Preview

Critical Discourse Analysis Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
702 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Critical Discourse Analysis Essay
Academic Statement of Purpose
The need for critical discourse analysis is crucial now more than ever because of the sheer mass of information our society encounters on a daily basis. I hope to demystify some of these messages through the use of critical discourse analysis in both my future research and my career. My work in discourse analysis seeks to identify those who are powerful, the construct of power they rely on, the social indexing employed, and the implications of their words for those without power. Currently, I am analyzing the American presidential campaign announcement as a speech genre. Using Tannen’s (1998), van Dijk’s (1997), Chilton’s (2004) and Fairclough’s (2013) frameworks for political discourse analysis, conscious manipulation of collective mental models through thematic, rhetorical, and indexical structures can be observed in this speech genre. This particular speech act is an introduction to where the candidate believes the locus of power is how the candidate can persuade an audience into their narrative, and what shared social cognition is necessary to support this candidate. I believe critical discourse analysis of
…show more content…
(2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. Routledge.

Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2013). Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students. Routledge. Hoffman, C., & Tyler, A. (2008). United States legal discourse: Legal English for foreign LLMs. St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West.

Tannen, D. (1998). The argument culture: Moving from debate to dialogue. New York: Random House.

Tannen, D. (2006). You're wearing that?: Understanding mothers and daughters in conversation. New York: Random House.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What is political discourse analysis. Belgian journal of linguistics,
11(1),

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    6. The four parts of a successful persuasive message are attention, interest, desire, and action.…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The argument of this TV commercial is that the overall quality of life for men will improve if they use Old Spice deodorant. The audience includes women that are in a relationship with a man and is concerned about the way their significant other smells. The goal of this advertisement is to get women to buy Old Spice deodorant for their significant other. The commercial tries to accomplish its goal of getting women to buy Old Spice deodorant for men in several elements of rhetoric.…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Argument Culture” is a persuasive essay written by Professor Deborah Tannen. As a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, Tannen experience in language leads her to write many books in this field. Tannen uses “The Argument Culture” essay to persuade her audience that this society’s way of looking at debate encourages an “adversarial frame of mind” (Tannen, 305). Three of Tannen’s main points include; polarized views in the news, the use of “war metaphors’ by media to catch the readers eye, and even in the language mankind uses in everyday life. Tannen’s essay also includes different ways to look at these each of these situations that may help reduce the debate language that this society uses every day.…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "There's an incredible rush to judgment in this case," defense attorney Michael Fee told reporters outside the courthouse.…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    rhetorical analysis essay

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the story “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards’ purpose was to convert and make born again the congregation of Puritan sinners. He was able to achieve this with his eye opening sermons to the congregation. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Edwards uses rhetorical devices such as diction, imagery, and tone to contribute to the effectiveness of his sermon.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    John Gatto Papaer

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Cited: Wood, Nancy, and Miller James. Perspectives On Argument. 7th ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2012. Print…

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    • 884 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “The Carnivore’s Dilemma”, an essay by Nicolette Hanh Niman, incorporates rhetorical elements, such as logos, ethos, and rhetorical questions, in an attempt to convince the audience that meat itself is not the root of global warming. Written from a rancher’s point of view, the essay relies on studies and logic to prove itself. Niman starts out with a short acknowledgement that the meat industry has a hand in the increasingly noticeable global climate change. She then quickly changes gears, stating that the studies that show the meat industry is a major player in global warming only take the prevailing methods of producing meat into account and spews facts that show the flip side of the food industry.…

    • 884 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Constructive Criticism

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Linguistics professor and best-selling author, Deborah Tannen explains how “The Argument Culture” wants us to accept that by creating conflict is the best way of getting things done with an adversarial disposition. An essay taken from her book, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue (1988), Tannen expresses her views on having adversarial dialogue between two sides has weakened communication in our society. Although, we live in a society where we are free to express our conflicts openly, Tannen argues that as a society we should seek to find “constructive” ways of settling disputes and differences. In setting out to find truths, Tannen states that we “assume that every issue has two sides” and by having this assumption we begin to “doubt the existence” of any facts. With diminishing face to face communication and increasing use of technology, Tannen believes that these factors “isolate people in a bubble” while the argument culture makes a “defining impact” on society. By adding more dialogue to debates and not to think in twos, Tannen advises we should use our “imaginations and ingenuity” to explore truth and knowledge.…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    I am studying the rally speeches for the leaders of the Labour and Liberal Democrat party’s. Nick Clegg has been the leader of the Liberal Democrat party for 5 years now and Ed Milliband has been the leader of the Labour party for 2 years. Both of these leaders have become unpopular in the public’s eyes: Nick Clegg due to him lying about the raising of tuition fees as well as the negative view from his party as they feel he has disassociated himself from the party objectives in order to conform to a conservative coalition. Ed Milliband is unpopular due to his lack of solid policy projections and no real estimates of what he would do as prime minister, he has left the nation in confusion and doubting his ability. Subsequently both leaders had a lot to gain, or lose, from the party conference. Therefore I chose to study these speeches in order to judge political rhetoric and grammatical features used. I will look at things such as repetition, pronouns, metaphors and rhetorical questions as well as comparing the study to other language and power theories. Alan Finlayson of East Anglia University, theorized on the language used in political speeches and the use of rhetoric is a strong constant throughout. His research has bought up strong pointers also found in my data so I aim to explore his research among other theorists in comparison with my findings.…

    • 2761 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Debate Reflection Essay

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A, Kidd. "How to Debate." The English Speaking Union. N.p.: Oxford Union, 2002. N. pag. Print.…

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Critical Discourse Analysis

    • 2479 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Jan blommaert and Chris Bulcaen makes a brief introduction to the study of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA intends to use social-theoretical method in discourse analysis and is primarily linguistically based (Blommaet &ump; Bulcaen, 2000, p.447). It intends to analyze the structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control through a textual study (Blommaet &ump; Bulcaen, 2000, p.448). Based on the assumption that social discourse is constructed and socially conditioned, CDA explores the power dynamics in this process.…

    • 2479 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Theory of Islamic Contract

    • 11232 Words
    • 45 Pages

    [ 4 ]. Christine Rossini, (1998: 20), “English As a Legal Language”, London, UK, Kluwer Law International Ltd.…

    • 11232 Words
    • 45 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Dijk, T. A. van (2001). "Critical Discourse Analysis." In D. Tannen, D. Schiffrin and H. Hamilton (eds). Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 352-71.…

    • 9017 Words
    • 37 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Translation used to be considered an inter-language transfer of meaning, which is the point of departure for research and study. Many earlier definitions demonstrate this, using source language and target language as their technical terms. Moreover, translation theories strictly confined themselves within the sphere of linguistics. For many years the popular trend in the translation circles had been perfect faithfulness to the original both in content and in form and it had been regarded as the iron criterion as if from the holy Bible for translators to observe. The godly status and the impossible idealistic belief were not altered until new thoughts arose with the respect of consideration of target readers, the unavoidable translator subjectivity and the purpose and function of translations. This thesis, starting to look from new angles such as the accommodation to target cultural conventions, the translator 's consciousness of linguistic and cultural adaptations to make it easy for readers to understand translated works without too much pain and effort, and translation as a purposeful endeavor. Translation is then understood as a much more complicated activity with a much broader scope.…

    • 23846 Words
    • 96 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    There is widespread evidence that greetings are an important part of the communicative competence necessary for being a member of any speech community. They are often one of the first verbal routines learned by children and certainly one of the first topics introduced in foreign language classes. They are also of great interest to analysts of social interaction, who see them as establishing the conditions for social encounters. It is not surprising, then, to find out that there is a considerable number of ethological, linguistic, sociological, and ethnographic studies of greetings. But despite the attention greetings have received in the social sciences, there is to date no generalized definition of greetings and therefore no systematic way for deciding what qualifies as greetings in a particular speech community. Nonetheless, researchers have felt at ease identifying “greetings” in different languages and providing hypotheses about what greetings “do” for or to people.…

    • 3491 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Better Essays