Fairclough saw discourse as spoken and written language used in social practice, thus formed

the basis of CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) framework in studying the influence of power

relations on discourse, through social and linguistic analysis. Two case studies are discussed

in the following in relation to the use of Fairclough’s CDA approach in analysing politic and

education-related topics in formal discourse.

Thomas Huckin, an English professor at University of Utah, used his own correspondence

with an elected official as the subject of analysis by employing CDA framework in

explaining the discourse of condescension that is generally found in most political discourse

of the officials. In his letter, Thomas stated several reasons to justify his objection over the

government’s decision to slash the education funding and transfer the funds to a massive

project of road building project. In return, Thomas received a letter as an official response

from Senator Clayton Johnson. Thomas carefully analysed the letter and how the response

was structured. He then deduced three observations as to what makes the correspondence a

good example of the discourse of condescension. First, Thomas noticed the evasion , or “the

textual silence”, in the response from directly addressing the points raised by Thomas in his

first letter. Thomas raised several reasons why government should not sacrifice education

funding to finance the road building project, and suggested the raise of fees on road users

(toll or taxes). The letter from Senator Clayton, however, did not touch on any of the

substance or topics, instead, provided an epistolary brush-offs which lead to Thomas’ second

observation. It was noticed that the official’s response is comprised of a pastiche of different

discourse, mainly the bureaucratese opening and closing of the sentence, the fortune-cookie

discourse and the paternalistic discourse of the sentences that formed body of the text.

Thomas made his third observation on the letter’s ambiguity in aspect of speech-act. The

absence of personal pronouns (I and You) in some sentences prompted the need to make
inferences on the statements, in which Thomas realized that the senator was implying that

Thomas was “not truly objective”, does not understand the issue from “all of different sides”,

and “lack of correct information” (Huckin, 2002). This observation is further supported from

the repetitive use of words such as “opinion” and “false perceptions” in the text (Huckin,

2002). It may not be the official’s intention to come across offensive, however, the politeness

strategy failed miserably in its delivery. After the analysis done on microscopic and

macroscopic level, Thomas concluded there is an “ideological incoherence” (Huckin, 2002)

in what Senator Clayton represented himself in public as someone determined to “get the

governments off our back” in contrast to his official response in the letter, which Thomas

claimed that the official exudes air of superiority, and that makes him no different than other

politicians (Huckin, 2002). The purpose of Thomas’ analysis was to cultivate the civic

literacy among civilians, especially young adults in participating the local politics. Through

the CDA framework, it could be used as tool in honing rhetorical sensibilities and in

developing acute sense of awareness of the power abuse by politicians through the

observation of language used.

In a paper presented by Taylor (2002), she examined how CDA would be valuable in

analysing the process of policy making as well as how it could be used for other social goals,

which would in turn further social change. She cites Fairclough, stating that his many

researches have established that CDA looks at the relationships between texts and the cultural

or social representations of the world. In her paper, she studies education policy research

specifically, and calls policy making an “arena of struggle over meaning”, using a CDA

approach as it investigates the usage of language amongst power relations. Taylor uses

interdiscursive and linguistic analysis to analyse various policy texts that were taken from the
Education Queensland’s 2010 strategy, which was produced in 2000, to reform Queensland’s

state education. In her analysis, she found change to be a major theme, with students,

teachers, and schools changing for the better. There was a tone of uncertainty throughout one

of the texts analysed as well, as seen through the phrases “a challenge facing education”,

among other examples given. It can be inferred that the uncertainty seen in the text was

inserted so that the theme of change would be one that is welcomed. Another major theme

that was present was globalisation and flexibility, both of which were linked. Taylor stated

that the two themes above came under neo-liberal and social democratic discourses, which

reinforced the link to public communities and how education is supposed to serve the public.

On a linguistic perspective, there were many declarative statements that were present in the

text, as well as an urgent undertone throughout, as seen with the usage of words like “should”

and “must”. Furthermore, another dominant theme seen in the texts was the future, along with

the vision for the state. All in all, the main themes mentioned in Taylor’s analysis all tie

together for policy texts. Policy making is so that the welfare of the state will continue to be

maintained, and these themes highlight that these policies intend to make the lives of the

general public better through education. However, the researcher also found that there was a

subtle discursive shift. The voice of the active citizen, also known as social democratic

discourse, although mentioned, was a minority. The power relations can be seen here as well,

as the active citizen is not given any power in policy making.

In conclusion, CDA can be a useful tool when analysing and researching policy change, as

well as studies on rhetorical strategy used in political discourse by politicians. Both of these

issues are related to our society at large, and are important in driving social change.

(971 words)
References

Huckin, T. (2002). Critical discourse analysis and the discourse of condescension. In E.

Barton and G. Stygall (Eds.), ​Discourse studies in composition​. Retrieved on 27th July from

http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/Pdf_Articles/Huckin_Article.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiJ8

__X5sjcAhXLOY8KHTJ0B2kQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw3ahKkVNyLAvhDNRn4H

vpG9

Taylor, S. (2002). Critical Discourse Analysis in education policy research - to what ends?,

AARE Annual Conference, Brisbane, 2002.