VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
CAO DUY TRINH
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
IN EDUCATION: WHAT IDEOLOGICAL IMAGE DOES AN ENGLISH COURSE-BOOK
(AMERICAN HEADWAY 4, 2005) CREATE THROUGH ITS LANGUAGE?
(Phân tích diễn ngơn phê phán trong giáo dục:
Hình ảnh tư tưởng nào được xây dựng qua ngơn ngữ của một giáo trình dạy tiếng Anh
(American Headway 4, 2005)?
A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Trang 2VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
CAO DUY TRINH
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
IN EDUCATION: WHAT IDEOLOGICAL IMAGE DOES AN ENGLISH COURSE-BOOK
(AMERICAN HEADWAY 4, 2005) CREATE THROUGH ITS LANGUAGE?
(Phân tích diễn ngơn phê phán trong giáo dục:
Hình ảnh tư tưởng nào được xây dựng qua ngơn ngữ của một giáo trình dạy tiếng Anh
(American Headway 4, 2005)?
Major: English Linguistics Code: 62.22.15.01
A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Supervisor Prof Nguyen Hoa (Ph.D)
Trang 3STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
Except where the reference is made in the text of dissertation, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the
dissertation
This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree of diploma in any other tertiary institution
CAO DUY TRINH
Trang 4ABSTRACT
Foreign language teaching is not merely the introduction of a language but also the transmission of values and ideologies Language teachers do not only aim at learners’ language competence and performance but also the attitudes and behaviors of the learners towards their language speakers’ community Language educators provide the students with the linguistic rules and the social rules governing the language, the values underlying such language and the social contexts from which that language emerges For a foreign language course-book, the designers should consider the linguistic knowledge, the teaching and learning methods and the ways
the teachers and students view and interact with the world “out there’
In this dissertation, the course-book “American Headway 4-2005” is chosen for an analysis from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective Herein, certain values which make up “an image” created by English language textbook writers, are worked out The analysis is done mostly through the wordings and the illustrations in the lessons Before the analysis, some working concepts such as values, ideology, power, English language teaching and the politics of this teaching as well as American values and ideologies will be defined and reviewed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the research methodology is also revisited Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and Norman Fairclough's textual analysis as theoretical foundation and analysis framework are discussed The researcher justifies on the ground of Marxist viewpoint The above issues are, perhaps, not new to the researchers of socio-linguistic and applied linguists This study is hopefully an interface of them all The typical image found will prove that certain values are purposely introduced and reinforced in the course-book These values belong to and characterize different ideologies of the main stream of American, and often tend to give a sanitized version of the American life They might be beneficial to our Vietnamese learners and we hope to be able to share many of their “globally” good
Trang 5Through this minor work, values education and critical awareness in foreign language courses may attract the attention of the teachers and students of English in Vietnam The learners are urged to adopt whatever is suitable to them, the Vietnamese, and to avoid alien ways of life Since then, our Vietnamese learners’ image of a good American English speaker is not necessarily exactly the same as
Trang 6ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could never have finished this dissertation without the help of many people
My thanks go to Prof Nguyén Hoa, my supervisor, for his continuous support during the years I did my M.A and Ph.D courses His knowledgeable understanding of linguistics and related disciplines is always the trusted source for my
consultation
I want to thank the professors and the visiting professors of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, ULIS and their staff Professor Hoang Van Van and Assoc Professor Lé Hung Tién have been very considerate and helpful to me I have benefited from their knowledge and professionalism in research
For this thesis, Thai Nguyen University has offered me a good financial sponsorship I am grateful to that
My home university, Thai Nguyen University of Sciences, has always been standing by me, urging me in my study I am thankful to the university’s leadership, all the colleagues in and out my Department of Basic Sciences in the University for their assistance as I am working on this thesis
I appreciate the valuable advice and useful help from all of my Ph.D student class- mates in Hanoi They are very nice and willing to share their experiences and to help when I am looking for solutions to research problems
I will always bear in my mind and recognize the encouragement of the international professors and friends Language, culture, politics and society always go together Their interesting talks have inspired me to greater efforts in my study I would like to take this chance to thank Emeritus Professor Markus Brodman, Zurich University, Switzerland; Professor Frank Morgan, Williams College, USA — Vice President of American Mathematical Society (2009-2012); Emeritus Professor
Marcel Morales, Grenoble University, France; Doctor Fred Rohrer, Zurich
Trang 7Rural Life Development Foundation - and his wife, Melissa Henry My special thanks go to Professor Neal Koblitz, University of Washington, the creator of Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography, the founder of the Kovalevskaya Prize for developing countries, the great social activist and a trusted friend of Vietnam His profound comments and suggestions for my thesis make me more confident about the research results I also express my deep gratitude to David John Grealy and Assoc Prof Nguyén Van D6 for their valuable suggestions
Last but not least, I want to say many thanks to my beloved wife for her love and kind reliance My son and our little daughter have also cheered me on a lot
Trang 8TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP 2011112211212 1111111118111 111111114511 re i nh v00 — .ỐốỐỔỐỔ.Ổ.ố il ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .0cccccccccceseseceeeeeeesneeeeeeceeeesseeeeeeeeeeessseeeeseeeenaaeeeees iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .0.0cccccccccccccccececeeeeenseeeeeceneeneeeeeeeeseessseseeeeseensieseeeesenens vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 00.0 cccccccccccccccetcncceeeeeceesseceeeeeseeeseeeeeeeeeeninseeeeees vill IS 9)14W.1s3P si 1X IIRSN9)0/6000.45 1 X LIST OEF APPENDICES Q.00 001111 20111111111 1111111 kg kh XI PART TINTRODUCT ION 017 ăăă 1 I Rationale for the S{Uy - - -c c2 1222222221221 111111111 511151115 11111 1E kg 1 “ĐI u00 1 ‹ ỐỐỐỐốỐốỐ 4 3 OblJect and scope Of SfUdỈy - Q2 n TH n TH TT HT TT HT nn TT nnnTnnn TT 5 ƠN s:(900.1)000000009/ 2 ea ad 5 h - n9 56 ad .aẠasa i ố a4 5 r6 0 an “ 5 PART II DISSERTA TION DEVELOPMENTT - nnnccsc nh eese 8 CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 0000000 00cccc ccc cece cettnreeeeeeeeenaes 8 1.1 A brief overview Of CDA 00.0 cccceeccterte cece eeeeeeeeeeeteetenttneseeeeeeeeeeeseeeeneees 8 1.1.1 Discourse 7 8 1.1.2 Critical discourse analySiS ccccccccccccssceceeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseseseeeeeeeeeeeeeees 10 1.2 Tenets, obJects and elemenfs of CA c +2 ++++++++++++++ssxssererses 15 II 100i 10009/ T -a. 20 1.4 Syllabus design and the wider SOCI€ẨV - -L Q2 Q2 2n nnnn HS n HH nghe 22 1.5 The works 00998 e.ăẶốăă._ 23 1.6 Values, culture, ideology and POWET .c.ccccccceccceecccecceeceeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 25
Trang 91.6.2 Culture oo eee 29 =8 02 Ố.ỐỐ 3l 1.6.4 Power as constructed by vue§ - - -.c - c2 2c 22 2n 2n ng ghe 33 1.7 American VvaÏU©S 2222021210111 101111111 111115111 5112111111111 1kg 35 1.8 Image and ideological 1maØe .- - - c2 22221 2 2 1211111111111 1 111tr reg 37 8; 1 ĂẰ.ằằằằăăăăằăằă SÀ 37 IFwø 00c e Ố.ỐỐ 40 CHAPTER 2 MVTHODOLOGY Q00 1n nn n2 HH TT ng 1k khen ky 44 2.1 Defining the framework —- <4 45 2.1.1 Systemic Functional CGrammar - 2 222222112111 11 1111111111111 1151 x55 45 2.1.2 Fatrcloughˆs Textual AnalySIS 0020211 SS SH SH S SH HS SH HS TT k key 51 2.2 Analytic Procedure e—a 59 CHAPTER 3 THE ANALYSIS 0.0 ccccccccceceeeetnnseeeeeeeeteneeeeseeneas 64 3.1 The social context of the textbook under analySIS -+c++<c+<++2 64
S0 2 017 67
CHAPTYER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS c co 145 4.1 Interpretation for the values expressed by the writers in the course-book 145 4.2 Explanation for the American values created in the course-book 149
4.2.1 Societal determinants at societal level - American history, society, culture,
Trang 10LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CIA Central Intelligence Agency CFL College of Foreign Languages CL Critical Linguistics
CLS Critical Language Study CLT Critical Language Teaching CP Critical Pedagogy
CT Critical Theory
ELT English Language Teaching MR Members’ resources
SFG Systemic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics TNU Thai Nguyen University
TNUS Thai Nguyen University of Sciences The USA _ The United States of America VNU Vietnam National University
Trang 11LIST OF TABLE Table
Trang 12Figure Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 LIST OF FIGURES Page Elements of CuÏfUF€ c1 11211121111 111151221111 1111111 khen 30 Farrclough”s analysis of an Image - + +22 22222 ++S+xsssrsrses 4] The Iimage of Mr Happy, the British English speaker 42
DIscourse as text, Interactlon and conf€xf - -ccc sa 53
Situational context and discourse fVD€ - c2 56
2.4) ) 7 — 37
Trang 14PART TL INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale for the study
Human struggles are carried into the language of lessons Most people learn the language, the events and their national spirit in kindergartens, schools, universities
and, for a few, in PhD lecture-halls However, from the standpoint of political
economy, whether a society is fair or unfair, to a large extent, depends on its distribution of wealth, not on language Marx (1859) says, in political economy, distribution is distribution of products but before that it is the distribution of the means of production and the distribution of the members of the society among the various types of production Thus, it is understandable that in the social structure of modern production, dominant values under the influence of ideologies and control of power can decide the social distribution realms Moreover, it should be remembered that tendencies of bias distribution are clearly expressed by and reflected in human language, including language in classrooms And oppressed people also use language as their arms to liberate themselves from the domination Language never exists for itself Human beings use languages to give information, to persuade other people, to entertain each other, to maintain relations with other people, to construct mental representations of the world and to express our membership, our individuality, our mood and emotions Language does not exist in a vacuum There are always other people we talk with and display our attitudes with Language does not only mean grammar, vocabulary or syntax It rather means
what we want to say, to whom, where, when, why, how, and what we keep silent
Trang 15(Singh, 2004) Language does not merely mean linguistics but also life As a social practice (Fairclough, 2001), language contains values In different texts, values can be expressed in discourses and other types of representations such as photographs, paintings and artistic products
When values are mentally and physically represented in such ways, they will make up certain symbolic images of a society, including the typical image of, say, “the hero” of a society This is exactly what the dissertation is looking for in an English course-book In 2007, the author’s M.A thesis “Exploring ideological power relations in a global document: the Berne convention for the protection of literary and artistic works” was successfully defended Now, the study of the image of “the standard speaker" of English in a course-book — “American Headway 4-2005 1s another research with the similar methodology The image, together with a concrete visible picture, should be made up of the values of the native speakers of American English which, in its turn, may govern their thinking The book chosen for analysis is not a random choice though I believe that any text-books or course-books in any teaching will reveal some values If I must give the reasons to choose this book for analysis, perhaps because it is popular world-wide and in Vietnam It survives the trial of time and is largely accepted by teachers and adult learners Other values of the language speakers should be found, more or less, somewhere else in other teaching materials
Trang 17American English speaker This is also the reason why we are going back the string to analyze the values developed by the language of the course-book as well as the ideologies behind them
This analysis will be done on the part of the texts - the word choices, the titles, the
typical reading passages of the lessons - and the pictures (the photographs and pictures) The theoretical framework of analysis is the Integrated Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) - that is the Textual Analysis of Fairclough, an approach of Critical Discourse Analysis and the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (Hoa, 2006) This functional approach is hoped to help interpret language uses here
People do things through speech acts (Austin, 1962) And poverty, inequality, bias and social injustices can also be reinforced through the language The expressions take place everywhere around us: in families, hospitals, markets or at the schools The language of a course-book under investigation is never an exception: it is about the values the society is longing for and, at the same time, is ignoring
Since 2003, in ULIS - VNU, Vietnam, some MA students of English such as Van
T.T.H., Huong N.T.L., Huong P.T., and I myself started to employ CDA as our main tool of analysis, under the supervision of Professor Nguyén Hoa But to the best of my knowledge here in Vietnam, a study of textbooks using CDA methods is, perhaps, left untouched Therefore, I hope this piece of work is of significance to the teaching and learning of English in Vietnam
2 Dissertation aims
Trang 183 Object and scope of study
Within its limitation, the object of my enquiry will be focused on finding out the ideological image definable in terms of the values as presented through the language, both verbal and non-verbal, of this course-book (“American Headway 4, 2005”)
4 Research assumptions
I am doing this research with the assumption that there is an image of a standard man with values expressed in the course-book The values which go into the make-up of this image are normative in the sense that they can govern the textbook writers’ conduct, and are expressed in the language employed by them
5 Research questions
The study should give answers to these three research questions:
1 What is the ideological image (describable in terms of the values and the visible picture) of the typical American English speaker in this course-book?
2 How is the image created in the language of the book? 3 Why has such an image been created?
It should be noted that although the study aims at an “image”, our understanding is that this image is created through values In other words, the values make up the image, or we see the image in terms of the values
6 Methodology of the study
As the principle tool of analysis, the dissertation uses an integrated framework of CDA (Hoa, 2006), based on a combination of Halliday’s functional grammar plus Fairclough’s textual analysis and Marx’s Dialectic Materialism and Historical Materialism This choice will be accounted for in Chapter II on methodology
7 Research design
PART I INTRODUCTION
Trang 19research assumptions and the research questions, the methodology of the study and the research design In this part, the author generally explains the reasons for the study; setting up the specific tasks of the research; showing how the research is done as well as providing the outline of the research structure
PART II DISSERTATION DEVELOPMENT
The development of the dissertation is made up of four chapters: the literature review; the methodology; the analysis; and the findings and the discussions
Chapter 1, the literature review, first deals with CDA: the concept and the history, its tenets, objects and elements; different views of CDA; syllabus design and the wider society; and the works of CDA The chapter then revises other related issues such as values, culture, ideology and power, offering the working definitions for further discussion in the dissertation Finally, the chapter directs to its closer interests of the study stated in the dissertation title: the American values and the ideological image
Chapter 2 offers the methodology for the dissertation analysis This chapter starts with the framework defining and then explains the choice of Systemic Functional Grammar for the research The author then discusses Fairclough’ Textual Analysis which best suits this study The analytical procedures are also provided, ready for the coming step of discourse analysis
Chapter 3 is the analysis, proceeding from the social context of the textbook under analysis
Trang 20determinants at societal level - American history, society, culture, politics & economy; the political English Language Teaching as institutional determinant at institutional level and the American ideologies as situational determinants at situational level of discourses
PART ITT CONCLUSIONS
Trang 21PART IT DISSERTATION DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 A brief overview of CDA
In critical discourse analyses, researchers are interested in problematic social issues expressed by language uses The works of critical discourse analysis are firmly grounded in the studies of discourse analysis In other words, the advent of critical discourse analysis, regarding language uses, can be traced back to the analysis of discourses In this brief introduction to CDA, some notes about discourse analysis might be, therefore, helpful for the readers to understand the discourse analysis as its foundation
1.1.1 Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis (DA) has been developing and attracting researchers’ attention for the past twenty years Harris (1952) was the first to introduce the term
‘discourse analysis’ by which it is popularly known today
Trang 22Language study and teaching do not involve only the study and teaching of correct (and incorrect) sentences but, for real communication, the language uses Cook (1989: 6) defines discourse and discourse analysis, stressing language coherence and
language purposes:
We have, then, two different kinds of language as potential objects for study: One abstracted in order to teach a language or literacy, or to study how the rules of language work, and another which has been used to communicate something and is felt to be coherent (and may, or may
not happen to correspond to a correct sentence or a series of correct
sentences) This latter kind of language - language in use, for communication - is called discourse, and the search for what gives discourse coherence is discourse analysis
Cook sees sentence as a stretch of language which is grammatically well-formed, and a discourse as a composition of one or more than one sentence with certain meaning in a certain context Nunan (1993: 5) also assumes that: “a discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived as being related in some ways”
Moreover, Nunan (1993: 6) offers the key concepts of discourse analysis, discourse
and text, in this distinction:
text is any written record of a communication event The event itself may involve oral language (for example, a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transaction) or written language (for example, a poem, a newspaper advertisement, a wall poster, a shopping list, a novel) discourse to refer to the
interpretation of the communicative event in context
Nunan (1993) emphasizes the role of context - the situation giving rise to the discourse and within which the discourse is embedded The two types of context, according to him, are /inguistic context - the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis and the non-linguistic or experiential context within which the discourse takes place
Trang 23materials, he thinks that learning from the text and learning about the world will be parallel To understand the textbooks about geography, history, biology etc., world knowledge is needed as a foundation and it also requires extension and modification Van Dijk (1981: 16) has the following to say:
The reader must discover the dependence of various geographical conditions on economic and political factors, the relations between historical events, or the physical characteristics of plants, animals and men But again, this is possible only when distinctions are made between what is
important and what is only detail, which conditions are crucial, how causal
or argumentative relationships play a role For these structural properties
in our knowledge about the world the text will need to establish the basis,
together with visual and sometimes auditory information
Van Dijk poimts out that textbooks are written to provide an adequate basis for appropriate knowledge acquisition with important words and passages signaled in different ways (italics, repetition, boxing, etc.), summaries provided, relevant questions asked, visual schemata drawn and so on
According to Van Dijk, the links (structural connections, local coherence, missing propositions, global content and schemata) should be established systematically with previous knowledge and actual interests, beliefs and opinions Appropriate discourse analysis requires a thorough background knowledge of language as well as of the community of the language speakers the language serves
There is a famous quotation in the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam: “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom’’ In the context of war in 1966, President Ho Chi Minh’s call for struggle aroused millions of Vietnamese Behind the discourse is a national thirst for Vietnam’s long standing values as independence and freedom And they never ceased fighting against American imperialism until the final victory in 1975
1.1.2 Critical discourse analysis
Trang 24“performance” to language functions The relationship between language and context was reconsidered, focusing on speakers’ pragmatic and sociolinguistic uses (Labov, 1972, Hymes, 1972) The research was mostly aimed at language description and explanation, not social hierarchy and power The works of such scholars as Kress and Hodge (1979) and Fowler et al (1979) have laid the ground for linguists like Van Dyk (1985), Fairclough (2001) and Wodak (1989) to build a discipline known as Critical linguistics (CL) in the 1970s and Critical discourse analysis (CDA) in 1990s when it is more consistently used for linguistic analysis From the beginning, Fowler et al (1979, 1991, 1996) contributes to the early foundations of CL and shows that theories such as Chomskyan grammar and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar are helpful and can be used to “uncover linguistic structures of power in texts” (Wodak, 2001: 6)
CDA has grown and developed as an independent approach of DA With CDA, researchers analyze a discourse critically, not only looking into the forms used but also considering the social and situational contexts it emerges from for appropriate interpretation, being aware that power relations and inequality exist in the language CDA not only focuses on language itself but also pays much attention to the social structures which constrain the language uses on one hand and are constructed by discourses on the other
Contemporary CDA has recently been activated as a network with a group of
scholars: Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunther Kress, Ruth Wodak, Siegfied
Jager and Ron Scollon In a small symposium in Amsterdam in January 1991, these researchers got together for two days to discuss theories and methods of discourse analysis and especially CDA The analysts of different approaches stand a good chance of confronting each other with the distinctive views Wodak (2001:4) writes:
In this process of group formation, differences and sameness were exposed; differences towards other theories and methodologies in discourse analysis and sameness in a programmatic way which could frame the differing theoretical approaches of the various biographies and
Trang 25Van Dijk (1977, 1981) has been interested in text and discourse as basic unit and social practice, in units of language larger than sentences and the dependence of a text on context for meaning The development of van Dijk with Kintsch (1983) in a cognitive model of discourse understanding from individuals to societal level can help us explain the construction of meaning He tends to refer to socio- psychological research, arguing that social representation plays an important part of a theory of context Social actors rely on collective frames of perceptions (social representations) and the individual cognitive system to translate, homogenize and co-ordinate the external requirements and subjective experience Hence, Meyer (2001: 21) repeats Wagner’s statement (1994): “this assumption is not new Social representations are shared amongst members of a social group Thus they form a core element of the individual’s social identity”
Dyk’s ‘Handbook of Discourse and Analysis’ (1985a) is ‘the state of the art’ of critical linguistics in the mid-1980s, a tool in the investigation of other social phenomena Van Dik (1985b, 1986) works on media discourse, dealing with communication, various theories and applications in production, and uses and functions of media discourse In his joint work with Wodak (2000), he develops a theoretical model explaining cognitive discourse processing mechanisms after focusing on issues of racism and ideology (1998)
Fairclough (2001) considers the social theories as a ground of CDA and offers a number of examples of textual analysis to illustrate the field of CDA, its aims and methods In his works (1992, 1995a, and 1999 with Chouliariki) he describes a CDA analytical framework for exploring the relationship of language, power and ideology as well as contemporary social and cultural change Fairclough also proves that language of the mass media is the site of power and struggle where language is clearly involved Fairclough applies Marxist traditions and the study of the linguistic
manifestations in discourse to work on social conflicts, focusing on dominance,
Trang 26Productive activity, the means of production, social relations, social identities, cultural values, consciousness, and semiotics are dialectically
related elements of social practice He understands CDA as the analysis of the dialectical relationships between semiotics (including language and other elements of social practice)
The constitution of genres and styles are decided by the semiotic aspects of social practice Order of discourse is the semiotic aspect of social order The approach used by Fairclough is between focus on structure and action Fairclough aims at emancipation and focusing on problems that dominated people have to face Fairclough himself (Fairclough, 2001: 11) is more of a functionalist than “a formalist” in his works
Kress (1990) provides us with a theoretical foundation and sources of critical Imnguistics He shows that CDA 1s a different kind of linguistic theory with criteria of a critical discourse analysis paradigm and CDA is different from other political discourse analysis The basic assumptions of CL or CDA offered by Kress (1989) are:
-Language is a social phenomenon;
-Not only individuals, but also institutions and social groupings have specific meanings and values that are expressed in language
in Systemic ways;
-Text is the relevant unit of language in communication;
-Readers/hearers are not passive recipients in their relationship to texts; -There are similarities between the language of science and the language of institutions
Wodak (2001) indicates that, in CDA, language is seen as a social practice, and the context of language use is crucial Therefore, linguists shift their interests to the relationships between language and power They see the larger discursive unit of text to be the basic unit of communication Wodak (2001:2) wrote: “This research specifically considers institutional, political, gender and media discourses (in the broadest sense) which testify to more or less overt relations of struggle and conflict”
Trang 27investigate social inequality CDA studies the inequality of the society as expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized by language use (or in discourse -Wodak, 2001) Wodak has also mentioned Habermas’s claim (1977) that language is also a medium of domination and social force, serving to legitimize relations of organized power, being ideological Wodak has been interested in three concepts: power, history and ideology Wodak belongs to the historical CDA approach which states that every discourse 1s historically produced and interpreted, that is, it is situated in time and space She agrees that “Functional systemic linguistics proved to be most important for the text analysis undertaken by this school’ Wodak (2001: 3) discusses other roots of CDA in classical rhetoric, text linguistics and sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and pragmatics in which “the notions of ideology, power, hierarchy and gender, and static sociological variables were all seen as relevant for an interpretation or explanation of text’ and “Gender issues, issues of racism, media discourses or dimensions of identity research have become very prominent’
Wodak holds the views that all small qualitative case studies or large data corpora from fieldwork and ethnographic research can be used as methodologies for CDA Wodak wrote that by the end of 1980s, CL was able to describe its aims, research interests, chosen perspective and methods of analysis much more specifically and rigidly than hitherto She says she has listed, explained and illustrated the most important characteristics of critical linguistic research Especially, a historical perspective is mtroduced as the discourse -historical approach Wodak (1996) writes about the common focus of the concepts of power, ideology and history from different scholars of different backgrounds who engaged in linguistic, semiotic and discourse analysis
Trang 28done by work, activity and non-discursive practices The social subject is the link between discourse and reality Meyer (2001: 20) has shown that Jager’s works are influenced by Foucault (structuralism for relationship of discourse and reality), Ernesto Laclau (social constructivism for epistemological position) and Jurgen Link (notion of discourse as consolidated concept of speech) He aims at analysis of discourse and dispositives (a concept covering discursive and non-discursive practices and materializations) Jager (1993) sees discourse, with historical roots and is interwoven, as a flow of text and speech through time His analysis is done in several steps in an explicit research program and methodology
Scollon is a micro-sociologist in CDA With notions like mediated action, site of engagement, mediational means, practice, nexus of practice, community of practice, scene and action surveys, focus group, chains of mediated action and practice and
ce
so on, he proposes a ‘mediated discourse analysis (MDA), focusing on “ social actions through which social actors produce the histories and habitus of their daily lives which is the ground in which society is produced and reproduced” (Scollon, 2001: 140) For him, social actions are mediated by cultural tools or mediated means, and language (or discourse) is probably the most salient and common meditational means, mainly on empirical grounds In fact, Scollon aims to study the relation of social issues and daily discourse to fully account for the practice of the participants in the habitus and particular social action
All in all, though distinguished by their analytic procedures, these linguists share the same ideas about the principles and objects of CDA We can say that they agree on the fact that a text is a product of a society and, thus, any text will bear a certain society’s traces in terms of experiential, relational and expressive values (meanings), as indicated by Fairclough (2001)
1.2 Tenets, objects and elements of CDA
Trang 29CDA is both a theory and method Researchers who are interested in the relationship between language and society use CDA to help them describe, interpret, and explain such relationship CDA is different from other discourse analysis methods because it offers not only a description and interpretation of discourse in context, but also offers an explanation of how and why discourses work CDA is a domain of critical applied linguistics Discussing CDA, Teun A van Dik (1993: 252) pointed out: “CDA does not primarily aim to contribute to a specific discipline, paradigm, and school or discourse theory It is primarily interested and motivated by pressing social issues, which it hopes to better understand through discourse analysis’
Rogers (2004) explains the dissension between the researchers mainly because of the analytic procedures which, in fact, depend on the definitions of critical, discourse and the intentions in conducting the analysis While some methods focus more on linguistic aspects, others emphasize the context of the discourse or the historical emergence of the concepts or policies Some methods pay attention equally to both language and social theory, which Fairclough called ‘textually oriented’ There are eight tenets of CDA offered by Fairclough and Wodak (1997), which are known to us now:
- CDA addresses social problems; - Power relations are discursive;
- Discourse constitutes society and culture;
- Discourse does ideological work; - Discourse is historical;
- A socio-cognitive approach is needed to understand how relations between
texts and society are mediated;
- Discourse analysis is interpretive and explanatory and uses a systematic methodology;
- CDA is a socially committed scientific paradigm
Trang 30- To study relation between linguistic form and ideology and the way in which various aspects of grammar (syntax and semantics) are connected to power and control
- To analyze systems of meaning from the viewpoint of social structure and processes rather than taking the structure of language as the starting point for analysis, and to extend the analysis beyond verbal language,
that is, to other sign system
- To link linguistic analysis to social analysis Discourse (language use) is viewed as social practice A three dimensional framework to analyze linkages between discourse, ideology, and power “The aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis of discursive
events as instances of socio-cultural practice `
- To carry out an extensive program of work on ethnic prejudice, racism, and related topics, involving multiple levels and types of analysis, for
example, participant’s positions, speech acts, topics, text schemata
(argumentation), propositional structures of clauses and sentences, variations of syntax and lexicon, and rhetorical features There’s an emphasis on cognition as the mediator of discourse and social structures It is apparent that, there exists an emphasis on the role of linguistics forms and ideology, meaning and social structures, linguistic analysis (participant’s positions, speech acts, topics, text schemata (argumentation), propositional structures of clauses and sentences, variations of syntax and lexicon, and rhetorical features) and social analysis (ethnic prejudice, racism, and related topics) CDA 1s, therefore very lively and attractive, once the study is not at all dull and idle, only about boring and still linguistics
The term “Critical Discourse Analysis” is meaningful and significant First, it makes sense to ask why CDA is critical Critical Discourse Analysis has been, basically, a type of analytical discourse research that primarily studies the way social abuse, dominance and equality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political contexts To do this job, the critical discourse analyst has to take explicit position, and thus wants to understand, expose and ultimately to resist social inequality (van Dijk, 1998)
Trang 31of naturalism, rationality, neutrality and individualism It argues for a dialectic between individual agency and structural determinism Kress (1990) indicates that the term CL was quite self-consciously adapted from its social-philosophical counter-part, as a label by the group of scholars working at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s As with all research, the intentions of critical discourse analysts are not neutral Corson (2000) says that their aim is to “explore hidden power relations between a piece of discourse and wider social and cultural formations” and to have an interest in “uncovering inequality, power relationships,
injustices, discrimination, bias, etc.” Rogers has gone further to add that another
interpretation of the term critical in CDA is the attempt to describe, interpret, and explain the relationships between the form and function of language The assumption is that certain networks of form-function relationships are valued in society more than others Wodak (2001: 9) wrote:
The notion of ‘critique’ which is inherent in the CDA program is also understood very differently: some adhere to the Frankfurt school, others to a
notion of literary criticism, some Marx’s notion
And she explained: “Basically, ‘critical’ is to be understood as having distance to the data, embedding data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly, and focus a self-reflection as scholars doing research”
Wodak pointed out that the application of the results is important because that will be helpful for the teachers, doctors or civil servants in the seminars in their writing books or giving expert opinions As Wodak is one of the researchers of the historical approach, she paid more attention to this aspect of the word ‘critical’ She
mentioned Max Horkheimer:
Trang 32them” Van Dik (2001) shares the same idea when he calls CDA ‘a discourse analysis with attitude ’
Linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure or Noam Chomsky aim to study formal properties of language independently of social interaction and context They considered linguistic units in isolation from the purposes this semiotic system is designed for, that is: to serve human needs In fact, language always has a formal and functional unity just as the two sides of a same paper sheet Language forms are always used for communicative purposes and the expressions of human information, emotion and desires
Regarding the “discourse” component in CDA, Rogers (2004) reconfirms that CDA framework traces its linguistic genealogy to critical linguistics and systemic functional linguistics Language responds to the functions of language use and has different functions to perform Language use is always social and analyses of language occur above the unit of a sentence or clause Another thing is the difference between little ‘d’ and big “D’ discourse Little ‘d’ refers to language bits or the grammar of what is said Big ‘D’iscourse refers to the ways of representing, believing, valuing, and participating with the language bits Form of language cannot exist independent of the function of language, and the intention of speakers Big ‘D’ is not only a pattern of social interaction but it is connected to identity and the distribution of social goods
Trang 33and communities of language users and the influences of the factors from situational contexts Language is no longer a simple communicative tool but a social fact and social practice, a way of life, an action and a part of a culture Discourse becomes the interest of linguistics, sociology, ethnography, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, etc Hence, there is no pure discourse analysis but a combination of different analytical approaches and methods The most common feature of these approaches and methods is the use of the linguistic system and functions in the processes of social interaction with concrete linguistic forms in certain specific contexts
1.3 The other views of CDA
Like other research methods, CDA is subject to some criticism It may be said to be “sitting on the fence” (Meyer, 2001), or bias and looking for what is already known before the research Rogers (2004) mentions a number of critiques and responses to critiques of CDA concerning its theoretical and methodological basis The first critique is political and social ideologies are projected onto the data rather being revealed through the data The analysts know what they are going to find before they begin Their analysis is just the confirmation of what they suspect The second problem is that there is an imbalance between social theory and linguistic method The analysis may attend more to description of language or the context in which language use unfolds Another shortcoming may lie in the fact that many discourse analyses are extracted from social contexts (political speeches, government documents and newspaper reports (written documents) Fourthly, the methodology is not systematic or rigorous CDA is also criticized for not being applied to or attended to learning And there has been little attention paid to the non-linguistic aspect of discourse such as activity and emotions when emotions are a stronghold of ideology The cons sometimes center around analytic procedures which depend on what definitions of “critical” and “discourse” the analyst has taken up as well as his or her intentions for conducting the analysis There are more or less textually oriented approaches to discourse analysis Some CDA methods are less linguistically
Trang 34methods are interested in the historical emergence of a set of concepts or policies Some methods pay equal attention to language and social theory
However, the arguments in favor of adopting CDA are that language and society always go together and they should always be seen as an integrated body in human society Fairclough, (2001), among many others, in his book “Language and Power’, suggests that CDA is a significant tool of our trade to investigate the place of language in society via the relationship of language, power and ideology Fairclough says language is centrally involved in power and struggles for power through its ideological properties To work out this complicated relationship, Fairclough introduces the concepts of discourse, orders of
discourse, power relations, social structures, social practice, members’
resources (MR), ideology and so on For him, social structures (expressed in the social institutions as social orders, recognized by social roles or subject positions) shape MR, which in turn shape discourses; and discourses sustain or change MR, which in turn sustain or change structures Fairclough sees ideology as institutional practices people draw upon without thinking These practices often embody assumptions which directly or indirectly legitimize existing power relations
CDA is a critical analysis of discourse It gives us the looking-glass to inspect the society full of inequality and injustice However, the bourgeoisie scholars just mention the inequality and injustice and attempt to produce different discourses through their Critical Theory, Critical Language Study and Critical Discourse Analysis In fact, only with the change of discourse, we cannot change the society Together with the language liberation, people should change the economical depth: the private ownership of materials for production and then the unfair distribution of wealth under the reign of capitalism The Base and the Superstructure, as for Marx, always match If we want to remove the inequality and injustice from society, we must fight for a new system of discourse, a Lingua Franca for all Above all, we have to fight for an equal distribution of wealth (and equal discourse, of course) for
Trang 35Thus, CDA turns out to be one of the best approaches and methods to study that relationship It is now more firmly grounded linguistically as it is based on systemic functional grammar, other linguistic traditions as it can explore how metaphors are used in representations of social phenomena CDA is of great value as it obviously is the interface between language and its socially situated functions CDA, for the purpose of this research, can unravel the relationships between language, education and the social life behind the lessons Once the course books and the curricula are designed, the appropriate language representation and attitudes must be expressed Values and ideologies in the course design are also expressed Hence, when using course-books and curricula, people can decode them under their full situational and social conditions of production and interpretation In this dissertation, as I have mentioned in the introduction, I employ the integrated framework of CDA offered by Hoa (2006), with Fairclough’s textual analysis resting on Halliday’s SFG, and Marx’s view in Dialectic Materialism and Historical Materialism supplying a firm frame for a linguistic and social analysis of values
1.4 Syllabus design and the wider society
As this dissertation is, by nature, a critical discourse analysis of a language course book, the bond of syllabus design and “the real world” of the teachers and students as well as the interests of CDA in their studies of the syllabus design and the wider society in which the course is located should be worth considering
One focus of CDA from its early establishment until now is language and education, the educational situation and wider society But regrettably, as it happens, the impact of CDA on syllabus design, is not clearly felt although many implications in the forms of critical language awareness are offered
Trang 361.5 The works of CDA
In the midst of the academic shift in linguistic investigation turns to the exploration of the relationship between language and society, researchers have been building the essential bridge connecting language with human life through their works on discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis In the same vein, the focus of my study is the connection of the language uses and the cultural values which can be observed in a specific educational product - a course-book of English It is the values that are decided by the ideologies and, at the same time, are reinforcing these ideologies Abroad or domestically, it seems that cultural values in relation to social problems have been mostly neglected in CDA works whereas they should really create different ‘strata’ of a society If a society is seen as a living body, a “giant” for example, cultural values will make up his feet and political values his head The Giant must stand on his feet and make the decisions by his head Cultural and political values are pervasive and none of them is unimportant On the contrary, these values are interdependent and interact with each other dialectically My dissertation is written in the hope of filling part of this academic gap in other CDA investigations
Trang 37At the University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), VNU, a premier foreign language education and research institution of Vietnam, Hoa made a start with his doctoral dissertation on the analysis of socio-political discourses from a discourse analysis perspective in 1999 He went on to publish two books on discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis in 2002 and 2006 Ever since, there has been quite a number of MA theses using CDA as methods and methodology Among these studies, we can find the works on news analysis Many other Vietnamese works focus on political discourse analysis The picture that has emerged is that most of the research done so far concentrates on power relations and ideology as the main aims of the research They have mainly employed Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and Fairclough’s textual analysis as their major methodological tools and frameworks of analysis As far as the objects are concerned, many of the studies have selected the speeches of influential government leaders or politicians as discourses for analysis Other popular discourses chosen are the articles about wars, conflicts or race discrimination A few of the analyses use novels, cartoons, globalization texts or legal versions as discourses for analysis Although, CDA takes a look at education very early on, as the list above suggests It deals with broad issues such as “Critical Teaching for Social Change”, (Shor, 1992);
or “Critical literacy awareness in the EFL classroom”, (Wallace, 2001); “Critical
Trang 38answer This leaves room for a further investigation, and I have selected, inter alia,
the ideological image as the object of this doctoral dissertation In particular, my research takes a close look at the ideological image created in terms of cultural values Or put another way, it is about the cultural values that make up the image In trying to describe the image, we end up discussing the cultural values
In summary, the works of CDA are as various in their topics as the different interests of the researchers: they can be about theoretical foundations, methods and methodologies, ideology, language and education or other applications of CDA (language in legal, political and media texts, language and social scientific research, language and literature, language and knowledge) Despite the differences, CDA works share the tenets and objects I have mentioned: they are socially sensitive hyphens, linking the linguistic analysis and social analysis to encourage and discourage certain values in a particular community This is also why, in the next part, the discussion moves from the literature review of CDA to further related issues such as values, culture, ideology and power
1.6 Values, culture, ideology and power
Trang 39time, the interpretation must be inferred or established for specific cases It 1s quite in place to acknowledge that doing a critical discourse analysis is tough because you are not only dealing with language, you have to, at the same time, explain the society as well
1.6.1 Values
The study of values is important and interesting enough to attract people’s minds and hearts This is also the reason of the involvement of my dissertation in the
investigation of the ideological image, which is, in fact, the study of values
Specifically, the values (either cultural values or political values matching with the political ideologies) of the society (the American society, in this dissertation) expressed in the language of a course-book are the main objects of my study
Hofstede (2001) compares values to a mental software that can be activated in a various social situation, to govern our behavior, conduct, or the way to do things It is not just individuals, but also society that hold values Along the same line, Nanda and Warms (1998), see values as “shared ideas about what is true, right, and beautiful that underlie cultural patterns and guide society in response to the physical and social environment” From this viewpoint, values are ideas about good things in life and they are shared between people as their guidelines to treat other people or to behave in different social and natural habitats
In the same vein, Rokeach (1973) is of the opinion that when we say a person has a value, it is tantamount to saying that person has an enduring belief that a “specific mode of existence or end-state of existence is personally and socially preferable to alternative modes of conduct of end-states of existence”
Trang 40the system of criteria by which conduct is judged and sanctions applied.” At the same time, they noted Hofstede’s short list of some topics dealing with values:
Evil versus good Dirty versus clean Dangerous versus safe Ugly versus beautiful Decent versus indecent Abnormal versus normal
Unnatural versus natural Irrational versus rational Paradoxical versus logical Moral versus immoral Aspin (2007: 31) takes values:
to refer to those ideas, conventions, principles, rules, objects, products,
activities, practices, procedures or judgments that people accept, agree to,
treasure, cherish, prefer, incline towards, see as important and indeed act upon
Such things they make objects of admiration, high levels of aspiration, standards of judgment, prescriptions for action, norms of conduct or goals of endeavor in their lives seeing them as generally prescriptive in all their values reflection and decisions, and they commend them so to others
AS we can see, values can be approached from a number of perspectives, but what transpires is that values are normative in the sense that they can control or govern the way we do things, they can be desired and desirable This is a distinction between what people actually desire and what they think they ought to desire Further they are shared both at the individual and collective levels Therefore, it may be safe to say that a textbook writer shares many values with his or her fellow countrymen, and at the same time is subjected to an influence of the values they have Values are so important, Brown (2007: 227) pointed out, that many countries tried to introduce to their students the official systems of core values through their ‘values education’, which they believed their people should share These values might include:
For Australian:
Care and compassion, Doing your best, Fair go, Freedom, Honesty and trustworthiness, Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Understanding, tolerance,