question guide my inquiry: 1. What ways of thinking about technology are evident in Alberta’s education policy discourse? • What relationship exists between the ways of thinking about technology in Alberta’s education policy discourse and nodal discourses, specifically, the knowledge-based economy and globalization? The literature base informing my inquiry encompasses three fields of research, the philosophy of technology, education policy and critical organizational discourse. Since my study is based on technology policy in education through an interest in discourse, meaning and power, I employ critical discourse analysis to excavate the common sense notions and assumptions in documents and interview data from the four organizations. Feenberg suggests the various ways of thinking about technology can be summarized into four categories, instrumentalism, determinism, substantivism and critical theory (1999). Feenberg’s model (1999) serves as a lens through which to roughly classify the philosophical positions of the organizations. The findings illustrate technology policy discourse in Alberta is divided along the values axis between the ATA and ASCA taking up substantivist and critical theory positions and Alberta Education moving between instrumentalist or determinist positions. In addition, the data suggests a value-neutral view of technology has dominated the discursive field with significant implications on implementation. Despite the apparent philosophical divide in the ways of thinking about technology in education, the concept of 21 century learning emerged across all four philosophical positions. My findings point to a need for future policy dialogue to adopt a more philosophically inclusive and balanced approach to ensure the potential of technology to support student learning does not go unrealized or continue to narrowly support technical goals.

The main subject of this study is a detailed literature review analysis of critical discourse researches made in the Turkish language. As a unique discipline, critical discourse analysis has played an important research tool role in social sciences. Critical discourse analysis, which emerged in the late 1980s, can be considered a relatively new research method in our country. This discipline has developed around the schools of three different academics. One of the leading figures in this field is Teun A. van Dijk (b. 1943). Van Dijk, the founder of the Socio-cognitive Approach, is one of the important names cited in the analysis of political and media discourses. Another name is Norman Fairclough (b.1941). Fairclough's 3-Dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis method also constitutes an important space in discourse studies. Another significant figure in the field of critical discourse analysis is Ruth Wodak (b. 1950). Wodak, the founder of the Discourse Historical approach, first developed this method to analyze the biased anti-Semitic language and imagery in Waldheim's electoral programs in the Austrian presidential election that was held in 1986. Since then, the methodology developed by Wodak has been useful for discourse analysis of cases with an important historical dimension. This study aims to explain the approaches of the discourse experts mentioned above and to compile critical discourse analysis and corpus analysis studies conducted in political and media texts in Turkish academia. As a result of this study, which was carried out within the scope of the qualitative research method, important insights into the basic features, possibilities, and limitations of critical discourse analysis research in Turkish academia have been obtained. Some of the insights obtained can be summarized as follows: It has been determined that the critical discourse analysis studies available in the Council of Higher Education online database include a total number of 54 master’s and doctoral theses published since 2003. Among these theses, the number of the theses prepared in Turkish is 23. As a result of the Google Scholar search, it has been found that the number of Turkish studies conducted since 2003 is more than 90. The most cited research among these studies is the article “Discourse Analysis” published in 2008. The main limitation of most of the critical discourse analysis studies made in the Turkish language is about the usage of the translations of the works authored by the above-mentioned experts who developed this discipline, and this usage limits the number of resources concerning the method because not every major work has been translated into Turkish. In the light of the findings, the ways to improve the discipline in Turkish academia shows the importance of this study.

The present chapter proposes to build bridges between political discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. We intend to bring to light methodological benefits arising from the synergy of (political) discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, pointing to fruitful contribution from French text statistics. Taking the discourses of Nicolas Sarkozy as an example, we show how political discourse analysis can benefit from a reflection on corpora (their constitution, their role in the research process); on linguistic analysis and processing methods (particularly the computer-assisted methods of text statistics); and finally on the interpretative paths at a time of establishment of a numerical hermeneutics.

The war unleashed by Russia in 2022 is widely presented in online versions of English-language newspapers; Ukraine is constantly in the epicentre of the world news. This study highlights political and ideological contexts of the war in Ukraine, the sociopolitical and cognitive aspects of news according to an interdisciplinary approach considering the language as a social practice. The article highlights the polarization in the presentation of the events and the main actors entitled in the discursive strategies, representing the dichotomy In- versus Out-group. The study is aimed at the investigation of the ideological structures and their manifesting linguistic devices in political discourse based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of discursive strategies for constructing the images of Ukraine and Russia in the British and American press. The integrated Critical Discourse Analysis was applied to the research of the news to study the media discourse and the language, where CDA focuses on social practice, social power and ideology. Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) is used to research the ideology of war images presented in the language of news reports. The relevance of this study determined by the aim is to show the main discursive strategies of polaeization in political media discourse. The research methods of the article combine three vectors of the analysis by Fairclough with explanatory tools (by van Dijk), and the elements of stylistic analysis and Critical Metaphor Analysis. The illustrative material was collected by information search and continuous sample from the open access newspapers and magazines issued in the US and Great Britain (The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others). Conclusion. This research argues that polarisation is being demonstrated in the media discourse on the war in Ukraine in 2022. The taxonomy of the identified discursive strategies of polarization deployed in the media political discourse includes labelling, evidentiality, number game, hyperbolism, victimization, personalization and analogy, that can either be used singly or intervened. The discursive strategy of evidentiality is applied to authorities, officials, witnesses that are accepted as trustworthy sources of data; the number game strategy combined with victimization are verbalized by metaphoric simile, metonymy, enumerating and magnifying the numbers with the modifying adverbs; the strategy of hyperbole conveys the positive impression of the in-group and negative acts magnification of the out-group verbalized by metaphor, metonymy, metaphtonymy; the personalization strategy is deployed with the purpose of foregrounding the positive actions of the in-group that implies negative out-group actions; the strategy of analogy is applied in the comparison of the war in Ukraine and the struggle of the Ukrainians for their independence with other historical events. Linguistic means used to realize the discursive strategies of polarization include the conceptual metaphor, metonymy, simile, idioms, metaphtonymy, intertextual allusion and personification.

During the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, political discourse was dominated by the language of war as the world’s political leaders saturated their speech with the terminology of war. This article examines some properties of the speech delivered by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the parliament on March 22, 2020. The general framework of the study is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which investigates how language is used in ideological and social contexts and how it relates to power. The material of the research requires to apply a more specialised tool, namely Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) that examines the relation between language and political agendas and ideology. The study considers the political and ideological contexts of the speech through the entire political process and decision making at the national level as well as the sociopolitical and cognitive aspects of the speech in the parliamentary setting. In particular, attention is paid to the war rhetoric that induces the public to conceptualise the virus as an enemy and thus to present the crisis as a threat to the nation. The article explores language means employed by the speaker to actuali s e rhetorical strategies aimed at justifying his government’s measures taken to manage the crisis. To do this, the research looks into historical, cultural and psychological contexts of the speech as well as its political implicatures. Keywords: political speech; war rhetoric; political discourse; critical discourse analysis; mental models

Political discourse analysis is aimed at highlighting the emancipatory agendas of political actors who dialectically produce their discourses for the specific purpose of grasping “pro-ideologies” of masses without giving much room to their real interests. To a great extent the manipulation of language serves as a sturdy tool for political benefits and consequently it provides a strong base for the exploitations of the ideological assumptions of people on a large scale. A critical discourse analysis of Imran Khan’s point of view on Islamophobia suggested that a good speaker always overwhelms the masses and changes the way of thinking of the public. The researchers have accentuated that Imran Khan has affected the mindset of the people regarding Islamophobia. Also an analysis has been done by the researchers of discourses examples in the Imran Khan’s Speech. The researchers have explored various indicators of van Dijk in the Speech of Imran Khan.
 This paper aims to discuss the realization of the resistance of islamophobic ideology in Imran Khan Speech by means of language use in a political discourse, which is mainly grounded in Teun van Dijk‟s assumptions in critical discourse analysis. For this aim, the discursive strategies of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan during a press conference in the United Nation General Assembly held on 25th September 2019.The Speech will be examined within the context of his ideological, cultural and language background.
 . Keywords
 Political Discourse, Power, Ideology, Critical Discourse Analysis.

We are grateful to Alan Finlayson, Colin Hay and Stephen Coleman for their challenging responses to Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) and we hope to give a satisfactory answer to their main arguments. Both Hay and Finlayson argue that, in focusing on argumentation and deliberation, we misunderstand the nature of the political. Second, Finlayson thinks that there is a discontinuity between critical discourse analysis (CDA), in its previous versions, and our present framework. Third, Finlayson claims that CDA's focus on representations should not be displaced by a focus on action, that conflict over representations is fundamental in politics, and a rhetorical (not dialectical) perspective is best suited to analysing political discourse. Fourth, Coleman argues that important features of political discourse cannot be addressed by our approach, which should be supplemented by ‘dramatistic’ methods.

Introduction The Politics of Language from Multiple Perspectives:Latinidad and Indigenidad Serafín M. Coronel-Molina, Issue Editor (bio) The field of politics of language intersects with language policy and planning, language of politics, language politics, language revitalization, linguistic rights, language laws, and language regimes.1 This means that politics of language cannot be completely separated from the above-mentioned fields, since they are interconnected in various ways. In addition, it is fundamental to delve into the notion of politics of language not only from disciplinary and multidisciplinary angles, but also from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The politics of language takes place in a mosaic of contexts constituted by real and virtual communities of speakers, and in diverse communicative events and discursive practices. It can be grounded in any number of disciplines and fields—including sociology, political theory, political science, history, linguistics, sociolinguistics, identity politics, gender politics, sociology of language, literature, critical discourse analysis, the semiotics, pragmatics and semantics of political discourses, political economy, linguistic anthropology, philosophy, raciolinguistics, translingualism, folklore, communication and media studies (print and digital), language education, literacy studies—as well as in a wide range of creative works and semi-otic resources, such as in iconicity and imagery. Methodologically speaking, the politics of language is studied qualitatively and quantitatively, though the dominant research paradigm is the qualitative approach. Political speeches and political discourses—with both a capital D and a small d (Gee, 2012)—intersect with discourses that are linguistic, cultural, gender, power, identity, ideological, scientific, or economic in nature. Orality, translinguality, interdiscursivity, transdiscursivity, intertextuality, and transtextuality are considered cornerstones for understanding and defining the politics of language from [End Page 6] micro and macro dimensions, and from multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary perspectives. Languages in the United States and Latin America The United States is a multilingual, pluricultural, and multiethnic country where, without a doubt, English is the dominant and the only de facto official language. To a certain extent, Spanish is another commonly spoken language. According to the United States Census Bureau (2016), the United States’ Hispanic population numbers 56.6 million, or 17.6% of the total population, thus constituting the country’s “largest ethnic or racial minority.” It is estimated that by 2050 there will be 138 million Spanish speakers in the United States, “making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on Earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.” It is obvious, then, that the presence of Spanish in the United States is solid, since persons of Hispanic origin make up the largest minority group. In addition to Spanish, Indigenous languages and their many linguistic hybrid forms are present and robust in the United States and in Latin America: Recent U.S. Census data place the number of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians at approximately 6.4 million, or 2.1 percent of the total population (Hixson, Hepler, & Kim, 2012; Norris, Vines, & Hoeffel, 2012). The U.S. Census also reports 169 Native American languages spoken by 370,000 people (Siebens & Julian, 2011). … Although smaller in overall numbers, Native Americans reside in every U.S. state and territory, representing more than 560 federally recognized tribes, 619 reservations and Alaska Native villages, and 62 Native Hawaiian homelands. In the USA, the Indigenous language situation is characterized by diverse sociolinguistic ecologies and growing threats to that diversity reflected in twin movements to make English the nation’s official language and to circumscribe the teaching of Indigenous and other minoritized languages in school. Population estimates for Latin America place the number of Indigenous peoples at 40 to 50 million or 10 percent of the population (King, 2008; Lopez & Sichra, 2008). … The intermingling of Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and Europeans produced other varieties such as Carib Pidgin-Arawak in the Caribbean and Garifuna in Central America. Latin America encompasses 20 nation-states, nine dependencies, and a population of 568 million spread out across South, Central, and parts of North America (Garcia et al., 2010, pp. 353–354). With the exception of Uruguay and some Caribbean polities whose original peoples were decimated by colonization, significant numbers of Indigenous peoples reside in every Latin American country (King, 2008; Lopez & Sichra, 2008). (Coronel-Molina...

This essay overviews the body of research known as political discourse analysis (PDA). I begin by situating this work within the linguistic and political turns that took place in the latter part of the 20th century within the human and social sciences. I then discuss different conceptions of what comprises the political and the appropriate objects of study for PDA. Adopting an inclusive conception of politics and discourse, I consider the relationship between PDA and critical discourse analysis (CDA). I close with a review of studies of political discourse in terms of their theoretical and analytic frameworks and the socio‐political issues they address.

Language and Gender in Political Discourse (Mass Media Interviews)

An overview of political discourse analysis (PDA) research is provided in this essay. We start by placing this work in the context of the linguistic and political shifts that occurred in the last half of the twentieth century in the social and human sciences. We next go over many opinions about what constitutes the political and relevant subjects of study for PDA. We examine the connection between PDA and critical discourse analysis (CDA), adopting an inclusive understanding of politics and discourse. We conclude by reviewing political discourse studies in terms of the theoretical and analytical frameworks they use, as well as the sociopolitical topics they tackle.

Inspired by Aristotle and modern political theory, Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) introduce a model into Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) on the basis of deliberation and conductive argumentation (reasoning). This study makes an attempt to appraise the efficacy and adequacy of this model through examining Trump’s UN speech on Iran in 2017 in the light of other mainstream analytic tools and frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings suggest that the model is a step toward including the cognitive interface in PDA, and that the premises adduced in Trump’s speech could serve the purpose of delegitimizing Iranian government and ‘Iranoregimephobia’, hence calling for confronting Iran. It is concluded that if integrated with other approaches, the model could serve to possibly counter-balance the subjectivity and skepticism associated with CDA-oriented studies, thus possibly proving itself as a practical, effective, and informative tool for the critical study of political discourse.

Starting from the thesis that critical discourse studies, with their qualitative, critical and explanatory approach to the study of political communication, represent a valuable complement to the dominant approaches that privilege the positivist paradigm and quantitative research, in this paper we tried to provide more complex insights into the scientific contributions of these studies to the study of political discourse, through observing the specifics of their theoretical-methodological frameworks, analytical categories and interpretive procedures. For this purpose, some of the key features of Teun van Dijk's sociocognitive approach, Paul Chilton's cognitive-linguistic approach, Ruth Wodak's discursive-historical approach and Norman Fairclough's dialectical-relational argumentative approach were considered. In the introductory part of the paper, we provided an overview of the general distinctive features, main starting points and research interests of the critical analysis of political discourse, as well as an insight into the basic dilemma related to the scope of the content of the term "political discourse". The central part of the work consists of two complementary parts. In the first part, we started from the presentation of the analytical aspects of the following levels and dimensions of the political discourse structure: topics, superstructures or textual schemata, local semantics, lexicon, syntax, rhetoricand speech acts. Using an analytical-synthetic approach, we connected the semantic-grammatical dimensions of the textual level and the cognitive-pragmatic dimensions of the discursive level of production and analysis of political discourse. The second part of the central part of the work is focused on the presentation of the theoretical framework of the argumentative approach to political discourse, as a kind of upgrade and reframing of existing conceptual settings and analytical categories. In the concluding review of the insights reached in the article, as the main scientific contribution of critical studies of political discourse, we singled out the way in which is achieved the synthesis of systemic, but contextually sensitive textual analysis on the one hand, and descriptive, normative and explanatory viewpoints of critical social research, on the other.

In Australia, Closing the Gap is a highly profiled federal government policy aimed at closing the gap of disadvantage between Australia’s First Peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. This policy comprises of a yearly report providing statistical data addressing the progress of the initiative. As a significant parliamentary contribution towards the ideology of reconciliation in Australia, political leaders present a national address that responds to the statistical data of the report. This thesis presents a com-bined discourse analysis of the speeches presented in 2017, by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten. Being a political discourse analy-sis, it focuses on the language features used by Australian political leaders to support their political ideology. Michele Koven (2002) presented a model that explained how political leaders align (or misalign) themselves with other social actors. This research will adapt that model to identify how these leaders position themselves ideologically through their Closing the Gap speeches. Then by using critical discourse analysis, it will also present a typology of discursive strategies used in such political discourses, when negotiating an ideological alignment with Australia’s First Peoples. These two approaches will be further justified with two more supporting analyses. This compara-tive analysis contributes to a clearer understanding of how political language is used in Australia. Additionally, it contributes to the surprisingly minimal literature related to Australian political discourse analysis surrounding Indigenous issues, reconciliation and the Closing the Gap policy itself. By analysing such political speeches, reflection, engagement and empowerment then have the capacity to influence institutionalised notions of racism, poverty and class-consciousness with the view to rectifying them.