Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis

Abstract

Building on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, Foucault's theory of discourse, Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics and Martin's theory of activity sequences, this book defines discourses as frameworks for the interpretation of reality and presents detailed and explicit methods for reconstructing these frameworks through text analysis. There are methods for analyzing the representation of social action, social actors and the timings and spatial locations of social practices as well as methods for analyzing how the purposes, legitimations and moral evaluations of social practices can be, and are, constructed in discourse. Discourse analytical categories are linked to sociological theories to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis, and a variety of examples demonstrate how they can be used to this end. The final chapters apply aspects of the book's methodological framework to the analysis of multimodal texts such as visual images and children's toys.