Critical Discourse Analysis

In the Dijk (1993) article, he discusses how the managing of the ‘mind of others is essentially a function of talk and text’. This presupposes an ontological statement regarding the legitimacy of the dominant group’s management over the masses. Groups may enact legitimate power over others, manipulating their minds in ways that are beneficial and necessary for the submissive group to function. Or, the dominant group may enact illegitimate power, manipulating and managing the group in a way that makes them entirely submissive and at the mercy of the dominant group. The function of a critical discourse analysis is to enact significant social change, Dijk even discusses that this metric is used to measure the success of a CDA project. But how are we to untangle what power or dominance is legitimate, and which are illegitimate? Also, how can we enact social change when we’re not sure of the function of the power relation?

Consider a news channel that broadcasts horrifying images of a war (this is a Completely and hypothetical News Network). We as CD analysts may view this as having power over the populace, managing their minds, and imposing dominance over them. However, if we unpacked this belief a little more, we may begin to see that these images are used to ‘rally the troops’, or to garner nationalism- which may hold significant value in an unsteady world. The news network may indeed hold power over the masses, and yes, they may even illegitimately manipulate the minds of the masses, but if we don’t understand the subtending goal of the news network – to promote nationalism – our goal of enacting social change may cause serious disruption to society.

Further, the notion of global communication channels was not addressed, and I feel these are of extreme importance to a discussion on discourses. Text and talk can travel instantly across the globe, but the values and meanings of these discourses do not travel similarly. How are we to enact social change when we a) need to figure out both the legitimacy of the power dynamic, and the ways in which the power dynamic functions, and b) how this discourse proliferates across the globe, and whether we would be creating injustices by projecting locally valid assumptions onto the ways of addressing those involved in these international flows.

Hi Everyone! And welcome to our new members!
This past week’s readings on ethnography were really very interesting to me. Although understanding some (very) basic elements to ethnography in anthropological terms, I had never quite thought about it in relation to any of my own research, partly because I assumed that it was something left for those anthropological folks to do!

I realise now that even if you are only doing a survey, or interview, etc, that there is most likely to be ethnographical elements to your research that need to be considered. To make my point, my research interest revolves around resettled coastal/ island communities in Newfoundland, formalized collecting institutions (such as museums and archives), and representation of these now extinct communities in their holdings. A component of the research would involve surveying resettled individuals because they are now remote and living no longer as a community unit (some remained in Newfoundland while others have gone to different parts of Canada). So, I am not dealing in a research environment that is bound to 1 geographical place, however the notion of being accepted by these communities now in diaspora is of great importance to me. Without their trust, I will not be able to gain a holistic picture of how they remember or want to remember their lost homes, and whether contemporary collecting practices in formal institutions is reflective of their culture/ traditions.... My approach to even structuring (both in format and tone) the survey, and follow-up interviews, is changing and my approach to accessing these individuals will have to be thought out very differently.

Week 6 – Interviews, Focus Groups, and Observation

Truth be told, I knew from the get-go that my sensibilities would predispose me to research questions suggesting a fit with canonical based methods of inquiry and analysis. That said, I read portions of this week’s reading list with an easy sense of appreciation and empathy.

While Luker’s discussion concerning the refinement of an interview schedule (question clumps, turn signals, and “cool down” questions), the need to create “slots” as a means to test schedule related relevance and breath, and the need to be mindful of one’s appearance was of general interest, I felt a greater sense of engagement in the follow-up discussion concerning focus groups; for example, the comment (p. 183) concerning their capacity to enable an abundance of “slots” leading to a rich flow of data and very likely, a satisfying experience for the researcher (p. 187). I also found useful the comment concerning content analysis as a means to recognize “discursive shifts” – those times when an alternate frame of reference underpinning a particular dialogue becomes the norm (p. 189).

The effort to stay engaged with the Shaffir and Stebbins readings was, as a function of the illustrations (faith, football, and baseball) also an easy effort. I found myself easily absorbed in the balancing act each described while working to build trust and a credible projection of competency concerning subject-relevant knowledge, versus the understanding that sound research necessitates discernible detachment.

Michael Watchorn

Interviewing

Maybe it was just me being a little naive, but I never thought that there would be so much prep work that goes into using interviews as a research method! This may be because the only type of “interviews” (operationalization!) that I have had experience with are those of the job and volunteer positions variety. For these types of interviews, it seems that they have a rigid interview structure, consisting of questions and a predefined list of suitable answers. In this way, it is not at all similar to interviews used for research, where it is often valuable for the interviewer to discover something new and unheard of.

On the other hand, “fitting in” is something that can be applied to both types of interviews. When interviewing for a volunteer position, it is important to establish a connection with those who you will be working with. When it comes to conducting research, being able to fit in is essential in gaining the trust of participants so that the interviewer can hopefully extract the most honest responses from them.

Week Six

Week Five

Week five posts here please!

Week Four

Post comments for week four here please!