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Critical discourse analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a branch of linguistics that seeks to understand how and why certain texts affect readers and hearers. Through the analysis of grammar, it aims to uncover the 'hidden ideologies' that can influence a reader or hearer's view of the world. Analysts have looked at a wide variety of spoken and written texts – political manifestos, advertising, rules and regulations – in an attempt to demonstrate how text producers, use language (wittingly or not) in a way that could be ideologically significant.
Many of the tools used in CDA are drawn from Stylistics, which looks at the way literary texts create meaning and poetic effects. CDA uses a similar type of analysis to look at (mainly) non-literary texts. There is no set group of tools that must be used, and researchers are discovering new ways of analysing language all the time. However, traditional tools used include modality, transitivity and nominalisation, while more recent additions include naming, opposition and negation.
Media texts are a common subject of analysis in Critical Discourse Analysis. The following articles from two British newspapers – one published in the tabloid The Daily Mail, the other in the broadsheet The Independent– are analyzed. The articles represent each publication's take on a much-publicized British news story that broke on 19th February 2013, when the media picked up on a speech that the novelist Hilary Mantel gave for a London Review of Books lecture at the British Museum on February 4th. In her lecture, Royal Bodies, Mantel discussed the nature of the British monarchy, Kate Middleton's role within it having become the wife of the heir to the throne, and the media's treatment of Middleton.
When, later in the month, comments about Middleton and her portrayal in the press were reported in the newspapers, many articles focused on apparently unfavourable things that Mantel had said about Middleton. This prompted outrage from some at the insults allegedly made by Mantel and, from others, suggestions that the reportage had misinterpreted Mantel's comments. Many suggested that the press's coverage of the 'controversy' was not only biased against Mantel, but actively sought to misrepresent what she had said. This controversy makes the articles an interesting subject for a CDA analysis, which can investigate the language used to test the veracity of these different reactions to the texts.
Many CDA analyses are divided into sections corresponding to the tools that are used: for ease of reading, this sample analysis will be split likewise, with a concluding section at the end.
Naming
Naming looks at the contents of noun phrases – the units of language that name things in the world, e.g. A wolf, those cumulonimbus clouds, his appalling lack of respect. The ideological interest here comes from the fact that when we apply a noun phrase to something, we label it and use language to presuppose its existence: if someone refers to the immoral, adulterous celebrity, then they are presupposing that this individual exists, and that immorality and adultery are part of the package that is that person.
Naming is of interest in the Mail and Independent articles as they focus on two individuals – Hilary Mantel and Kate Middleton: how these individuals are named could give an indication as to whom the articles would like the reader to sympathise with. Unsurprisingly, each article refers to both by their full names; however, there are also occasions where the two are named in different ways. Notably, the Mail consistently refers to Mantel by her surname, and Middleton by her forename: "Mantel... dismissed Kate as a 'machine-made princess." The less formal way in which Middleton is referred to here could make the reader feel closer to Middleton. The Independent makes the same distinction, whilst also referring to Mantel as "Ms. Mantel": the title 'Ms.' comes with certain connotations, not least amongst them that the woman bearing it might be 'unweddable', creating a stark contrast with the woman the article refers to as "Prince William's wife-to-be".
Also, of interest is the way the news story – essentially Mantel's speech – is named. Observations made by Mantel, which to those present might have been heard as part of a lengthy, considered, formal lecture, are referred to by the Mail as "an astonishing and venomous critique of Middleton" and "a bitter attack on the Duchess of Cambridge", and by the Independent – more soberly – as "a withering assessment of Kate Middleton". Here, the negative adjectives 'venomous', 'bitter' and 'withering' suggest that Mantel was far from reserved in her remarks, and give the reader little room to determine their own view of her comments. Note also that while Mantel herself insisted that her comments were about perceptions of Kate Middleton, each instance of naming places Middleton in a grammatical position post-modifying the nouns 'critique', 'attack' and 'assessment', making her appear very much the subject of Mantel's remarks.
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