Progressing Positive Discourse Analysis and/in Critical Discourse Studies: reconstructing resistance through progressive discourse analysis

In this article, Norman Fairclough and Isabella Fairclough propose a procedural approach to moral critique within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This approach is grounded in the integration of practical argumentation as a framework for reasoning about action and decisionmaking. Through this framework, the authors aim to reduce the advocacy and bias that often accompany normative critique grounded in preestablished value systems or moral assumptions. The approach advanced by Norman and Isabella Fairclough—termed dialectical reasoning —emerges as part of a broader effort to review and redirect the dialectical–relational model, which has long served as the theoretical foundation of Norman Fairclough’s work in CDA. Instead, they propose an analytical orientation that draws on dialectical reasoning and foregrounds deliberation and critical accountability. In its revised formulation, this approach draws on multiple disciplines, including critical linguistics, discourse studies, critical sociology, and argumentation theory. It is particularly suited to the analysis of political discourse as a deliberative practice that unfolds under conditions of uncertainty, value conflict, and the need for justified decision-making. Rather than presupposing fixed moral frameworks, this model advocates for the evaluation of arguments advanced both by political actors and by discourse analysts themselves through context-sensitive practical reasoning. Thus, the model constitutes an attempt to advance a stronger and more impartial form of critique—one that preserves the scientific and moral dimensions of critique in research without falling into the pitfalls of normative moral theorizing based on predetermined values or prescriptive moral sources. (1) Norman Fairclough & Isabela Fairclough. (2018) "A Procedural Approach to Ethical Critique in CDA", in Critical Discourse Studies, 15(2), pp. 169-185.

This study aims to analyse power, dominance, racial discrimination, and power exercise that is narratively established through a subtle network of metaphors in a fiction work, The Kite Runner. The Kite Runner exposes the socioeconomic conditions in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, revealing the differences between power manipulation and the domestic performance of powerful social groups. The work also explores how religious and status dichotomies circumvent the progress of minority groups and align their physical features with their receding power and financial features. An adopted model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) indicates power, economic, and racial dichotomies in the book while revealing the shades of metaphors through conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) in a post-colonial text. Dogmatic ideographs are perpetuated in every public sphere through language and established gradually through unprovoking tools of metaphors. The metaphors are uncovered through CMT, providing a helpful understanding of different conceptual domains. Rhetorically, CDA helped reveal the racial discrimination, human rights violations, and hatred against minorities embedded in the selected metaphors. This investigation is very significant in connection with the current scenario of cross-cultural studies, as it mainly depicts the prevailing social trends regarding two different settings. The study may benefit intelligentsia interested in post-colonial and decolonial discourse and diaspora literature. Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, Metaphor, Power Expansion, Racial Discrimination Agbo, I. I., Kadiri, G. C., & Ijem, B. U. (2018). Critical metaphor analysis of political discourse in Nigeria. English Language Teaching, 11(5), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n5p95 Burke, K. (2017). A rhetoric of motives. 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New Political Economy, 3(1), 5–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563469808406330 Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Hosseini, K. (2003). The kite runner. New York, NY: Riverhead Books. Jawaid, A., Batool, M., Arshad, W., Kaur, P., & ul Haq, M. I. (2024). English language pronunciation challenges faced by tertiary students. Contemporary Journal of Social Science Review, 2(04), 2104-2111. https://contemporaryjournal.com/index.php/14/article/view/361 Jawaid, A. (2014). Benchmarking in TESOL: A Study of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013. English Language Teaching, 7(8), 23-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n8p23 Jensen, D. F. N. (2006, April). Metaphors as a bridge to understanding educational and social contexts. International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. https://sites.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_1/HTML/jensen.htm Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 202–251). Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Reddy, M. (1979). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 284–324). Cambridge University Press. Talib, N., & Fitzgerald, R. (2016). Micro–meso–macro movements: A multi-level critical discourse analysis framework to examine metaphors and the value of truth in policy texts. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(5), 531–547. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2016.1182932 Van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006 Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 4(2), 249–283. Van Dijk, T. A. (2005). Discourse and racism in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 62–86). London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about: A summary of its history, important concepts and developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1–13). London: Sage Publications. Wodak, R. (2007). Pragmatics and discourse analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Background and Purpose: Coronavirus has posed an unfamiliar threat to the world. Despite such circumstances, Malaysians continue to stay optimistic by keeping abreast with updates and mostly by seeking refuge in hopeful and consoling messages shared by fellow citizens. This study identified Facebook postings with positive messages, posted by Malaysians during the Movement Control Order (MCO) implemented by the Malaysian government as a form of prosocial behaviour.
 
 Methodology: Through an analytic framework consisting of Positive Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, 15 Facebook postings related to COVID-19 were selected and identified as positive discourse, which were coded and categorised using a thematic analysis. Further analysis was also conducted on the linguistic features identified in the narratives of the postings showing the construction of positive discourse in the Facebook postings.
 
 Findings: The findings demonstrate an extensive utilisation of expressions of solidarity primarily through collective pronouns like “we” and “us”, which suggest solidarity and empowerment among Malaysians in dealing with COVID-19. Further analysis reveals the forms and contextual functions of the linguistic strategies as carrying pragmatic devices (e.g. speech acts and figurative language), which contributes to the power enactment in the Facebook postings in creating an overall positive reaction.
 
 Contributions: This critical discourse study does not only promote positive discourse for its own sake, but also serves as a pragmatic approach to materialise utilitarian goals. It is therefore hoped to contribute not only to linguistics, but also social, psychological as well as arts and humanities studies through further examinations of the pivotal roles that communication and language play, especially in rising against dire situations.
 
 Keywords: COVID-19, Critical Discourse Analysis, media discourse, Positive Discourse Analysis, power and solidarity.
 
 Cite as: Azizan, M., Ismail, H. H., & Qaiwer, S. N. (2020). Power and solidarity in positive Facebook postings amidst COVID-19 in Malaysia. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(2), 329-364. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss2pp329-364

Although critical discourse analysis (CDA) sets out to investigate both oppressive and progressive discourses, the vast bulk of published studies seem to prioritize the former. This paper is a response to scholarly calls to engage with (non)oppressive discourses by integrating positive impulses in critical discourse analysis, and thus contribute to the growth of positive discourse analysis (PDA), a complement to CDA, which attends to the emancipatory mechanisms of resistance. Using a combination of theoretical tools, this paper takes a case study approach to explore the potentials of ‘complexification’ [Macgilchrist, F. (2007). Positive discourse analysis: Contesting dominant discourses by reframing the issues. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 1(1), 74–94], a counter-discursive strategy for propelling marginal discourses into the dominant official school discourse. Specifically, the paper discusses three layers of complexification found in a selected Moroccan EFL textbook which has been developed, approved and distributed by the Moroccan Ministry of Education, and has been required to be used in every school, public or private. The analysis highlights the role this textbook plays in promoting emancipatory and progressive discourses about Amazigh social actors, and hence, signals a new shift in analytic focus by illuminating a concrete application of PDA in education curricula.

This chapter introduces the transdisciplinary research movement of critical discourse analysis (CDA) beginning with its definition and recent examples of CDA work. In addition, approaches to CDA such as the dialectical relational (Fairclough), socio-cognitive (van Dijk), discourse historical (Wodak), social actors (van Leeuwen), and Foucauldian dispositive analysis (Jӓger and Maier) are outlined, as well as the complex relation of CDA to pragmatics. Next, the chapter provides a brief mention of the extensive critique of CDA, the creation of critical discourse studies (CDS), and new trends in CDA, including positive discourse analysis (PDA), CDA with multimodality, CDA and cognitive linguistics, critical applied linguistics, and other areas (rhetoric, education, anthropology/ethnography, sociolinguistics, culture, feminism/gender, and corpus studies). It ends with new directions aiming towards social action for social justice.

In this groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary book, Rebecca Rogers explores the complexity of family literacy practices through an in-depth case study of one family, the attendant issues of power and identity, and contemporary social debates about the connections between literacy and society. The study focuses on June Treader and her daughter Vicky, urban African Americans labeled as "low income" and "low literate." Using participant-observation, ethnographic interviewing, photography, document collection, and discourse analysis, Rogers describes and explains the complexities of identity, power, and discursive practices that June and Vicky engage with in their daily life as they proficiently, critically, and strategically negotiate language and literacy in their home and community. She explores why, despite their proficiencies, neither June or Vicky sees themselves as literate, and how this and other contradictions prevent them from transforming their literate capital into social profit. This study contributes in multiple ways to extending both theoretically and empirically existing research on literacy, identity, and power: * Critical discourse analysis. The analytic technique of critical discourse analysis is brought into the area of family literacy. The detailed explanation, interpretation, and demonstration of critical discourse analysis will be extremely helpful for novices learning to use this technique. This is a timely book, for there are few ethnographic studies exploring the usefulness and limits of critical discourse analysis. * Combines critical discourse analysis and ethnography. This new synthesis, which is thoroughly illustrated, offers an explanatory framework for the stronghold of institutional discursive power. Using critical discourse analysis as a methodological tool in order to build critical language awareness in classrooms and schools, educators working toward a critical social democracy may be better armed to recognize sources of inequity. * Researcher reflexivity. Unlike most critical discourse analyses, throughout the book the researcher and analyst is clearly visible and complicated into the role of power and language. This practice allows clearer analysis of the ethical, moral, and theoretical implications in conducting ethnographic research concerned with issues of power. * A critical perspective on family literacy. Many discussions of family literacy do not acknowledge the raced, classed, and gendered nature of interacting with texts that constitutes a family's literacy practices. This book makes clear how the power relationships that are acquired as children and adults interact with literacy in the many domains of a family's literacy lives. A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy Practices: Power In and Out of Print will interest researchers and practitioners in the fields of qualitative methodology, discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, literacy education, and adult literacy, and is highly relevant as a text for courses in these areas.

ABSTRACTThis essay is both a scholarly and personal endeavor to hold Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and its shift toward Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) accountable to claims of doing critique. First, we deconstruct CDA, and its slippage into an unaccountable ontology of intentionality, hiddenness, and hegemony. As an example of how unaccountable claims might shortchange what critical discourse work can accomplish, we take our own analysis to task. Next, we examine the concerted effort of CDS scholars to reconstruct and reclaim CDA critique by way of reflexivity, multimodality, and interdisciplinarity. We close with a proposal: if CDA’s unfolding into CDS supports an evolution of the critical as material action, then it must identify what matters and move us to do something that matters. We offer some suggestions about how to move forward.

Positive discourse analysis (PDA) falls under the broader umbrella of discourse analysis and privileges discourses that promote empowerment and social change. PDA is often viewed as a complementary approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) which aims to expose hegemonic discourses and discourses of disempowerment. While CDA has been useful in bringing to light discriminatory discourse practices, it has been less reliable at providing the means to change such hegemonic practices. PDA on the other hand, not only promotes positive discourse, it also advocates for design and interventions that empowers people and brings about social change. Since being first coined in 2002, PDA has been employed in many linguistic subfields including media discourse, ecolinguistics, and educational linguistics. And more recently, PDA has been developed as a tool for community members to use to address issues in their local communities. The major theory underpinning PDA is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL provides a functional theory of how language is used in social context and models language according to its three general social functions: to represent experience, to enact social relationships, and to organize these experiences and social relationships. But first and foremost, SFL is concerned with redressing inequality. For this reason, SFL frameworks are often used in PDA studies, in text analyses, and in designing materials and interventions. This bibliography explores some of the main linguistics subfields where positive discourse analysis has taken ground over the past two decades. However, there are plenty of studies that would be considered PDA prior to its coinage as a methodological approach. Therefore, this bibliography presents a variety of studies that either explicitly use PDA as a methodological approach or others that have not necessarily employed the term PDA, but would nevertheless be considered PDA since they advocate for positive discourses, social change and empowerment.

The author of this article aimed to conduct a holistic study on the critical discourse analysis (CDA) of visual semiosis in picture news. Integrating various theories within the field of CDA and multimodal studies, a theoretical framework of critical visual analysis is postulated to facilitate empirical study. Theoretically, the research sets out to help establish the academic identity of the critical multimodal discourse analysis, as discussed in Theo van Leeuwen (2012), and attempts to construct a holistic theoretical framework of critical visual discourse studies.

Critical Discourse Analysis (or Critical Discourse Studies – CDA/CDS) examines the relationship between texts, discourses and power, dominance, power abuses and social inequalities. Critical discourse analysis is a multidisciplinary research perspective, which not only examines the interactions between the text, the micro level and its surroundings, the macro level, but its main goal is to uncover social inequalities, expose the forms and modalities of abuse of power. The representatives of CDA are committed to social equality and justice. Present paper presents the work of one of the outstanding representatives of Critical Discourse Analysis, Teun A. Van Dijk, by presenting the history and possibilities of CDA, and also the key elements of Van Dijk’s approach. This study aims to show how knowledge, power and discourse are connected in Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis.

Critical Policy Discourse Analysis bridges the literature on critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical policy analysis to provide a practical guide on how to combine these major approaches to critical social science. The volume gives a clear introduction to concepts and analytical procedures for critical policy discourse analysis. Utilising ten international case studies, the authors explain and critically reflect upon the methods and theories that they have used to successfully integrate CDA with critical policy studies across a diverse range of policy issues. Case studies are used to explore issues in economics, health, education, crisis management, the environment, language and energy policy. Analysing these through discursive methodological approaches in the traditions of CDA, social semiotics and discourse theory, this book connects this discursive methodology systematically to the field of critical policy studies. This is an essential read for researchers wishing to practically combine methods of CDA with critical policy studies. It provides key insights for politics scholars looking to gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact and analysis of discourse.

Research has found humour and gender to be linked (Davies, 2006, Gendered sense of humor as expressed through aesthetic typifications. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1), 96–113. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.006; Kotthoff 2006, Gender and humor: The state of the art. Journal of pragmatics, 38(1), 4–25. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.003), specifically within languages/cultures (see Thielemann, 2011, Displays of’ new’ gender arrangements in Russian jokes. In M. Dynel (Ed.), The pragmatics of humour across discourse domains (pp. 147–172). John Benjamins, for jokes in Russian). In this respect, women are often subject of jokes and, in some cases, this reproduces the gendered imbalance of suitable roles in private and public spaces. In this paper, I examine the message of two jokes told by Italian fathers policing their daughters’ sexuality, as well as the interactions between myself and these fathers on Twitter. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar, 2007, Feminist critical discourse analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(2), 141–164. doi:10.1080/17405900701464816; Lazar, 2018, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. In J. Flowerdew, & E. J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 372–387). Routledge), Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (KhosraviNik, 2018, Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS). In J. Flowerdew, & E. J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 582–596). Routledge) and through adapting a framework designed to approach sexist jokes (Sunderland, 2007, Contradictions in gendered discourses: feminist readings of sexist jokes? Gender & Language, 1(2), 207–228. doi:10.1558/genl.v1i2.207), I discuss: (a) the ‘who/what the text is about’, and (b) a desire to a traditional fatherhood emerging from the interactions in it’s just banter and the good and happy father. Specifically, I discuss fatherhood as linked to an ontological desire (Kiesling, 2011, The interactional construction of desire as gender. Gender and Language, 5(2), 213–239. doi:10.1558/genl.v5i2.213) in connection to an alleged transition from old to new fatherhood (Cannito 2019, Beyond ‘Traditional’ and ‘New’: An Attempt of Redefinition of Contemporary Fatherhoods through Discursive Practices and Practices of Care. Men and Masculinities, 1–19; Magaraggia, 2013, Tensions between fatherhood and the social construction of masculinity in Italy. Current Sociology, 61(1), 76–92. doi:10.1177/0011392112464231) in Italy.

Accessible yet theoretically rich, this landmark text introduces key concepts and issues in critical discourse analysis and situates these within the field of educational research. The book invites readers to consider the theories and methods of three major traditions in critical discourse studies � discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and multimodal discourse analysis -- through the empirical work of leading scholars in the field.

Animated films are contemporary popular cultural products recreating the ‘real’ world and engaging massive worldwide audiences of adults and children. Children as the ostensible viewers of animated films may acquire their cultural and ideological knowledge and beliefs about the world from the representations in animated films. Although during the past decade animated films have increasingly been the focus of attention of researchers across different disciplines, including education, gender, sexuality and literacy, studies tackling the discourse and language of animated films are still in their early stages. More specifically, very few studies have investigated the use of euphemism as a major micro-level linguistic device reflecting macro-level discourse and extending to sociocultural structures. To this end, this thesis examines euphemism constructed through the discourse of animated films by employing the strategies of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). Moreover, Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) is employed to examine discursive strategies involving visual representations accompanying euphemism and what underpins those strategies, and to shed light on the multimodal relations between the representation of both. Euphemism is frequently associated with the notion of taboo. Consequently, new words or phrases are designated to refer to linguistic taboos as alternatives used by speakers to minimise the threat to the audience’s face as well as to their own. In addition, euphemistic occurrences represent a self-interested version of reality by pushing a topic into the background and highlighting instead a particular view of a topic. Therefore, euphemism is a speaker-oriented tool implying the reaction the speaker intends to prompt in the audience. This study shows that euphemism as a discursive linguistic tool has been used extensively in animated films as a manifestation of the discursive role anthropomorphised characters play to transmit certain ideological and social representations. A data set comprising 176 euphemisms found in four full-length anthropomorphised animated featured films, AAFF, extracted from film scripts and online channels was collected. The study identifies the main types of euphemism used in films, drawing on a framework of types based on Warren (1992), Allan and Burridge (1991) and Crespo (2006). After the main types of euphemism have been identified, the data set is approached from the perspective of taboo and culturally repressed topics, such as sexuality, gender and race. Moreover, discursive strategies adapted from Reisigl and Wodak (2016) are applied in order to identify important categories for the analysis of euphemistic discourse. This approach forms the basis for an in-depth, qualitative analysis of several representative scenes extracted from the films under investigation. First, the analysis focuses on racial euphemisms targeting different races. Then, I analyse sexual euphemisms related to nudity and sexual body parts, as well as conceptual metaphoric representations of sexual euphemisms. Finally, I focus on gendered euphemisms targeting the representation of four female characters in the films. The analysis shows that animated films tend to use euphemism to camouflage various taboo areas and manipulate the viewers’ perceptions, such as those relating to sexuality, gender and race. Nomination strategies are used more frequently with euphemisms referring to race, sex and gender. Metaphors and conceptual metaphors are used more frequently with sexual euphemisms. Visual empowerment strategies of female characters to highlight their sexuality are used more frequently with gendered euphemisms. I argue that while the linguistic element attenuates an ideology by virtue of euphemism’s manipulative nature, the visual element, in turn, highlights and confirms the same ideology, values or stereotypes. Hence, animated films can articulate the ideological and social legitimation or normalisation of a particular view of race, sex or gender through the use of euphemism and visual discursive strategies.

Chapter one sets the scene for this pivot publication. In addition to giving an outline of the monograph’s research objectives and presenting an overview of past research on Wikipedia, this chapter details the theoretical framework motivating the holistic approach to Wikipedia taken in this study. I discuss why it is important to know about Wikipedia’s modus operandi, technological affordances, policies and general site characteristics as well as its position in society and its potential societal functions. In this context, I draw on Herring’s research in Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) and complement this with a discussion of developments in (Critical) Discourse Studies to underscore the importance of contextualisation and theorisation when examining digital discourse. Finally, this chapter gives a brief outline of the remaining chapters.KeywordsWikipedia(Critical) discourse studies (CDS)Computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA)Social media critical discourse analysis (SM-CDS)Contextualisation