Text of Report GROUP 4

Approaches to Discourse: Interactional Sociolinguists and Critical Discourse Analysis

Interactional Sociolinguists

 Interactional sociolinguistics is an approach to discourse analysis that studies how people use
language in face-to-face interaction; specifically it focuses on how people manage social identities
and social activities as they interact.
 Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) developed as the expression of John Gumperz’s approach to
research, and it usually focuses on face-to-face interactions in which there are significant
differences in the participants’ sociolinguistic resources and/or institutional power.
 IS constitutes a comprehensive framework for engaging with the empirical specifics required for
any social science aligning with practice theory (Ortner 2006), and more particularly, it is a central
pillar within linguistic ethnography, encouraging researchers to “roll up [their] linguistic sleeves
and drill down to the detail of social problems” (Auer & Roberts 2011:381), making optimum use of
the sensitising frameworks available in the (sub-)disciplines focusing on language.
 “Hymes outlined the broad goals of sociolinguistics research, Gumperz concentrated on concrete
evidence of sociolinguistic methodology in action” (Sarangi 2011:377).
 Interactional sociolinguistics has a theoretical approach to language use and an accompanying
methodological perspective.
 Put in another way, interactional sociolinguistics holds that because of the incompleteness of talk,
all language users rely on other knowledge that is not communicated (but inferred): this is known
as extracommunicative knowledge.
 Consequently, words can be said to have indexical meaning, (a concept used by Garfinkel's
ethnomethodology and it is this meaning that interactive conversationalists need to utilise when
interpreting talk.
 Interactional sociolinguistics thus tries to describe how people in a conversation identify
extracommunicative elements. It then analyses conversations to see if the contextualisation has
worked in the production and reception of talk and whether that influences subsequent
interaction. The concepts of notions of contextualization cues and conversational inferencing
makes interactional sociolinguistics useful for exploring how talk and culture come together to
create meaning.
 Interactional sociolinguistics differs from ethnography of communication, which also argues that
talk is contextually and culturally embedded, because ethnography of communication does not
specify 'how sociocultural and linguistic knowledge are systematically linked in the communication
of meaning' (Bailey 2008)
 Interactional sociolinguistics investigates how 'contextualization cues' are used to adapt
conversational style to different situations.
 Cues usually involve multiple features that clarify what might otherwise be ambiguous content of
utterances.
 Cues and inferential patterns are acquired through prolonged and intensive face-to-face
interaction in particular cultural settings and contextualization conventions vary across cultures
and sub-cultures.
  Jürgen Jaspers (2011) noted that: Usually, words and cues operate in clusters to help build a social
persona or a social role.... The continual operation of such clusters eventually gives rise to what we
call registers or styles, such as manager talk, youthful talk, local talk, etc.
 The methodology adopted by interactional sociolinguists involves close discourse analysis of video
or audio recordings of interaction.
 Interactional sociolinguistics imitates conversation analysis (see Section 6.2) in using detailed, line-
by-line analysis of recorded talk. In many cases, the transcription of talk resembles the detailed
nuanced transcriptions of conversation analysis (CASE STUDY Transcribed conversation).
 Benjamin Bailey (2008) provides a useful summary: Like other perspectives, such as indexicality,
that focus on the intersection of talk, culture, and meaning, interactional sociolinguistics is
fundamentally interpretive, rather than predictive. With its eclectic toolbox and unabashedly
functional orientation, interactional sociolinguistics lacks the theoretical austerity of many
approaches to interaction and meaning.

Critical discourse analysis

 Critical discourse analysis aims to uncover ideology and power in discourse by understanding the
relationship between textual features and larger social practices. It explores how conversations
and language perpetuate social and political inequalities through different strategies, tactics and
structures.
 According to Tuen van Dijk (2015): Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is discourse analytical research
that primarily studies the way social-power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
legitimated, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context
 As an analytical practice, CDA is not one direction of research among many others in the study of
discourse.
 In essence critical discourse analysis is about the critical deconstruction of messages (from the
powerful to the less powerful) to show how they legitimate or reproduce a dominant ideological
perspective.
 Simon Moss (2008, np) suggested that critical discourse analysts are concerned to reveal how
public discourse perpetuates inequalities
 Moss suggested that critical discourse analysis, despite its variations of approach, are (a)
underpinned by an overt political stance (b) focuses on how the dominant parties maintain their
power (c) attempts to uncover the ideologies that underpin discourse.
 Fairclough and Wodak (1997) listed the main tenets of critical discourse analysis as:

CDA addresses social problems.

Power relations are discursive.

Discourse constitutes society and culture.

Discourse does ideological work.

Discourse is historical.

The link between text and society is mediated.

Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory.

Linguistic and social resources

Critical discourse analysis takes as axiomatic the idea that there is unequal access to institutionally
controlled linguistic and social resources. Van Dijk (2015)

Van Dijk (2015) suggested three interrelated questions for critical discourse analysis research:

How do powerful groups control the text and context of public discourse?

How does such power discourse control the minds and actions of less powerful groups, and what are the
social consequences of such control, such as social inequality?

What are the properties of the discourse of powerful groups, institutions, and organizations and how are
such properties forms of power abuse?

Major areas of critical discourse analysis

 There are several fields of study that have been a focus for critical discourse analysis, including,
inter alia, gender inequality, racism, politics and mass media.

1. Gender inequality

2. Racism

3. Political Discourse

4. Media Discourse

Criticisms and comparisons of critical discourse analysis with other forms of discourse analysis

 Critical discourse analysis differs considerably from conversation analysis. The underlying
epistemology and intention are quite different.

Conclusion

There is no particular method that distinguishes critical discourse analysis from other forms of discourse
analysis. The key difference is a critical attitude. There are many types of critical discourse analysis but all,
in one way or another, explore how discourse legitimises power and reasserts the status quo.

Referencea:

Introduction to Discourse Analysis. qualityresearchinternational.

https://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/methodology/RRW6pt9Criticaldiscourseanalysis.php

https://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/methodology/RRW6pt6Interactionalsociolinguistics.php

Group 4 members
Ramos, Nica G.

Ramos, Karen Joy V.

Luyon, Honney Glaize G.

Cabaltica, Jephine P.

Cabico, Mary Cris G.

Ballesteros, May Ann Joy

Valdez, Edwardo B.

Magalag, Roxan G.

Bergonia, Queenie

Corpuz, Xyrene Jane Angelique