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Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research

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After months of walking in circles, trying to find a guide for analysing texts and at the same time following Fairclough's views on critical discourse analysis, I found this one and bought it at once. It saved my life! You won't find the detail and specificity of this one in any other of Fairclough's works, which are mainly conclusive but not detailed when it comes to specific texts.

This book focuses on text analysis, which is a part of Fairclough's wider development for a methodology of social research, called critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Fairclough's argument for including detailed text analysis in his project, is that, contrary to a widely-spread tradition inspired by the works of Foucault, that mainly relies on social theory for analysing discourse, discourse analysts shouldn't be limited to the traditional ways of theoretical social research, but instead they should be able to oscillate between the analysis at an abstract, structural level (orders of discourse) and what happens in particular texts.

With the help of work from various authors, such as Pierre Bourdieu, L. Chouliaraki, A. Giddens, J. Habbermans, M. Hallyday, and many others, Fairclough develops the framework of detailed linguistic analysis of texts, explaining first that there are three types of expressing meaning: Action, Representation and Identities, which can be unfold respectively in terms of the different Genres, Discourses and Styles that are present on discourses.

The book addresses each one of these aspects, along with examples from texts of public domain (interviews, political discourses, advertisements), covering selected social research issues, such as discourse in new capitalism, governance, social structures, hegemony, legitimation, etc. In particular, fairclough shows how linguistic and grammatical features in particular texts account for evidence of the different purposes and constructed meanings, not easily spotted at first sight.

A good source for students and researches in language and discourse, interested in processes of meaning making and social construction.

I bought this book for use in a class on rhetoric. It is difficult reading, but if you stick with it, it can help to give you a new perspcetive on thinking about the discourse around you.