Invited Seminar Critical Discourse Studies: Precursors, Practitioners, Potential Paths

Critical Discourse Studies: Theories, Methodologies, and Pedagogies at the Intersections Instructor: Dr. Susana Martínez Guillem April 2021 Higher School of Economics, Moscow Tentative Syllabus (subject to minor changes) Course description: This class introduces students to the different precursors, practitioners, and potential paths shaping a unique approach to socio-discursive phenomena first labeled as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). We will first locate the less immediately recognizable, but highly influential, precursors and intellectual sources of CDA in Critical Linguistics but also Cultural Studies. Next, we will review the work of different practitioners that played a key role in the institutionalization of the CDA “brand,” namely Norman Fairclough, Teun A. van Dijk, and Ruth Wodak. We will then trace the more recent, broadening turn toward Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and its implications in terms of theories, methods, and objects of study—including a series of rethinkings along, feminist, nonwhite, and postcolonial perspectives. Drawing on scholarship in media and communication, as well as related disciplines, we will review and assess the different challenges and possibilities for the traversing trajectories of CDS and media/communication studies. Course objectives: You will develop an understanding of Critical Discourse Studies as an interdisciplinary area of study comprising different theoretical assumptions, methods, and objects of study. You will be able to identify influential concepts and approaches in Critical Discourse Studies and relate them to specific areas and objects of study. You will enhance your capability to highlight the (dis)connections between “classic” studies and current lines of research in Critical Discourse Studies, as well as within contemporary approaches. You will be able to engage in hands-on analysis and critique of discourse through detailed examination of distinctive discursive practices. You will enhance your ability to concisely review and compare different kinds of scholarly work, develop productive critiques to locate the works’ major strengths and weaknesses, and relate them to practical examples outside of the classroom. You will advance your research agenda by producing a term paper to present at an academic conference and/or submit for publication. Your goal is to develop a theoretically and methodologically sound analysis and critique that can contribute to the Critical Discourse Studies project as you understand it. Course Sections and Readings: Precursors I Fowler, R. et al (1979) Language and Control (excerpts) Holborow, M. (2006) Putting the Social Back Into Language: Marx, Vološinov and Vygotsky reexamined. Studies in Language & Capitalism, 1-28. Precursors II Ives, P. (2004.) “Language and Hegemony in the Prison Notebooks.” In Language and Hegemony in Gramsci (pp. 63-101) Pêcheux, M. (1982) Language, Semantics and Ideology: Stating the Obvious (excerpts) Martin Rojo, L (2017). Language and Power. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society Edited by Ofelia García, Nelson Flores, and Massimiliano Spotti Bloomaert, J. (2015). “Pierre Bourdieu: Perspectives on language in society.” In Jan-ola Östman_&_ Jef Verschueren (Eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics. Practitioners I Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Karen Tracy et al., “Critical Discourse Analysis and (U.S.) Communication Scholarship,” Communication Yearbook 35, no. 1 (2011): 241–86. Krzyżanowski, Michał, and Bernhard Forchtner. “Theories and Concepts in Critical Discourse Studies: Facing Challenges, Moving Beyond Foundations.” Discourse & Society 27, no. 3 (2016): 253–61. Practitioners II Fairclough, N. (2017) “CDA as Dialectical Reasoning,” in The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, ed. John Flowerdew and John E. Richardson (London: Routledge). Van Dijk, T. A. (2002). “Discourse and racism.” In David Goldberg and John Solomos (eds.), The Blackwell companion to racial and ethnic studies, 145–159. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Wodak (2001) The discourse-historical approach. In Wodak & Meyer (Eds.) Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Potential Paths I Carvalho, A. “Media(Ted) Discourse and Society: Rethinking the Framework of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Journalism Studies 9, no. 2 (2008) Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Angelos Kissas. (2018) “The Communication of Horrorism: A Typology of Isis Online Death Videos.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 35, no. 1 (2018): 24–39. Stavrakakis, Y. et al., “Extreme Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Revisiting a Reified Association,” Critical Discourse Studies 14, no. 4 (2017): 420–39; Martínez Guillem, S. “Race/Ethnicity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, edited by John Flowerdew and John E. Richardson, 359–71. London: Routledge, 2017. Potential paths II Shi-Xu, (2016) Cultural Discourse Studies through the Journal of Multicultural Discourses: 10 years on. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 11:1, 1-8, DOI:10.1080/17447143.2016.1150936 Ewa Glapka, (2018) “‘If You Look at Me Like at a Piece of Meat, Then That’s a Problem’ Women in the Center of the Male Gaze. Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis as a Tool of Critique,” Critical Discourse Studies 15, no. 1, 87–103; Pardo, L. (2010) “Latin-American Discourse Studies: State of the Art and New Perspectives,” Journal of Multicultural Discourses 5, no. 3, 183. Resende, V. M. “Decolonizing Critical Discourse Studies: For a Latin American Perspective,” 2017, http://www.academia.edu/35750120/Decolonizing_critical_ discourse_studies_For_a_Latin_American_perspective. Lazar, Michelle M., ed. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. (excerpts) Baysha, O. “Deconstructing the coloniality of the West-centric democratic imaginary.”