With
the widespread availability of the internet and various news sources, the role
of discourse in people’s everyday lives seems more important than ever.
However, this importance and its influence on people’s beliefs and opinions
often go unnoticed. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) tries to explain how
these phenomena work.
According to van Dijk’s (1995)
definition, CDA is an issue oriented, multidisciplinary approach to studying
discourse. It mostly concerns how people see and understand the social world
(Fairclough, 2013). This intriguing approach in Applied Linguistics first
appeared in the 1970s, at the University of East Anglia where a group of
linguists aimed to examine texts in relation with their contexts.
CDA’s
main focus is how discourse is used to gain more power (political, for example)
and observes the effect it has on social relations (Fairclough, 2013). CDA
tries to explain whether good speakers can achieve more and have more influence
on people and if so, how is that possible. Moreover, they say that just as
actual weapons, this sort of power can be abused as well. Therefore, linguists
concerned with CDA focus on social and political issues and study how discourse
is used for the wrong reasons, for dominating groups of people, enforcing
inequalities, or influencing others’ ideas. The most important topics
influenced by discourse include gender inequality, media discourse, political
discourse, and social issues, such as anti-Semitism, nationalism, or racism. (van
Dijk, 2001).
It
is somewhat alarming to see that powerful people might be able to use certain
forms of discourse as a mean to control people’s minds. Also, if they manage to
do so, they might have some control over their actions too, since these people
are “more or less passive targets of text or talk” (van Dijk, 2001).
In
one of his studies, Dutch scholar Teun van Dijk (1994) presents a very
interesting example of how mind control via discourse works. He brings up
racism against minorities as a social issue through which he introduces the
problems of one-sided media representation. To begin with, very few minority
journalists are hired and even if they are, they almost exclusively write about
news concerning minorities. Moreover, minorities rarely appear in newspapers in
news about other than violence, crime (often related to drugs), or racial
conflict, with headlines highlighting words such as ‘police’ or ‘black’.
Newspapers often use semantic techniques to distance themselves from minorities
(e.g. referring to them as ‘these people’) and rarely quote them. This sort of
representation and choice of topics can have a negative effect on how society sees
these groups as pre-existent stereotypes can be strengthened or new ones
created.
Another
very important topic which concerns CDA is gender inequality. It can also be
heavily influenced be media representation. In order to find a concrete example
for that, it might be worth taking a closer look at the recent Steubenville
rape case to which the media had an unexpected and quite surprising reaction. Although
they did not openly take the two boys’ (who raped an unconscious girl at a
party) side but they did start to lament their promising football careers.
Several prestigious news sources (including the CNN and the Associated Press)
highlighted that the boys were very talented football players with bright
futures ahead of them which were now ruined, They also stressed that the victim
was drunk at the time of the incident, maybe suggesting that she was
responsible for the boys having to live the rest of their lives as registered
sex offenders. (Culp-Ressler & Strasser, 2013)
What
is relevant in the case from the point of view of CDA is how dangerous the
influence of the media can be and how careful journalists should be when
presenting such a sensitive topic. Ordinary people believe what they read
(especially if it is the CNN or other trusted news site) and tend to agree with
the opinions they find there. Therefore, social issues (like rape culture or
victim blaming, as seen in the Steubenville case) will be made more difficult
to overcome.
A
seemingly less serious, but not less relevant example of unequal representation
in the media is what everyday interviews with male actors look like in contrast
with questions addressed to actresses. At a press conference for a box office
hit, the male lead was asked about character development and character depth, while
the female star of the film was asked about the diet she had to go on, in order
to look good on the screen (DigitalSpy, 2012). This rather small excerpt exemplifies
how deep-rooted these sort of sexual stereotypes are and how easily they can be
supported by more or less everyday discourse.
In
conclusion, people are surrounded by social issues such as the ones previously
mentioned, and they rarely notice that the representation of those can be
biased and even misleading. Critical Discourse Analysis tries to point out how
discourse is used by powerful people (media sources, political leaders, or
other authorities) to influence others’ opinions and shape them as they please.
Its ultimate goal is understanding, exposing, and finally resisting social
inequality (van Dijk, 2001).
References
Culp-Ressler, T. & Strasser, A. (2013). How The
Media Took Sides In The Steubenville Rape Case. ThinkProgress. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/18/1732701/media-steubenville/
Digital Spy. (2012, April 20). The Avengers UK Press Conference in full. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBbSNnGmPfw
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: The
Critical Study of Language. New York, USA: Routledge
van Dijk, T. A. (1994). Discourse and Inequality. Lenguas Modernas, 21, 19-37.
van Dijk, T. A.
(1995). Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis. Japanese Discourse, 1, 17-28
van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis. In Tannen, D., Schiffrin, D., &
Hamilton, H.: Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 352-371). Oxford, UK:
Blackwell