2.5 A review of some previous works on Adichie’s novels
2.6.2 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
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(Figure 2.3: Martin and Rose, 2004: p.4)
In the above diagram (figure 2.3), Martin and Rose (2004) illustrate grammar, discourse and social activity as a series of circles, in which discourse nestles within social activity, and grammar does same within the discourse, suggesting a three complementary outlook within a single complex phenomenon. What is apparent in the above postulations is the insinuation that social contexts are realised as texts (discourses) which are in turn recognised as sequences of grammatical structures which operate in texts as part of the social process.
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for designating particular ways of representing particular aspects of social life. The thrust of the above consideration is that, discourse refers to a larger instance of language use;
and these include either written or spoken aspects which provide opportunities for the analyst to work with larger instances of language use rather than a single sentence (Grenoble, 2000; Brown and Yule, 1983).
Attempts aimed at associating discourse with communicative instances that demonstrate a larger use of language first came into broad use, following the publication of series of papers by Zelling Harris as from 1952. These publications were said to have encouraged the emergence of transformational grammar in the late 1950s. Harris’
analyses of discourse were based on the concern that formal equivalence relations between the sentences in a coherent discourse are made explicit by using sentence transformations to put the text in a canonical form. The analysis of discursive events as formal equivalence relations by Harris progressed over the next decades into a scientific analysis of language which culminated into revelation of information structures in sublanguages of science; like that of immunology, and a fully articulated theory of linguistics (Harris et al., 1989). During this period most linguists pursued a succession of elaborate theories of the sentence–level syntax and semantics, borrowing greatly from the ideas of Harris. Although Harris was more interested in the analysis of the whole discourse, he, however, did not work out a comprehensive model as a means for carrying out this analysis. It was much later that James Lannault, after building on Harris ideas to work out a logical mathematical rule that transcended the simple sentence structure, came out with an all-inclusive model of discourse analysis. And by late 1960s and 1970s, a combination of approaches to form a new cross-discipline of discourse analysis began to develop within the social sciences.
Emanating from these cross-disciplinary explorations of language use were considerations that the basis of discourse analysis therefore is the examination of the structure of the text above the sentence level (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975). Such investigations were said to require paying attention to text’s form; its composition at the levels of phonology, grammar, lexical constituents and other higher levels of its textuality in terms of exchange systems, generic structures, and the context (Fairclough, 2007). The focus of analysis of discourse from this stand point was indeed truly above the sentence level.
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The above argument that discourse analysis is an exercise above the sentence level is reinforced by Paltridge’s (2006) assertion that discourse analysis focuses on the network of language further than the word, clause, phrase, and the sentence. This consideration seems to have informed Gregory’s (2008) suggestion that discourse analysis challenges us to move from considering language as an abstract event to an instance which allows us to see our world as having meaning in a particular historical epoch, social or political condition. This argument relates language to the socio-cultural contexts in which it is used. The merger of language with the socio-cultural practices, according to Fairclough (1995), draws attention to the dependence of texts upon the various bits of variables that sprang from the context in form of linguistic resources made available within the network of the discourse. These resources are provided by the context which is determined by historical and socio-cultural attributes.
Paltridge (2006: 2) submits further that:
Discourse analysis examines how use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of language has upon social identities and relations. It [DA] also considers how views of the world and identities are constructed through the use of discourse.
This implies that discourse analysis considers the ways in which the use of language presents different views and divergent ways of understanding the world and how these are influenced by the relationships existing between the participants.
Apparently, Fairclough’s (1995) argument about what discourse stands for seems not only to have armoured Paltridge’s resolve but expands this argument to consider a discursive event as an existing chain of relations, which make the interpretation of discourse to be dependent on three major discursive practices. He suggests that the discursive practices include: (i) its manifestation in linguistic form (text) (ii) its instantiation of a social practice (political, ideological, among others) and (iii) its focus on socially constructed process of production, distribution and consumption which determine how texts are made, circulated and used. The focus of this argument seems to have suggested that texts are product of language, reflecting larger patterns of social practices as they operate in the world, and its entire process of production is therefore dependent on these socio-cultural practices.
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Consequently, the focus of discourse introduces series of variables that have allowed conceptual contradictions to set in. Wetherell et al. (2009) in the face of these challenges draw attention to the fact that, discourse analysis does not provide any tangible answer to a project, a statement or a method of research; but rather enables a revelation of hidden motivations beneath texture of texts, and therein the stimulus for choice of a particular method of research to interpret texts. As such discourse analysis will not, thus, provide absolute answers to specific problems, but instead facilitate an understanding of the conditions behind specific hitches and make us realise that the essence of that problem and its resolutions lie in its assumptions that allow the existence of that problem. With these types of arguments, the ideas about language are expanded to move from its formal properties to embrace theories from social practices. Harris (1951), who is acclaimed to have been the first person to use the word ‘discourse’ to imply a sequence of the utterance, was quoted to have defended this, by asserting that:
Stretches longer than one utterance is not usually considered in current descriptive linguistics… the linguist usually considers the interrelations of elements only within one utterance at a time. This yields a possible description of the material, since the interrelations of elements within each utterance (or utterance type) are worked out, and any longer discourse is describable as succession of utterances, i.e. a succession element having stated interrelations. This restriction means that nothing is generally said about the interrelations among whole utterances within a sequence (Ahmad, 2009: 1).
In analysing the above assertion, Grenoble (2000) observes that Harris has interestingly ruled out the kind of study which discourse analysis aims to do. He argues further that Harris’ view seems to focus on the elements within an expression which made him to define discourse as a sequence of utterance; the study of interrelations between utterances within a discourse. This suggestion seems to have sailed through because as Harris propositions developed, the art of discourse analysis spurred the emergence of different approaches which threw more light on the nature of the various networks at work in the textual milieu of discourses. These developments also brought about more predictable analytical principles aimed at providing lucid and accurate focus in the analysis of
‘‘interrelations’’ in discourses. This development also facilitated the inclusion of new methods of analysis of discourses which were different from the ones prior to periods which regarded discourse analysis as ways of thinking about a problem. Grenoble (2000),
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for instance, suggests that the scope of a discourse requires much more information than the theoretical kits provided by Harris and his associates.
Apparently, to make analysis of the discourse to be more focused marked the emergence of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which considers the discourse as a social construct. CDA, according to Fairclough (1992), van Dijk (1998), Rogers (2004), and Paltridge (2006), is designed with the capabilities of taking the analysis of the discourse to a higher level of description for a better and deeper understanding of texts;
and is said to provide greater degrees of explanations of why a text is as it is, and what it is aiming to do. It is further argued that, CDA approach substantiates not only the interrelationships that exist within the discourse, but its relationship with the context from which it germinates. And by using different modes of analysis to describe or interpret a discourse, CDA offers deeper explanations about the character of these relationships (Rogers, 2004).
van Dijk, in one of his works titled Ideology, is of the opinion that issues such as ideologies are formulated, reinforced and are reproduced in the textual networks of discourses. This implies, therefore, that the only means with which these textual networks in the discourse would truly be understood is through the use of CDA method of analysis which provides the best means to investigate the nexus in the texture of texts by
‘challenging some of the hidden and out-of-sight social, cultural and political ideologies and values that underlie texts’ (Paltridge, 2006: 186). This must have been the basis for emphasis by discourse analysts, like Fairclough (1995), to argue that CDA is not just interested in the character of linguistic systems in discourses, but the manner in which these networks are used to achieve social goals, and the roles they play in social maintenance and change in the textual networks of discourses. Bloor and Bloor (2007) submit further that, CDA examines social practices and customs in the society so as to discover and describe how these social practices work. This implies that, CDA analyzes these by making explicit those discourse aspects that underline the various interactions in the discourse that construct these social variables. Consequently, through the process of deconstruction; breaking the discourse into its components part, CDA analyzes not just the lexico-grammatical networks in the texture of these texts but reveals the stream of associations and implications arising from the nexus of these relations, especially when foregrounding means are applied in the linguistic milieu of the discourse. Based on the above premise therefore, discourse is considered both as a product of the society, and as
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part of a dynamic and changing force that is constantly influencing and reconstructing social practices and values, either positively or negatively in the society.
Of all the analysts from Lancaster School of Linguistics who contributed to the emergence of method of analysis, Fairclough is said to be foremost among these scholars that engineered the formation of CDA from the combination of perspectives from different disciplines in humanities and social sciences, such as critical linguistics.
Fairclough developed a three dimensional framework with the aim to map three separate forms of analysis into one for the purpose of studying the discourse. These frameworks include the analysis of (spoken and written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (process of text production, distribution and consumption), and the analysis of discursive events as instances of socio-cultural practice (Fairclough, 1995). Fairclough (2000) asserts further that, CDA mode of operation attempts to unite, and establish the relationship between three levels of analysis: (a) the actual context; (b) the discursive practices (that is the process involved in writing, reading and or listening) and (c) the influence of the larger social context on the text and the discursive practices in the process of text creation. McGregor (2003) observes further that the text or the discourse, therefore, refers to a record of an event where communication involves presentation of facts and beliefs, construction of identities of participants in the communication process, and the various other strategies used to frame the texture of the message. A discursive practice refers to rules, norms and mental models of acceptable social behaviour in specific roles or relationships used to produce, receive, and interpret the message.
Apparently, what construes the above assertion is the premise that, in spite of CDA’s attempts to be more focused in its methods of operation unlike discourse analysis (DA), it seems not to have, as observed by van Dijk (2000), a unitary theoretical framework as a specific method of studying the various networks in the discourse; rather it encompasses a wide range of approaches in its mode of operation. CDA draws from these pull of approaches, suitable principles to map out some useful and varied dimensions in the texture of written texts (McGregor, 2003).
However, despite its encompassing theoretical nature, and the divergent character which the analysis of the texture of discourse has assumed, the basis of CDA still depends heavily on the principles and operations of linguistics; which offer its language interpretative resources to the analysis of the discourse. As observed by Fairclough (1995:188), CDA utilises:
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…linguistic analysis in an extended sense to cover not only the traditional levels of analysis within linguistics (phonology, grammar up to the level of sentence, and vocabulary and semantics) but also analysis of textual organization above the sentence level, including inter-sentence cohesion and various aspects of the structure of texts which have been investigated by discourse analysts and conversation analyst (including properties of dialogue such as organization of turn-taking).
This implies therefore that CDA handles language as a type of social practice that includes many other forms of textual resources used as means of significations of social realities in texts (Dellinger, 1995). Apparently, CDA provides, in its theoretical and descriptive modes, critical approach to discourse analysis; as it accounts for its production, internal structure, and overall organisation of its texture in relation to the social practices. The essence for this kind of resourcefulness, therefore, is:
… to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a)discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes, to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles for power (Fairclough, 1995:132).
The above suggestion seems to have embraced so many relevant dimensions of our arguments. This must have influenced Locke’s (2004) description of this brand of analysis as a scholarly orientation with potentials to transform the modus operandi of a range of research methodologies. However, in whatever dimension these postulations presuppose, the concern of CDA is not disparage in the sense that these arguments still lead to considerations of the discourse as a social construct elucidated by the conglomeration of language and other qualities in the textual networks of discourses.
Apparently, as Locke (2004) suggests, since language is an ineradicable characteristic of social interaction, it is therefore still the concern of CDA. With language as its most valuable asset, CDA, according to Paltridge (2006) and Kress (1991), connects the socio-cultural practices to the discursive features in the textual quality and other assumptions that are highlighted in the discourse. That is, CDA is interested in unravelling what people say and do in their discourse in relation to their views about the world, themselves and in relationship with each other, which are demonstrated in discourses through the
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resources of language. This entails that in CDA, the relationship between language and meaning is never arbitrary in that the choice of a particular genre and or rhetorical strategy brings with it particular presuppositions, meanings, ideologies and intentions (Kress, 1991). The interest of CDA, therefore, is to unite the various discursive features in texts with the socio-cultural practices that the text reflects, reinforces and produces (Paltridge, 2006; Martin and Rose, 2001 and Fairclough, 1995). This argument is presented in a diagram form:
Figure 2.4: Text as socio-cultural practice (Fairclough, 1992:73 and Paltridge, 2006:184)
The figure (2.4) above, is showing the relationship that exists between text, discourse and socio-cultural practice from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. The text as presented in this instance arises from discourse which sprouts from socio-cultural practices.
Evidently, CDA takes us into what Riggenbach (1999) considers as a better-quality depiction of textual situations that are often left out during a more micro-level descriptions of language use. CDA uses principles from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), to analyse the social and cultural settings of language so as to account for the reason as to why particular discursive choices are made in an instance of language use in the texture of texts. And in the process of this analysis, CDA takes analysis of discourses from mere descriptions to explanations and explication of how and why language users adapt such discursive strategies in their everyday spoken and written interactions (Paltridge, 2006).
The above submissions seem to suggest that, to truly have an in-depth knowledge of the implication of language use in discourses, therefore, implies recourse to linguistics, which concerns itself with, and provides analysis of language. In our subsequent analysis, therefore, emphasis is placed on the application of linguistic theories, specifically Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), in the operations of CDA.