CDA/Response to Scheuer 2003

[杉森 典子]

Hi,

This is my response to Jann Scheuer’s article entitled,
“Habitus as the principle for social practice: A proposal
for critical discourse analysis
” Language in Society 32, 143-175.

Jann Scheuer’s article is an interesting read, even if
you are not interested in critical discourse analysis
(CDA). Scheuer analyzes the process in what way Neil, a
middle-aged unemployed job applicant, was rejected in the
interview.  I became involved in the interview process to
the degree I sympathized and identified with him.
Although the article
’s text may seem long (30 pages), about five pages are
Danish transcripts of the job interview. English
translation neatly follows after each block of interviews
(not each turn or sentence), so it can be read quickly,
skipping the Danish part.

Scheuer criticizes Fairclough in the following way:

Faircloough does not, however, sufficiently explicate what
social theory lies behind the concept of social practice,
or how text-external data should be incorporated in the
analysis (p.144)

Because my study of CDA is still shallow, I cannot say
whether Scheuer is right or not. As the quote below shows,
Fairclough (2003) is trying to connect social theories and
discourse analysis. After writing about Foucault,
Representation, Action, and Identification, he writes:

What these various formulations point to is the
possibility of enriching our understanding of texts by
connecting each of the three aspects of meaning with a
variety of categories in social theories. Another example
might be to see Identification as bringing what Bourdieu
(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) calls the
‘habitus’ of the persons involved in the event in the
event into consideration in text analysis, i.e. their
embodied dispositions to see and act in certain ways based
upon socialization and experience, which is partly
dispositions to talk and write in certain ways
(Fairclough, Analysing Discourse 2003:28-9)

Scheuer says that CDA’s connections with social theories
are not sufficient. Do you agree? Does CDA have to follow
one particular social theory?

Best wishes,

Noriko Sugimori



Noriko Sugimori
20 Chestnut Street #204, Cambridge, MA 02139
tel & fax 617-494-6497
杉森典子
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