Critical Discourse Analysis Methodology Research Articles

How Is a Label of Borderline Personality Disorder Constructed on Twitter: A Critical Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACTThis research took a social constructionist stance and explored how Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is constructed by Twitter users who identify with this diagnostic label. Consistent with this position, a critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology was employed. The data comprised two-hundred and twenty-five tweets. Tweets from professionals, or links to blogs, were excluded, in an attempt to ensure only personal tweets were used. Two interpretative repertoires were produced from the analysis: BPD as an existence of tension and BPD as a different existence. The findings indicated that authors were involved in a negotiation between themselves and BPD, which had an impact upon their felt sense of agency/control over BPD. Likewise, authors constructed themselves in opposition to individuals who did not identify with the diagnosis of BPD. Whilst this provided more favourable positions, it potentially limited access to healthcare professionals and services. The research highlights the importance of the terminology and language clinicians employ when working with clients and other professionals, as they may inadvertently disempower or stigmatise. As CDA does not assume equivalence between individuals' accounts and their internal experiences, future research may need to explore the experience of stigmatisation through social networking sites.

Strategic management research on emerging economies

PurposeUniversalizing approaches to knowledge when combined with a dominating cultural discourse is problematic for management research paradigms as “West meets East”. This study aims to examine the case of the rapidly expanding, mainstream strategic management research in and on emerging economies through a critical perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze the strategic management society’s special conferences and workshops on “Emerging India” that aimed to write a fresh chapter of research on India as an emerging economy, using the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The authors treat this conference as representative of several such conferences and workshops being organized in emerging economies.FindingsThe results detect some troubling undercurrents of privilege and marginalization. The authors find support for a dominating cultural discourse embedded in the rapidly expanding, universalizing strategic management research perspectives in and on emerging economies.Research limitations/implicationsThe implications for indigenous knowledge creation is discussed with a concluding call for academic reflexivity through revisiting different philosophies of science in management research and studying the social mechanisms of international knowledge exchange.Originality/valueThe theoretical framework combining the process of universalizing knowledge (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999) with a dominating cultural discourse sustained through a system of pressures and constraints (Said, 1978, 1993) is an original contribution. The choice of an emerging economy site is not very common, and the use of CDA on an event like a conference is valuable to research methodology.

'You want to show you're a valuable employee': A critical discourse analysis of multi-perspective portrayals of employed women with fibromyalgia.

Background Advice on fibromyalgia, a chronic illness primarily affecting women, often presents it as incompatible with work and rarely covers how to remain employed. Yet many women do. Objectives We aimed to understand how these women, their family members, and workmates portrayed employees with fibromyalgia, and how these portrayals helped women retain employment. Methods We interviewed 22 participants, comprising five triads and three dyads of people who knew each other. Using the methodology of critical discourse analysis, we analysed the interview data within and across the triads/dyads through coding, narrative summaries, and relational mapping. Results Participants reported stereotypes that employees with fibromyalgia are lazy, malingering, and less productive than healthy workers. Countering these assumptions, participants portrayed the women as normal, valuable employees who did not 'give in' to their illness. The portrayals drew on two discourses, normalcy and mind-controlling-the-body, and a related narrative, overcoming disability. We propose that participants' portrayals helped women manage their identities in competitive workplaces and thereby remain employed. Discussion Our findings augment the very sparse literature on employment with fibromyalgia. Using a new approach, critical discourse analysis, we expand on known job-retention strategies and add the perspectives of two key stakeholders: family members and workmates.

A Year of Bad Choices

Teen dating violence (TDV) is a significant social justice issue. The prevention of TDV requires interventions across ecological systems levels including the macro-level. The media has been implicated as influencing societal-level narratives about TDV. Using critical discourse analysis methodology, the purpose of this study is to unpack the dominant cultural narratives about TDV in young adult (YA) literature, a media genre that is marketed to adolescents. Data include YA novels with a central focus on TDV ( n = 8). Through these novels, the language of gender inequality was supplanted by a postfeminist rhetoric of choice, personal responsibility, and self-help.

Policy Discourse on Marginalised Youth in Albania: The Constraints of the ‘Normalisation’ and ‘Integration’ Policy Approaches for Inclusive Education

The paper addresses the complex phenomenon of marginalised youth and particularly children in street situation in the Albanian contemporary society. Through a qualitative methodology of critical discourse analysis, the paper investigates the most relevant policy documents on inclusive education for marginalised youth in Albania. The paper is interested in exploring the conceptualisation of marginalised youth, specifically children in street situation, as embedded in policy documents, action plans and intervention programmes for inclusive education. The intention here is to discover the explicit and implicit themes of the policy discourse on marginalised youth in Albania and the how it impacts the approaches adopted by the government to address the phenomenon. The critical discourse analysis on policy framework shows that the discourse on marginalised youth in the public sphere (re)produces and reinforces already existing aspects of social deprivation, marginalization and discrimination. The research shows that there are limited efforts to elaborate the concepts of ‘marginalised youth’ and ‘children in street situation’ and that there is confusion in policy regarding the use of the terms. In addition, children in street situation are seen either as victims of socio-economic hardship and endangered by their presence in the spaces of the ‘street’ or as a possible threat to the rest of the society, i.e. the street criminalises children. The research shows two main policy approaches: (i) correctional or repressive-oriented policy approach that conceives ‘street children’ as a danger to public order whose features differentiate from mainstream childhood and as such invites intervention programmes that tend to ‘normalise’ children; (ii) protective or rehabilitative policy approaches, i.e. emphasising children needs and aiming at protecting and re-integrating them in family and mainstream society. The paper takes a critical stance on the current policy discourse and the consequent policy approaches of ‘normalisation’ and ‘integration’ and argues for a reconceptualization of children in street situation as social actors based on the notion of childhood as socially constructed. It is thus necessary to link research on the socialisation processes, identity construction and resilience of marginalised youth in the spaces of the street based on their dynamic lifestyles and perspectives with policy development.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Korean Newspaper Reportage of Korean Universities’ Graduation Accreditation System for English Proficiency Certification

This study aims at applying critical discourse analysis methodology to investigating Korean newspaper media reportage of Korean universities’ graduation accreditation system for English proficiency certification. In this study, the discourse event was discussed from three dimensions of textual, discursive, and social practice. It was found that a top-down communicative practice was mobilized to legitimize the need for English proficiency certification for college students in Korea. The voices of university presidents were frequently quoted in the aspect of style. By presenting their voices as authoritative (a portrayal enhanced by combining deferential presentation with the interview genre, in which an authoritative voice states definitive answers to questions posed), discourse producers regarded English language as an object to be managed, a problem to be solved, and a target to be mastered. It legitimized the dominant paradigm of language determinism, or monolingualism in internal and interdiscursive relations of the text.

Exploring John Updike's Terrorist as a Neo-Orientalist Narrative of the Arabo-Islamic World

The present study aims at exploring John Updike's "Terrorist", as a Neo-Orientalist account of the Muslims, especially the Arabs. In fact, there has been an age long strife between the West and Islam dating back to the Crusades. The ideology which propelled the crusaders was based on the binary of "us" versus ˜them. The Western rulers, clergy, missionaries,merchants and writers would tend to view Islam and Muslims through their myopic lens and built an exotic, strange albeit distorted image of Islam and Muslims in their accounts. These accounts influenced the representations of the Muslim and Islamic World in the scholarly discipline of Orientalism significantly.The study underpins that orientalist representations of the Muslims as barbarians, inert, unprogressive and an imminent to danger to world peace, are still very much a part of the contemporary world. This re-incarnation of orientalist thinking is termed as Neo-Orientalism in the post-colonial parlance. Many literary works published in the wake of 9/11 echoes this Neo-Orientalist thinking. Updike's famous novel ‘Terrorist’, which was published in 2006, has been chosen as a specimen text to this effect. The critical appraisal of the narrative, particularly the depiction of Muslim characters, through application of the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on the lines enunciated by Huckin, suggests that Updike has adopted a Neo-Orientalist approach by creating and fortifying the so called binary of West and Islam, and portrayed them as irreconcilable entities. Instead of bridging the gulp between the West and the Muslim World, the narrative is likely to create further chasm between the two.

Making sense to decreasing citizen eParticipation through a social representation lens

This paper investigates the development of an electronic platform by a local government with the goal of increasing citizens' participation in public decision-making process, particularly the modality known as participatory budgeting. The local government of Belo Horizonte, a Brazilian municipality, decided to use web-based technologies to create a project called digital participatory budgeting (DPB), whose purpose was to include new segments of the population –particularly the middle class and youth – in the process of prioritizing the allocation of investments in the city's public works. The project was launched in 2006 and repeated in 2008 and 2011. Intriguingly, however, citizen participation decreased significantly. This study seeks to understand why citizens' participation decreased over time, despite the availability of a cutting-edge, user-friendly and iterative web-based platform to help connect citizens to the process. The theoretical approach is based on social representation theory (SRT) and the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) of 101 documents and 19 interviews. This combination of SRT and CDA helps in understanding how people gave meaning to a new social object - the digital participatory budgeting – through their voices. Simultaneously, this approach represents a skillful approach to uncovering power imbalances signaled by "silences". The results suggest that deviations in the social representation process, namely, trivialization and reification, help us to understand the process through which citizen participation decreases. Therefore, governments seeking to improve eParticipation should, without neglecting the technical aspects, pay more attention to the social representational processes that characterize their web-based initiatives.

Applying Critical Discourse Analysis in Health Policy Research: Case Studies in Regional, Organizational, and Global Health.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a promising methodology for policy research in nursing. As a critical theoretical methodology, researchers use CDA to analyze social practices and language use in policies to examine whether such policies may promote or impede social transformation. Despite the widespread use of CDA in other disciplines such as education and sociology, nursing policy research employing CDA methodology is sparse. To advance CDA use in nursing science, it is important to outline the overall research strategies and describe the steps of CDA in policy research. This article describes, using exemplar case studies, how nursing and health policy researchers can employ CDA as a methodology. Three case studies are provided to discuss the application of CDA research methodologies in nursing policy research: (a) implementation of preconception care policies in the Zhejiang province of China, (b) formation and enactment of statewide asthma policy in Washington state of the United States, and (c) organizational implementation of employee antibullying policies in hospital systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Each exemplar details how CDA guided the examination of policy within specific contexts and social practices. The variations of the CDA approaches in the three exemplars demonstrated the flexibilities and potentials for conducting policy research grounded in CDA. CDA provides novel insights for nurse researchers examining health policy formation, enactment, and implementation.

Pretending to be a normal human being: Peep Show, sitcom, and the momentary invocation of disability

This interdisciplinary article presents research about the place of disability in the British sitcom Peep Show, whose 54 episodes span more than a decade in their transmission (2003–2015). The methodology of critical discourse analysis is employed to probe the relationship between casual word choice and broader themes such as normalcy, humour, and social attitudes. This analysis is informed by classic and new work in cultural disability studies, as well as by work in literary studies and television studies. The conclusion is that, despite its apparent irrelevance to disability studies, Peep Show reveals much about conversational invocations of disability.

Discourse of a Mormon Ally in Supervision

Counselors-in-training (CIT) who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to as the Mormon Church) may face internal dissonance when counseling clients who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB). This article explores the experience of a self-identified Mormon CIT who was supervised over the course of one semester by a lesbian-identified supervisor while developing as an LGB ally. Critical discourse analysis methodology was conducted to investigate the supervisory experience. In conclusion, suggestions for ally development during supervision are discussed.

Protocol for a process-oriented qualitative evaluation of the Waltham Forest and East London Collaborative (WELC) integrated care pioneer programme using the Researcher-in-Residence model

IntroductionThe integration of health and social care in England is widely accepted as the answer to fragmentation, financial concerns and system inefficiencies, in the context of growing and ageing populations...

Strategies, systems and services: a Northern Ireland early years policy perspective

Following a lengthy consultation process across Northern Ireland (NI), 2013 saw the publication of Learning to Learn: A Framework for Early Years Education and Learning [DE (Department of Education). 2013. “Learning to Learn: A Framework for Early Years Education and Learning.” Accessed July 15, 2014. http://www.deni.gov.uk/english_a_framework_for_ey_education_and_learning_oct_13_tagged.pdf]. This document has major implications for change in regard to children's services in the province. For this paper we have employed a critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology (Ozga, J. [2000]. Policy Research in Educational Settings. Buckingham: Open University Press) in order to explore the relationships between language and power in the shaping of the policy discourse illustrated by Learning to Learn. Comparisons and contrasts are drawn between the language and assumptions made in the document, particularly in relation to the issues of quality and workforce qualifications. Attention is drawn to the message of the framework document that early years professionals must provide consistently high quality services to children and families through a process involving effective collaboration. However, the persistent ‘split system’ of statutory and voluntary sectors within the field of early childhood provision in NI plays a key role in the creation and legitimation of dominant discourses and accepted norms. Through this CDA process we demonstrate the ‘emancipatory potential’ of CDA for analysis of early years policy by both academics and practitioners.

Discourse of resistance: Articulations of national cultural identity in media discourse on the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China

This study examines the discourse of resistance constructed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake coverage by Chinese state media. It tries to explore how media discourse can be constructed to facilitate crisis control in natural disaster situations. Set in a context of nationalistic culture in contemporary China, this paper dissects how state media in China frame narratives and represent meanings to construct national cultural identity in earthquake coverage. In analysing this discursive process, this research adopts the methodology of critical discourse analysis and cluster criticism; the findings indicate that the discourse of resistance deals with the disorderly information flow in a crisis by differentiating the messages, framing media stories and engaging with the broad nationalistic culture, to construct positive representations of disaster relief. Specifically, a strong sense of belonging to a national community is constructed for people trapped in uncertainty, anxiety and trauma. This study concludes that, in doing so, discourse of resistance enhances disaster relief by controlling the meaning of the crisis.

Eurovision song contest and identity crisis in Moldova

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was created for strengthening the development of a European soul. But generally speaking, one can say it has been used as a tool for nation-branding, and as a means for Central and Eastern countries to “return” to Europe, in particular after the fall of their Communist regimes. In the difficult social, economic, political, and historical context of the Republic of Moldova nowadays, the ESC furthermore allows the discursive construction of the nation and the building of a particularself.Accordingly, based on a method inspired by the Critical Discourse Analysis methodology applied to three local newspapers, the research demonstrates how the ESC acts as a sound box when building the Moldovanself.The Moldovan identity that emerges from the articles seems to be an identity in crisis which proves much different from the usual political constructions of the nation. This bottom-up identity put forward by journalists has indeed to be related to the twofold crisis in which Moldova is at the moment: social and economic, on the one hand, and linked to a permanent struggle between a separate Moldovan or an integrated Romanian identity, on the other.

The racism that dares not speak its name: Rethinking neo-nationalism and neo-racism in Norway

Abstract In contemporary Norway, the mere referral to the term racism has for all practical purposes become taboo in the public sphere. This is both the result of a strategic far-right distancing from classical forms of racism and a conscious effort by numerous Norwegian academics and public intellectuals to restrict its meaning and reference in the course of recent decades. Norway has a comparatively weak tradition of social science scholarship on racism, and persistent claims to the right to name racism on the part of minorities in Norway often come up against social and political imaginaries in which Norway and Norwegians are cast as ‘exceptional’ and ‘virtuous.’ In this article I contextualize Norwegian neo-racism with reference to persistent fears about lack of social and national cohesion arising from modern mass immigration and an increasingly multicultural Norwegian society. Using the methodology of critical discourse analysis, I take as my empirical starting point media and popular discourses on Islam and Muslims in Norway from c. 1987 to 2014. The rise of far-right political formations in Norway, I argue, must be understood not primarily through economic determinants, but seen as a result of a successful ‘culturalization of politics’ characteristic of neo-liberalism more generally.

English

The methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir and the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) highlight the similarities and differences in leveraging the text as research data beyond the level of the text’s structure. Questions on similarities and differences between methodologies are addressed in the present study. This study, therefore, compares the similarities and the differences between the methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir and the methodology of CDA. Based on the comparison, the present study also constructs a religious discourse analysis model. The selected methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir is al-Sabuniy’s in Safwat al-Tafasir (1979), while the chosen methodology of CDA is Fairclough’s 3D (1992; 1995). The universal principle of discourse and the linguistic goals in the philosophy of language is applied in the analysis. Similarities and differences were identified in the production, meaning and interpretation. The findings strongly suggest that the two methodologies have circumstances which lead to the use of language, the production of language, the features of texts, the nature of meaning and the means of interpretation. One of the main focuses of the comparison is on the differences that constitute barriers to the adoption of CDA for religious discourse analysis, specifically the critical approach towards the sickle and the fixed elements. The obstacles to this alternative are presented in order to prove that there is a linguistic approach that is capable of linking language with social elements. The findings thus have implications for the relatively new methodology of religious discourse in linguistic studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2015-1501-08

Looking like a teacher: fashioning an embodied identity through dressage

This article makes a case for bringing in the body from the margins of research on teacher education. In doing so, it considers the personal and socio cultural issues reported by seventeen pre-service teachers (PSTs), who are part of a one-year post graduate diploma in post-primary teaching, when learning to embody and fashion teacher identity. The article focuses on embodiment drawing on qualitative interview data from a large-scale government-funded study on initial teacher education. Drawing on Foucault’s general theory of dressage, at the center of which reigns the notion of disciplining and applying the methodology of critical discourse analysis, this article presents three themes tethered to the analysable and manipulable teacher body, namely dressage as compliance, dressage as discipline and dressage as performance. For PSTs, ‘looking like a teacher’ and dressage as a practice of power is a significant part of the fabric of their professional school life.

Reflections on applying critical discourse analysis methodologies in analysing South African history textbooks

This article is a reflection on the choice to apply Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in a large scale study in which South African history textbooks were analysed for their construction of African consciousness. The article begins with an evaluation of history textbooks analysis as a field of study. It then explains my rationale for adopting CDA in a field where most studies are qualitative content analyses. This is followed by the explanation of my practical adaptation and application of Norman Fairclough’s version of CDA mixed with functional linguistics and visual semiotics. Only a few examples of the findings in the larger scale study are given to elaborate on this application. The article ends with a reflective evaluation of my application of CDA. I conclude that, though fraught with challenges, the application of CDA offers a worthwhile alternative methodology in the analysis of history textbooks.

Youth Protests against Education Privatization Reforms in Post-Soviet States

This article examines youth protests against education privatization in the post-Soviet countries of Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine. Drawing on a sample of online sources and scholarly articles, this study uses critical discourse analysis and visual methodologies to examine why and how post-Soviet university students have organized to protest against education privatization reforms. The study also critically analyzes visual and discursive representations of youth protests by government officials, mass media, and academia in the post-Soviet education space. The study reveals that while student protesters are deeply concerned about the future of public education, the messages (and images) generated by youth protesters are reappropriated in various ways by mass media, often beyond the control of protesters themselves.