Textual AnalysisMyra GurneySchool of Humanities and Communication Arts

What is textual analysis?

A research method used to describe and interpret the characteristics of texts

Describes the content, structure and functions of a message in a text

The choice of elements within a text can offer evidence of how people make sense of or understand the world. It can also show how they wish to be understood

Most commonly uses language as a source of analysis for the production of meaning but can also use semiotic systems

Texts do not exist in isolation and must be read in the context of speaker, audience, genre and historical context

What is a ‘text’ In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a ‘text’

includes written and spoken language but also films, photographs, television productions, music, artwork etc.

They can also be ‘read’ as artifacts of ‘ideology’ where the choice of elements and their composition (how they are constructed) consciously or unconsciously reflects a political or ideological position

Texts are ‘socially constructed’ … that is, they are created by, as well as reflect and represent, our views of the world

Linguist MAK Halliday’s definition of a text is ‘a semantic unit containing specific textual components, which make it ‘internally cohesive’. He was also concerned with studying ‘the relationship between language and other elements and aspects of social life’ (Fairclough, 2003, 5)

The ‘Humpty Dumpty syndrome’

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that's all.’

Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland

The study of language

Language is the predominant channel of communication used by humans

Language is learned and imbibed from our social surroundings

Words are symbols: meaning is in the use and interpretation, not in the word itself

Each speaker and reader will bring their own interpretations to the meaning

Context can alter meaning

Language as a ‘social construction’

Kress: language not something that is “outside time” -

Language not a static, fixed system or as something where “the individual language user meets the system as a monolithic, immutable given, which he or she may use but cannot alter.”

Discourses reflect the users’ view of the world and act to internalise these views via language

Lakoff (2008): “[s]ince language is used for communicating thought, our view of language must also reflect our new understanding of the nature of thought. Language is at once a surface phenomenon and a source of power. It is a means of expressing, communicating, accessing, and even shaping thought”

Language and ‘reality’

Discourses reflect the users’ view of the world and act to internalise these views via language

According to Kress and Hodge (1979), naming and labeling a phenomenon has the effect of shaping how we think about it: boat people, illegal immigrants, queue jumpers

The words we choose to communicate our version of ‘reality’ will reflect both how we experience these phenomena and also how we wish others to see it.

Bill Lutz writes: I like my coffee hot; my wife says my coffee is scalding; I say

the handle of the pot is too hot; my wife grabs it with her bare hand; I say the shirt is red; my wife says it is orange. I say the car is small; the salesman calls it ‘mid-sized’. What passes for a mountain in the mid-West is called a ‘foothill’ in the West (1996, 9).

Words as symbolsBoth the sounds and the letters used to represent the

sounds are arbitrary: they have no inherent meaning

We learn and use particular meanings and they evolve and change

Language is not fixed: it evolves and changes

Words and expressions, forms of speech often act as historical artifacts eg Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven

years ago our ancestors brought forth our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Churchill’s war speeches: “We will fight them on the beaches … ‘ Martin Luther King “I have a dream”, JF Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you …”

The notion of ‘discourse’

Language is more a social than an individual matter and Kress uses the term discourse to mean the systematic way in which institutions or social groups habitually talk or write (Mohan et al, 1997, 69)

“… a group of statements which provide a language for talking about a topic and a way of producing a particular kind of knowledge about a topic. Thus the term refers both to the production of knowledge through language and representations and the way that knowledge is institutionalized, shaping social practices and setting new practices into play” (Du Gay, 1996, 43)

Approaches to textual analysis: Rhetorical criticism

Rhetorical criticism: a systematic method for describing, interpreting, analysing and evaluating the persuasive purpose of a message (Frey et al, (1999)

Origins in Classical Rhetoric of Ancient Greeks esp Aristotle

Asks a range of questions including: What is the relationship between a text and its context/ How does a text construct reality for an audience? What does a text suggest about the rhetor?

Three main dimensions of rhetoric Ethos is trustworthiness, credibility, and reliability of

the speaker;

Pathos is appealing to an audience's most basic, most deeply held values, attitudes, beliefs and needs;

Logos is the appeal to evidence through use of logic and the reasoning process.

Most messages contain all these dimensions to a greater or lesser extent

Approaches to textual analysis: Content analysisContent analysis is used to identify, enumerate and analyse

occurrences of specific messages and message characteristics embedded in texts

Qualitative: researchers are more interested in the meanings associated with messages than the number of times messages occur

Quantitative involves identifying and coding semantic units like words or phrases, or thematic units such as topics. Often uses software programs such as NViVO or Leximancer to code

Example: Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ): Sceptical Climate Part 1: http://sceptical-climate.investigate.org.au/part-1/findings/research-design-methodology/

How to ‘do’ textual analysisfrom McKee (2014)

Start with a question you want to answer eg how does the media represent a certain issue such as climate change

Locate texts which either directly or indirectly represent the issue eg media reports, speeches, press releases, advertising texts, political advertising, parliamentary speeches, film, television, cartoons

Narrow your question to focus on one aspect eg What frames do the texts use to argue for climate change?

Find previous academic and popular writing on the subject

What is the cultural or political context of the text? Eg other texts, genre, intertexts (eg blog posts, letters to the editor), the ‘semiosphere’ (or ‘world of meaning’ within which the text circulates: what other texts or issues might influence the interpretation)

How to ‘do’ textual analysisfrom McKee (2014)

Gather examples of the texts

Examine as many examples as possible in terms of the rules which govern how they work. What are the themes, styles, conventions?

What is NOT said? Omission can be as important as inclusion

What frames (political positions, focus, structures, choice of metaphor etc are dominant)?

What are the linguistic devices (sentence structures, metaphor, word choices, rhetorical structures) which create these frames? To what extent are these deliberate or accidental?

How might audiences respond? Give examples to support your contention

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Example: Climate change: ‘The great moral challenge of a generation’

Rhetorical trope first articulated in Rudd speech of June 2007 at the National Climate Change Summit

Political speeches have an important strategic role in the evocation of a position and a politician’s power: Rudd was establishing his credibility as an alternative PM

He was trying use climate change to distinguish himself from old world values and approach of John Howard in lead up to 2007 election

Trying to establish his position within theALP

Taking up a previous position in an earlier essay “Faith in Politics” (2006)

Research questionHow is the “moral challenge” framed?

What underlying values does the discourse reflect?

What are the dominant frames?

Does the speech work rhetorically to construct the problem as a moral and ethical one? Why not?

Some competing climate changeframes From Nisbet (2009)

Frame Defines science-related issue as …

Social progress A means of improving quality of life or solving problems; alternative interpretation as a way to be in harmony with nature instead of mastering it.

Economic development and competitiveness

An economic investment; market benefit or risk; or a point of local, national, or global competitiveness.

Morality and ethics A matter of right or wrong; or of respect or disrespect for the limits, thresholds, or boundaries.

Scientific and technical uncertainty

A matter of expert understanding or consensus; a debate over what is known versus what is unknown; or peer-reviewed, confirmed knowledge versus hype or alarmism.

Pandora’s box/Frankenstein’s monster/runaway science

Research or policy either in the public interest or serving special interests, emphasising issues of control, transparency, participation, responsiveness, or ownership; or debate over proper use of science and expertise in decision-making (“politicisation”).

Middle way/alternative path A third way between conflicting or polarised views or opinions

Conflict and strategy A game among elites, such as who is winning or losing the debate; or a battle of personalities or groups (usually a journalist-driven interpretation).

What do we mean by ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’? Climate change is about more than just ‘weather’, it’s about

fundamental human rights

Climate shapes and affects all societies and cultures

Climate affects non human habitats and species

Climate change will “cost” future generations

Intergenerational responsibilities

Who should ‘pay’? How is ‘payment’ calculated and apportioned?

Religious notion of “stewardship” of “God’s gift”

Gaia a “living entity” (Lovelock, 2006) with value for and of itself

A problem of ‘quantification’ or ‘faith’? A question of ‘values’ but whose? And measured how?

Findings: Rudd

Rudd and “the greatest moral challenge of a generation” (June 2007)

Opening a “call to arms”: repetition of “challenge”

Diplomatic discourse: Australia has a tradition of “middle power diplomacy”

Lists the “challenges” but addresses “moral challenge” last:

How you sustain a proposition which says that when the evidence is in and the scientific evidence is in, the economic data is accumulating that when that is presented to us in the year 2007 and we fail to act, how can we look towards the interests of the generation which comes after us and say, “I’m sorry, it was too difficult to act”. For me, that is a compelling argument as well [para 23].

Findings: Rudd“Moral” implied rather than articulated, unlike

other framesFifth, the fifth question is, what are the best policy

settings for what might be described as personal responsibility, corporate responsibility, community responsibility agenda? How do we individually act as citizens, engage with the great challenge of climate change to do our bit to reduce our own carbon footprints? [para 35].

More weight to economic dimensions: a la Stern Review

Conclusion: “… climate change does represent significant market failure, that’s where Governments have to enter the field …” [para 43].

Discourse AnalysisSome videoshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

NpJhICZczUQ

Florian Schneider introducing Discourse Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTLUVv0_gJ4

Adrian Coyle (UK) on analysing songs