Steps To Carry Out A Critical Discourse Analysis

When providing online assignment help to students, one of the major areas that students seek help in is critical discourse analysis. Being one of the tricky businesses, especially students of social and political sciences – CDA needs to be understood well in order to be mastered. Experts of assignment help suggest putting down the course of CDA in 10 easy steps, which would not only clear the picture of what discourse analysis is but also make it easy for the students to do it themselves, waiving off their need for assignment help in this area. Here is the 10 step guide to critical discourse analysis that will make your job much easier.

1. Derive the Context of The Discourse

You start with a research question and all the resources from where you would gather the data which will be critically analysed. See where the sources fit in context with the big picture. Analyse the historical and social context of the discourse. Jot down who produced it, where, when and why? Check if it is related to any critical event and also jot down where and how you got the source material.

2. Study the Production Background

Check for four things: background of the producer, the medium in which it is published, the layout of the discourse and the genre your source belongs to. Checking for who is the author, what are their political inclinations, which institutions they are associated with, etc. would give deeper understanding of the purpose of the discourse. The medium matters since each medium has a different audience, and way of approach. The layout is different in each medium and hence, a study of the same would help analysis better and of course, whether it is an interview or a cover letter, a news item or a commentary – it is important to establish that.

3. Prepare For Analysis

Prepare multiple copies of your source so that you have enough scope for jotting your points down and marking the important ones. If possible, digitize your source so that comments, references and remarks can be  entered digitally and saved for future reference for yourself and others as well.

4. Code Your Data

Assign tags to paragraphs, sentences or words that fit in a particular category or relate to a particular concept in your source, so as to make categorization and assembling of data easier.

5. Analyse The Structure Of The Text

Examine the flow of your text. Are several issues addressed one by one? Is too much attention given to one discourse and do other discourses overlap? How is the argument given and how is the case registered? What is the significance of  the introduction and conclusion of the text?

6. Analyse Discourse Fragments

Pick up statements from each code and try to conclude what each statement of the code refers to and what the whole text boils down to on each topic discussed.

7. Identify Intertextuality References

Think about how your text supports your argument. Is your text implying references to other sources or knowledge of other subjects? Understand how the inter relatedness of these texts serve the cause of your argument.

8. Study the Linguistic and Rhetorical Mechanisms of the Discourse

Look out for word groups, grammar features, rhetorical figures, modalities, evidentialities and type of speech used to get into the contextual and implicative meaning of each statement. It would also give an insight into the cultural reference of the producer.

9. Interpret The Text

Having it all together now, address the main question – What does it all mean?. Explain what the discourse is all about, what it implies, how it works and what was the purpose if the discourse.

10. Reach Your Target Audience

Once your analysis is complete, it’s time to present it to the target audience. In the process, you might have collected lots of notes, references and data. Use them all up to put together a presentation, report, thesis or paper.

Assistance in assignments is the easy way out, learning to do yourself if the right way though. Hope these steps will make your task easier and fun too.