Análisis del Discurso en Lengua Inglesa

GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES:

LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CULTURA

Unit 5: Post-structuralism and its derived approaches:

Critical Discourse Analysis, Positive Discourse Analysis and
Mediated Discourse Analysis

Prof: Dr. Laura Alba Juez

[email protected]
 Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
originated as a
reaction against the
“absolutism” and
totalizing concepts
of Structuralism
(synthesized in the
ideas of Marx,
Freud, and de
Saussure)
 1) The concept of ‘self’ as a singular
The practices of and coherent entity is a fictional
construct, thus in order to study a
post-structuralism given text a reader/hearer must
understand how this discourse is
are grounded on related to the writer’s/speaker’s
own personal concept of self.
the following
assumptions  2) Each human reader builds an
individual aim and meaning for a
given text. Therefore the author’s
intended meaning is secondary to
the meaning that the reader
perceives (this phenomenon is
known as ‘decentering’ of the
author).

3) The meaning of a text, then, shifts in

relation to the variables related to
the reader’s identity. None of the
possible interpretations is
considered to be the right one; all of
them contribute to the better
understanding of a text.
• Although originally labeled a structuralist, Michel Foucault (French
philosopher and historian) came to be regarded as the most important
representative of the post-structuralist movement. Like the structuralists,
Foucault believed that language and society were shaped by rule-
governed systems, but unlike them, he did not believe that there were
definite underlying structures that could explain the human condition, nor
did he think that one could study discourse from an objective point of
view.

• Post-structuralism conceives of the social space (institutions, identities,

etc.) and the world of material objects as discursive in nature. Thus for
post-structuralists there is nothing outside the text. However, they do not
deny the material world.

• There is an underlying relativism in all post-structuralist ideas, which

suggests that no signifying system is completely stable and/or
unproblematic.
• In sum:

There is a deep sense in post-structuralism that

we live in a linguistic universe. ‘Reality’ in this
universe is only mediated reality, which is
governed by things such as the structure of
ideology, the various cultural codes, etc. All
meaning is textual and intertextual, and it
circulates in economies of discourse, for every text
exists only in relation to other texts.
• Post-structuralist discourse theory has its
weaknesses, the main one being its failure to
present an explicit method for the analysis of
actual instances of text or social interaction-in-
context.

• Nevertheless, some authors (e.g. Howarth (2000)

or Carabine (2001)) have attempted to apply
some aspects of this theory to the analysis of real
discourse in action. Both Howarth and Carabine
propose methods based on an elaboration of
Michel Foucault’s genealogical method.
 Social Theory

Social Theory is considered to be outside the mainstream of Sociology

because it does not follow the scientific method. It has been affected by
recent developments in feminism, critical race theory, multiculturalism and
other movements associated with groups that are somehow perceived as
oppressed.

Thus, social theorists are suspicious of “objectivity”, for they point to the
radical difference in phenomena between the subject matter of Physics and
that of Sociology.

Some social theorists, such as Michel Foucault or Pierre Bourdieu, have made
important contributions to the study of language and discourse.
Michel The popularization of the concept of
discourse and discourse analysis as a
Foucault method can partly be attributed to
Foucault’s great influence upon the social
sciences and humanities.

His contribution to the theory of discourse

is mainly found in such areas as the
relationship of discourse and power, the
discursive construction of social subjects
and knowledge, and the functioning of
discourse in social change.

His work is divided in three stages:

1) Archeological work
2) Genealogical studies
3) Ethics
Foucault’s early archaelogical work (1972)
includes a constitutive view of discourse
(i.e.: discourse constitutes or constructs
society on various dimensional planes:
social subjects, forms of self, social
relationships, objects of knowledge, etc.).

He insists on the prevalence of discourse

structures over human agency, a view that
has the following implications:

a) Meaning is governed by the formative

rules of discourse; thus it does not
originate in the speaking subject
b) Social identity is ‘dispersed’. The social
subject is replaced by a ‘fragmented’
subject with unstable identities
enabled by discursive formations.
c) The acquisition of social identities is a
process of immersion into -and
submission to- discursive practice.
In the second stage of Foucault’s work, that of
his Genealogical Studies, discourse is placed
on a secondary plane. He turns his focus to
truth/power regimes and how they affect the
bodily disposition.

Thus Foucault analyzes two major

‘technologies’ of power: discipline and
confession.

Discipline is a technology for handling masses

of people, and manifests in diverse forms,
such as the architecture of schools, prisons or
factories, the division of the educational or
working day into strictly demarcated parts,
etc., thus ‘objectifying’ the subject.

Confession (e.g. talking about one’s sexuality)

is a ritual of discourse and, contrary to
discipline, it subjectifies people. However,
Foucault believes this is only an illusion, for
confession draws the person more into the
domain of power.
In his third stage, Foucault
shifts his focus to the
ethics of the postmodern
subject, and he develops
an ethical orientation for
the postmodern era which
is based on the idea that
an analysis of the
techniques of domination
can be counterbalanced
by an analysis of the
techniques of the self.
Summing up:
Foucault’s main ideas and contributions to D.A.
1. Foucault focused on discourse as a system of representation (i.e. the rules and
practices that produce meaningful statements and regulate discourse in different
historical periods).
2. Discourse is a way of representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a
given historical moment.
3. All practices have a discursive aspect.
4. It is discourse, not the things in themselves, which produces knowledge (for we
can only have a knowledge of things if they have a meaning).
5. All discursive practices are defined in terms of their relations to others, and
depend upon others in complex ways.
6. The practices and techniques of modern ‘biopower’ (such as examination and
confession) are discursive to a significant degree.
7. Discourse has a political nature (for the exertion of power occurs both in and over
discourse).
8. Social change is discursive in nature: changing discursive structures are a sign of
social change.
But Foucault’s analysis of discourse does not include discursive and linguistic analyses of real
texts. One of his followers, Carabine (2001), proposes 11 steps to apply genealogy to the
analysis of actual discourse in order to search for the power/knowledge networks which are
evident in social policy:

1. Select your topic: Identify possible sources of data (policy documents, cartoons,
speeches, pamphlets, etc.
2. Know your data: read and re-read.
3. Identify themes –categories and objects of discourse.
4. Look for evidence of an inter-relationship between discourses.
5. Identify the discursive strategies and techniques employed.
6. Look for absences and silences.
7. Look for resistances and counter-discourses.
8. Identify the effects of discourse.
9. Context 1 -Outline the background to the issue.
10. Context 2 -Contextualize the material in the power/knowledge networks of the
period.
11. Be aware of the limitations of the research, your data and sources.

(2001: 281)
Pierre Bourdieu 1. The metaphor of symbolic capital, which
A philosopher, social theorist and establishes an analogy between financial capital
teacher who, from a language studies and symbolic resources (e.g. the access to
perspective, is associated with these discourse situations and the ability to mobilize
three main key concepts  sets of linguistic conventions). Certain groups in
society possess more symbolic capital than
others, and the more capital one has, the easier
it is to invest it profitably.

2. The notion of Habitus, which refers to

individual differences in practical linguistic
competence. The formation of a habitus is
permanently modified and sanctioned by the
relative success/failure in the market of
linguistic exchanges. It is shown through
language use. The notion of habitus
presupposes a theory of linguistic practice,
rather than a theory of the linguistic system.

3. The notion of bodily hexis, which associates

linguistic practices with deep-rooted bodily
dispositions. Thus, for instance, members of the
upper-social classes will have a different bodily
disposition associated to their use of language
than members of the lower classes.
From Bourdieu’s point of view, then:

a) communicative efficiency is subsidiary to political efficiency

and the desire to dominate and gain profit. Therefore,
according to Bourdieu, comprehension is not the primary
goal of communication.

a) Authority and credibility in a particular situation do not

necessarily imply an impeccable use of a standard
language. The value of any given utterance depends highly
on the speaker’s capacity or ability to impose his/her
criteria (and this capacity is not determined only in
linguistic terms).
So his sociological critique of linguistics entails a three-way
displacement of concepts:

1. He replaces the concept of grammaticalness by the notion

of acceptability.

2. He speaks of relations of symbolic power, rather than of

relations of communication, thereby replacing the
question of the meaning of speech by the question of
value an power of speech.

3. He uses the term symbolic capital (associated to the

speaker’s position in the social structure) instead of
linguistic competence.
 Bakhtin argues that language must be seen as a
Mikhail concrete lived reality (not as an abstract system)
Bakhtin: because it is an essentially social phenomenon
which is rooted in the ambiguities of everyday life.
A theorist writing in the
Soviet Union during the
Stalinist era. His works, The basic ideas of his work are the following:
however, became
influential and achieved
recognition only after the Language is dialogic: utterances are the basis of
1960s. language, and they always contain an implicit
respondent voice.

Discoursive practice is essentially heteroglossic:

texts often contain the various voices that have
been involved in their production (E.g.: a film text
normally includes the voice of the screenplay
writer, the director, and the people involved in its
production).
According to Bakhtin, there is an internal struggle in language which is
conceptualized in terms of a conflict between centripetal and centrifugal
forces:
Centripetal forces are Centrifugal forces, on the other hand,
associated with political allude to the stratification of language
centralization and a into varieties related to different genres,
unified cultural canon. professions, age groups and so on.
They generate
authoritative and inflexive
discourses (e.g.: religious
dogma, teachers, fathers,
scientific truth, etc.)
The essential dialogic and heteroglossic nature of
language ensures that our views and understanding
of the world, as well as our relations with others and
our sense of our own identity, are always evaluative
and ideological.

Genres are viewed as the drive belts between the

history of language and the history of society, and
therefore, any change or transformation in genre
conventions contributes to, and therefore indicates,
social change.
But note the following:

Some linguists (e.g. Schegloff) have not accepted post-structural theories on

the grounds that they are politically oriented and biased.

However, social theories have had a considerable influence upon other and
subsequent approaches to discourse, such as Critical Discourse Analysis,
Positive Discourse Analysis and Mediated Discourse Analysis.
 Critical Discourse Analysis
CDA is an approach to discourse whose origin can be found at the end of
1970s, in the ‘critical linguistics’ that emerged as a reaction against the formal
paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s. Critical linguists focused on the analysis of
language as text or discourse, rather than as decontextualized sets of possible
sentences in the Chomskyan fashion, and they based their analytical
approach mainly on Halliday’s systemic/functional grammar.

Critical linguistic studies were based on the premise that grammar is an

ideological instrument for categorization of things that occur in the world.

Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak are three of the most
prominent current researchers in CDA.
van Dijk defines the discipline as follows:

“CDA is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way
social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced and
resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident
research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to
understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality.”

(van Dijk, 2001: 352)

Norman Fairclough (e.g. 1989, 1992, 1995,
2001) presents a comprehensive and
programmatic attempt to develop a theory
of CDA which links discourse, power and
social structure. For him, discourse is a
three-dimensional concept which involves:

1. texts (the objects of linguistic

analysis)

2. discourse practices (the production,

distribution and consumption of
texts), and

3. social practices (the power

relations, ideologies and hegemonic
struggles that discourses reproduce,
challenge or restructure).
Ruth Wodak defines her approach of Critical
Linguistics as an interdisciplinary approach to
language study with a critical point of view
which intends to study language behaviour in
natural speech situations of social relevance.
She focuses on the use of multiple methods
and the importance of taking historical and
social aspects into account, in order to expose
social inequality and injustice.

Wetherell et al. (2001) present CDA as an

approach which is based on a view of semiosis
as an irreducible part of material social
processes, semiosis including all forms of
meaning-making: visual images, body language
and verbal language. Social life is seen as
interconnected networks of social practices,
every practice having a semiotic element.
So CDA does not have a unitary
theoretical framework.
However, all perspectives
within CDA will try to ask and
answer questions about the
way certain discourse
structures are deployed in the
reproduction of social
dominance, featuring such
notions as discrimination,
power, dominance, hegemony,
ideology, gender, race, etc.
The main tenets of CDA (Fairclough & Wodak (1997) are the
following:

• CDA addresses social problems.

• Power relations are discursive.
• Discourse constitutes society and culture.
• Discourse does ideological work.
• Discourse is historical.
• The link between text and society is mediated.
• DA is interpretative and explanatory.
• Discourse is a form of social action.
Thus CDA is a form of
E.g.: A racist speech in parliament is
social action, and uses the a discourse at the microlevel of
analysis of discourse to social interaction in the specific
situation of a debate, but at the
make people aware of macrolevel –and at the same time- it
social and political issues. may enact or be a constituent part of
a legislation or the reproduction of
racism.
CDA tries to bridge the
gap between micro- and
macro-levels of social
order.
• CDA focuses on social cognition (i.e. social representations in the minds of social
actors) as the empirical missing link between discourse and dominance, in order to
show the relationship with discourse and dominance, by attempting to show the
nature of its relationship with discourse and society.

• CDA believes that language always manifests itself as the representative of an

ideological system.

• Most CDA studies, then, deal with different aspects of power, domination and
social inequality. In particular, we may find research on topics such as professional
power, gender inequality, racism, ethnocentrism, etc.
 Discourse and power
Power is multi-faceted and can Social power is defined in
take different forms (physical terms of control. The members
power, military power, political of a social group will have
power, etc.). It is associated power if they can control the
with rank and status. acts and minds of members of
other groups.
E.g.: The president of a given
nation is generally regarded as
one of the most powerful
people in that nation; white
people in certain contexts are
regarded as having more
power than black people.
Althusser (1971) was one of the first theorists to describe power as a
discursive phenomenon, and his work has influenced much of the early work
in CDA. He also views power as an ideological phenomenon and claimed that
it operates through discourse.

Regarding the relationship between power and discourse, CDA takes the
following statements as axiomatic:

- Access to specific forms of discourse is itself a power resource.

- If we can influence people’s minds by using our power, we will indirectly
control their actions.
- Those groups who control most influential discourse also have more
chances of controlling the minds and actions of others.
When the groups who control the discourse abuse their power
and other groups accept this abuse, CDA uses the term
hegemony. The hegemonic groups constitute the power elites.
CDA defines elites in terms of their symbolic power (term
borrowed from Bordieu’s metaphor of the symbolic capital.
 • The elites can enact their power by
Powerful controlling the context of discourse (i.e. its
discourse structures time, place, setting, etc.). E.g.: Professors
control the context of appointments with
students (not viceversa), or C.E.O.s (not
employees) call for a meeting at the time,
place and circumstances which are
convenient to them.

• CDA is specially concerned with those forms

of context control which are morally/legally
unacceptable, such as the exclusion of
women by men, or any other kind of
discrimination or marginalization.
Through these modes of context control, the
less powerful are censored or not heard. Their
voices are blocked. The discourse itself becomes
a ‘segregated’ structure.

Very subtle manifestations of dominance can be

found at the, semantic, syntactic,
morphological or phonological levels. E.g.: by
dominating the floor or the (im)politeness
strategies, or by using some rhetorical figures or
a certain intonation. Indeed, it is a well-known
fact that those people who are in power may
feel entitled to be impolite towards their
subordinates (e.g.: members of high military
ranks towards lower rank soldiers).

Other linguistic strategies commonly used to

express power: pauses, laughter, hedges,
interruptions, choice of topic, topic change, etc.
 Ideology, social cognition and discourse
• Ideology is a key notion in CDA, for it is considered to establish the
connection between discourse and society.
• Ideologies resemble natural languages in that they are essentially social:
they are shared by the members of a group to have an effective
communicative interaction.
• Ideologies control social groups and their discourse. Van Dijk (1997, 2004)
explains that ideologies are developed by dominant groups to reproduce
and legitimate their domination. Thus, for instance, groups may have
ideological racist or sexist beliefs that condition their discourse and social
practices.
• Ideologies are both social systems and mental representations that form
the basis of social cognition (i.e. the shared knowledge and attitudes of a
group). This means that ideologies not only have a social function but also
cognitive functions of belief organization which finally make up the basis
of discourse.
 Steps to follow when doing CDA

Wetherell et all (2001) propose an analytical framework for doing CDA which
is modeled upon Bhaskar’s (1986) concept of explanatory critique:

1. Focus on a social problem that has a semiotic aspect.

2. Identify obstacles to the social problem being tackled. (This can be
done through analysis of the network of practices it is located within, the
relationship of semiosis to the elements within the practice(s),
interactional analysis, linguistic and semiotic analysis, etc.)
3. Consider if the social order (network of practices) “needs” the
problem.
4. Identify possible ways past the obstacles.
5. Reflect critically on the analysis (stages 1-4).
 Criticisms levelled at CDA

Schegloff argues that the type of research carried out by CDA does not
include a detailed and systematic analysis of discourse. He states that critical
analysts impose their own frames of reference on a world that is already
interpreted and constructed by the participants of discourse, thereby –and
ironically- performing an act of intellectual hegemony.

Other authors (e.g. Cunningham 2004) have accused CDA of being ‘left-
leaning’ and thus politically-oriented which, in their opinion, disqualifies it
as scholarship.

Martin (2007) observes that all these criticisms seem to suggest that CDA
should move in the direction of Peace Sociolinguistics, a circumstance that
led him to call for the development of Positive Discourse Analysis.
Practice:
Analyze the discourse of the
following scene of the film
“The Shawshank Redemption”
taking into account issues such
as power and hegemony as
seen by CDA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQSmfzfg2MY
The Shawshank Redemption - Escape Andy Dufresne
 Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA)
Martin and Rose (2003) and Martin (2004, 2007) argue that we now need to
concentrate on the positive aspects of power, turning to a complementary
focus on community, taking into account how people get together and make
room for themselves in the world in ways that redistribute power without
necessarily struggling against it. These observations, together with the feeling
that a change of direction was necessary in CDA, were the basis for the
development of PDA.

PDA argues for constructive discourse research. Thus, its aim is to engage in
“heartening accounts of progress” rather than in “discouraging accounts of
oppression” (Martin, 2004: 184).
PDA is a novel approach to the analysis of discourse, some examples of which can be found in the
following works:

 Martin (2002 and 2004) considers the role of images and evaluative language in promoting
reconciliation, focusing on indigenous relations in Australia and South Africa.

 Martin & Rose (2003) introduce the reader to this new field of research and they analyze
some inspirational writing by Mandela and Tutu, on the grounds that the study of texts
concerned with the processes of truth and reconciliation takes text analysis to a new and
higher dimension.
 Anthonissen (2003) discusses the productive resistance to media
censorship in apartheid South Africa.

 Martin & Stenglin (2006) present an analysis of the use of space in relation
to land rights in a gallery of the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.

As a novel and recent approach, PDA still has a long way to go in the
development of its methodology and tools for analysis. However, this is an
approach with strong foundations, for it is grounded on Systemic Functional
Linguistics, as well as on positive values and intentions.
Practice: Read the “Example of Analysis” (10.6.1) in the base book of this
course and then try to make an analysis of President J.F. Kennedy’s peace
speech at the American University from the PDA perspective. Follow the steps
used by Martin (2004) in his study of voice in the example given (for instance,
think of how certain minorities are given a voice through Kennedy’s words).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUjJa9jnynA
JFK "Peace" Speech at American University -- Part 1
 Mediated Discourse Analysis (MDA)
MDA...
• is an approach to D.A. Which focuses more upon human social action
than texts or discourses.

• does not consider language as the only mediational means; technology,

non-verbal communication and physical objects used by an agent in taking
an action are mediational means as well.

• explores the actions individuals take with texts, as well as the

consequences of those actions.

• is interdisciplinary. It developed out of linguistics and it integrates

concepts from mediated action theory, sociocultural psychology,
anthropological linguistics and intercultural communication.
Ron Scollon (2001) explains that MA is a
framework for looking at social actions with
the following two questions in mind:

– What is the action going on here?

– How does discourse figure into these

actions?
 Central Concepts in MDA
• Mediated action: This is the unit of analysis in MDA. Analysts
focus on the acting of social actors because discourses are not
merely material objects: they are instantiated in the social
world as social action.

• Site of engagement: the social space where mediated action

occurs. The focus is on real time, irreversible actions, rather
than on objectivized analysis of discourses.

• Mediational means: the material means (e.g. the body, dress

and movements of the material actors) through which
mediated action is carried out. Mediational means are
multiple in a single action, and they are polyvocal, intertextual
and interdiscursive.
 E.g. the nexus of practice related to eating
• Practice: Mediated action is out in an Italian restaurant would
include:
only interpretable within
practices. E.g. having dinner • ordering practices (e.g. we have to
at a restaurant is differentiate the different types of
interpreted as a different pasta)
action from having dinner at • eating practices (e.g. alone or with
someone)
home. • discursive practices (e.g. pronounce
some Italian words)
• physical spacing practices (e.g. there is a
• Nexus of practice: place for the staff and a place for the
discursive and non- customers)
discursive practices are
interconnected to form
nexus of practice.
 MDA as a theory of social action
• Most of the things we say are accompanied by action and, conversely,
most of our actions are accompanied by language.

• The single most important principle in MDA theory is the principle of

social action:

– Discourse is not seen as a system of representation, thought or values,

but as a matter of social actions.
– Mediated action (i.e. the person or persons in the moment of taking
an action along with the mediational means which are used by them)
is therefore the ecological unit of analysis.
– All social action is based on tacit, normally unconscious actions which
form the different practices.
– The individual’s accumulated experience of social actions is called the
habitus (Bordieu 1977, 1990) or the historical-body (Nishida, 1958).
 Methods in MDA
MDA includes multiple methods in order to identify and analyze
key mediated actions, such as:

• Ethnography of communication surveys of key situations and

participants: They are surveys that focus on social issues so as
to obtain information about the participants, the mediational
means, the scenes or situations, and the events and actions.

• Issue-based surveys of public discourse: These provide an

independent analysis of the significance of topics,
mediational means and mediated actions, to cross-check
against the ethnography of communication surveys.
• Public opinion and focus
group surveys of issues
and situations: These
provide information about
the means of determining
the sociopolitical issues
that are central across the
public at large. Then they
are compared with the
analyses of public
discourses and those of
specific concrete mediated
actions taken in specific
sites of engagement.
Each type of data can be seen from four
different perspectives:

Members’ generalizations: expressed by

statements such as “We usually do X or Y”,
which may be contrasted with generalizations
about other groups of people, such as “Those
Xs do P or Q”.

Individual experience: members of a social

group make sweeping generalizations about
their group, but, if given the chance, they
make a disclaimer about these generalizations
by saying that they do not do everything their
group does since they are different. Thus, it is
important to study the range delimited by
both individual and group actions, because
the habitus of individuals may vary widely.
• Neutral/objective data: • Playback responses: used to
MDA is skeptical of focus on linguistic details of
objectivised data. However, social interactions since it
the introduction of the provides the original
point of view of a distant participants in a scene with an
observer provides ‘objective’ record of their
important information for actions and the analysis
the analysis, and thus MDA developed by an external
introduces the examination observer.
of the analyst by using
cameras, tape recorders,
etc. as mediational means
to complete the
information.
 Mediated social interaction
• E.g. in the news discourse,
• All discourse is Scollon (1998) argues that the
mediated and all primary social interactions are
mediations are among the producers (e.g.
journalists, photographers,
discursive. editors) and not between the
producers and the audience.
Thus for this author, the sender-
receiver model of
communication is misleading
(because it makes us think that
the social interaction occurring
in texts is between the author
or producer and the reader or
audience.
 Interdisciplinarity

• MDA is an interdisciplinary approach to discourse.

• The integration of many disciplines brings about some crucial

problems:

– Representation and action: There is a tension between the

study of abstract systems of representation and the study of
social actors living in real time. MDA considers that the habitus
of social actors and the mediational means carry with them the
life history of the person, as well as the histories and social
structures of the world in which they were created.
– Linguistic relativity: MDA places all studies of practice
within a broader study of the place of the practice in
the whole ecology of the social actor.

– Units of analysis: Mediated action is taken as the unit

of analysis. But the use of this unit entails certain
problems (e.g. The question of whether language is a
unique mediational means or whether there are other
cognitive structures underlying other semiotic
systems.
Methodology: Tape recording,
transcription or playback focus more on
linguistic data than on the mediated
action and the social actors, and this
may lead to errors of interpretation or
analysis. The solution is found in
ethnographic studies.

• The psychology of the social actor: The

MDA analyst faces the problem of not
having a well-grounded analytical basis
for attributing a given action to a
particular social actor, and thus s/he has
to resolve to what extent it is necessary
to enter into the psychology of the
social actor.
How does MDA analyze discourse?
As an example of how social actions are analyzed in MDA, Scollon analyzes the social
action involved in having a cup of coffee with friends. This action is not simple, for it
involves a very complex and nested set of actions (e.g. lining up, ordering, paying,
etc.). Likewise, the discourse of the conversation among friends is not the only one in
the action: there are other discourses implied, such as the discourse of service
encounters, of the international marketing of coffee, etc.
Scollon focuses on the coffee cup, which he considers the primary
mediational means, and points out that the cup itself is a
impressive semiotic complex where at least seven different
discourses can be found:

1) The discourse of commercial branding

2) Legal discourse
3) E-commerce discourse
4) Consumer correctness discourse
5) Environmental correctness discourse
6) Service information discourse
7) Manufacturing-information discourse
 Geosemiotics
• MDA has developed a broad and systematic analysis of how language
appears in the material world. This broad analytical position has been
called Geosemiotics, and it holds the assumption that a very
important aspect of the meaning of all language is based on the
material, concrete, physical placement of that language in the world.

• From this perspective, “any human action is a process of selection

among many semiotic systems which are always in a kind of dialectical
dialogicality with each other” (Scollon & Scollon, 2003).

• The key to the analysis of any human action is indexicality, i.e. The
meaning of signs based on their material location.
• Geosemiotics entails a
broad analysis of
discourse, and therefore
it not only appies to signs
or other symbols, but also
to signals and messages
such as those sent off by
our bodies, and whose
meaning depends greatly
on where they are and
what they are doing ‘in
place’.
 Indexicality
In order to understand the meaning of any linguistic sign we
need to ask the following questions:

a) Who has uttered this?

b) Who is the viewer?
c) What is the social situation?
d) Is that part of the material world relevant to such a sign?

These questions can be posed thanks to the property of

language called indexicality.
Indexicality is a universal feature of language, and it is defined as “the property
of the context-dependency of signs, especially language; hence the study of
those aspects of meaning which depend on the placement of the sign in the
material world” (Scollon & Scollon, 2003: 3).

Our meanings are signalled by means of:

– Icons: signs that resemble the objects being signed. E.g.: emoticons

– Indexes: signs which point to or are attached to the object. E.g.: an

arrow

– Symbols: signs which are arbitrarily or conventionally associated with

the object. E.g.: the signs of written language.
 Central elements in Geosemiotics
• Social actor: A person who
moves in the physical world
and ‘gives off’ different
signals (such as race, age,
sex, etc.).

• Interaction order: The set

of social relationships we
take up and try to maintain
with other people who are
in our presence.
• Visual semiotics: The visual frame
of the social action (e.g.: how the
interaction order is represented
visually and how placement of
visual symbols affects their
interpretation).

• Place semiotics: All actions take

place somewhere in the physical
universe. Both semiotic and non-
semiotic spaces (i.e. spaces where
signs are forbidden) are taken into
account.
So, from the point of view of Geosemiotics, everything
surrounding us may influence our taking particular
actions: from our location in a city or place, to the
people with whom we interact or the signs that form
part of the whole picture of our social interactions.

MDA, thus, takes a holistic approach to the analysis of

discourse by considering every element related to
and interconnected with the discourse situation and
the social action being carried out.
 Practice Analysis of social action

Watch the video below and analyze the social action taking place
by exploring the different discourses involved in the action, as
well as the information on its place and time (Geosemiotics).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe751kMBwms
Barack Obama: Yes We Can.