I found it interesting that Dijk in
her essay, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis”, discusses the
relationship between discourse, power, dominance, social inequality and the
position of the discourse analyst. Dijk calls this study domain
“multidisciplinary” and it’s true – so many aspects of social structure are
involved in defining dominance – economical, political, cultural, etc. I am
surprised to hear that not a lot of research has been done on the role text or
talk play on creating the dominance of elites.
Second
of all, Dijk made me think about the American-Cuban article that I am peer
reviewing this week. The authors of the article had also set off to use
discourse analysis as a method to identify the role media plays in
American-Cuban population’s views on Cuba. When reading the paper for the first
time it struck me that the question the researchers pose is extremely complex.
Now I have the proof that it, in fact, is complex. The authors of my peer review paper, like Dijk, need to
think of many aspects of social structure – economical, political, cultural -
if they want to answer a research question on the role media, or any discourse,
plays in setting people’s views. Dijk very carefully offers disclaimers, such
as “the relationships involved and the conditions on reproduction are
complicated” while the Castro article authors do not. In general, I think
discourse analysis is a risky undertaking and has to be carried out with
multiple considerations of meaning. Otherwise the data collected is just raw
and unconcerned quantity.
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