This latest book by Norman Fairclough is an extension of his earlier work on critical discourse analysis (CDA) (e.g., Fairclough 1989, 1995, 2001). Relying on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as his linguistic theoretical standpoint on one hand, and on social theoretical themes presented by critical theorists like Bourdieu and Habermas on the other, the author attempts to present a detailed framework of linguistic analysis that links the “micro” analysis of texts to the “macro” analysis of social relations (p. 16). In his introductory chapter, Fairclough specifies two types of audience for the book who may find this framework relevant to their own research: students and researchers in social sciences and humanities with little or no knowledge of language analysis, and those specializing in language studies.
After the introduction, in the two chapters of Part I, Fairclough presents an overview of the framework to be elaborated later in the book. He depicts three levels of social phenomena as the broad context of his framework: social structures as very abstract social entities, social practices as a mediating level between social structures and events, and social events as actual happenings. Language as an abstract phenomenon parallels social entities at the level of social structure. At the level of social practice, language appears as “orders of discourse” – that is, “a network of social practices in its language aspect” (24). At the level of social event, orders of discourse figure in text. The actualization of social-practice-level discourse (as an uncountable noun) in social-event-level text has three main aspects. These three aspects – genres, discourses (as a countable noun), and styles – are the major lines along which the author organizes the practical analytical procedure of his framework.
Genres are the actional aspect of what texts mean, discourses reflect the representational meaning, and styles include the identity-making aspect of text meaning. Fairclough's framework for analysis of texts as parts of social events involves looking at texts in terms of these three types of meaning. The threefold analysis of text meaning allows for exploring “internal” and “external” relations of texts and making connections between actual events and more abstract social practices. This conceptual web might appear complicated, especially to readers from disciplines other than language studies who might be overwhelmed by the linguistic jargon, although the author expresses his concern for avoiding linguistic terms and his attempt to move away from the “forbidding terminology of linguistics” (6). To make this further complicated, and, ironically, to explicate other aspects of the proposed analytical framework, in this first part of the book he also discusses issues of dialectical relations among the three types of meaning, genre mixing, intertextuality, and assumptions as well as some social theoretical themes like governance, the public sphere, and hegemony.
The three chapters of Part II discuss genres and the actional aspect of texts in detail. The proposed process of analysis of genres, as discoursal aspects of acting, proceeds in three steps: analysis of genre chains, analysis of mixtures of genres in particular texts, and analysis of individual genres. Although Fairclough asserts that “there is no established terminology for genres” (66), he goes on to distinguish between levels of abstraction of genres: pre-genres, disembedded genres, situated genres, and sub-genres. However, this does not seem to make the framework any richer. Taking genre as the actional aspect of text meaning, one would need to analyze the actional meaning of sentences or longer stretches of texts rather than to specify and name genres at different levels of abstraction. The author proposes a process of analysis of individual genres in terms of three aspects: activity, that is, what is done with language; social relations between social agents; and communication technology, that is, being unidirectional/dialogical and mediated/nonmediated.
Semantic relations between sentences that actualize the generic aspect of texts are discussed and exemplified in detail. These relations include causal, conditional, temporal, additive, elaborative, and contrastive relations. Grammatical relations of parataxis, hypotaxis, and embedding are also discussed and applied to analysis of some examples. Surprisingly, higher-order generic semantic relations such as problem solution and goal achievement are only touched upon in a very brief section, but one would expect an elaborate discussion of these semantic aspects of long stretches of text. Fairclough discusses actional meaning at the sentence level in a separate chapter. He concentrates on three issues of genre analysis at the level of the individual clause: types of exchange that take place through sentences in texts, functions of speech, and grammatical mood. Examples of how text analysis is carried out in terms of these concepts are also presented throughout the chapter.
In Part III the author elaborates on discourses as the second aspect of realization of social-practice-level discourse in texts as parts of social events. Discourses are the representational aspect of texts. In Fairclough's own words, discourses “not only represent the world as it is … they are also projective, representing possible worlds which are different from the actual world, and tied in to projects to change the world in particular directions” (124). His scheme of identifying discourses in texts includes two dimensions: identification of aspects of the world represented, and identification of the particular perspective on representing those aspects. The major characterizing features of discourses are lexical semantic relations, assumptions, and grammatical features, with vocabulary asserted to be the most obvious distinguishing feature of discourses. In the second and final chapter of this part, heavily drawing upon Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics, Fairclough discusses elements of social events that can be represented in texts and different levels of abstraction in representation, along with actual examples of the representational aspect of texts.
Discourses seem to be the most significant aspect of texts, not only because representational meaning is a major type of text meaning but also because the other two major types of meaning are forms of representations, as well. Genres and styles are functional and identificational aspects of meaning, but at the same time they represent parts of the world from particular perspectives. Therefore, analysis of representations reflected in discourses could be viewed as the major part of textual analysis covering all aspects of text meaning. Considering this overarching nature of discourses, one might expect a more elaborate and extended discussion of this aspect of texts than what Fairclough presents in these two brief chapters. Moreover, as in his discussion on textual realization of genres, Fairclough seems to be simply neglecting the higher-order textual representations such as assumptions, which can extend beyond clause level.
Part IV of the book, comprising two chapters, focuses on the identificational aspect of meaning reflected in styles. Identification as “a complex process” (160) is dealt with, ironically, in a very short chapter of only four pages. The interplay between social and personal identity, levels of abstraction of identification, and linguistic features in which styles may be realized is briefly touched upon in this chapter. In the second chapter of this final part of the book, based on the assumption that “what people commit themselves to in texts is an important part of how they identify themselves” (164), Fairclough elaborates on modality and evaluation as two major textual factors relevant to the identificational aspect of texts. How these two are realized in clauses is discussed, along with examples of their application for analyzing texts.
In the three parts of the book dealing with the three types of meaning, two issues might appear questionable. First, although the author reiterates the dialectic relationship between the three aspects of text meaning, the exact nature of the link between them is not obvious. Actional and identificational meanings might be viewed as representations, and representational meaning might be considered as an action. Therefore, how the three aspects of meaning interact dialogically needs to be discussed more. Second, the author seems to be reluctant to approach aspects of text meaning beyond the clause level and over longer stretches of text. Reducing text to sentence-level meaning, or at the most to the combination of a few neighboring sentences, could be a serious problem that might lead to ignoring higher-order aspects of text meaning over longer pieces of text, such as paragraphs. Arrangements of sentences and paragraphs and also interconnections among them throughout the text seem to be crucial aspects of texts that need to be accounted for in a framework of text analysis.
The concluding chapter has two objectives: drawing together and summarizing details of the text analysis framework presented in the book, and presenting a “manifesto” for CDA as a general research agenda (191). Fairclough summarizes the framework in the form of questions one might ask before analyzing texts, starting with “What social event, and what chain of social events, is the text a part of?” (191). He also presents his analysis of a sample text on the basis of the framework. In his manifesto, he depicts CDA as a form of critical research. In Fairclough's view, critical social research, concerned with relations of power, control, and possibility, needs to focus on language and discourse because language is playing a crucial role in social transformations. Finally, he puts forward and briefly discusses a five-step schematic view of CDA as a “method” in the critical social analysis of language.
An extensive glossary of key terms appears after the body of the book. It includes brief notes on linguistic and social theoretical concepts discussed throughout the chapters. Numbers after each entry of the glossary, indicating the chapters where the concepts are used, allow cross-referencing and can be helpful in the process of reading the book. To make the glossary more helpful, the note on each entry contains references for further reading. A descriptive list of key theorists is also provided. There follows an appendix of 15 example texts that were used to exemplify theoretical discussions throughout the book.
The proposed framework offers challenging discussions for students and researchers in various areas of linguistics. Although the book might not appear to present a comprehensive and thoroughly delineated framework, it does admirably contribute to CDA by attempting to inform it through an established linguistic theory (SFL) on one hand, and by placing text and textual analysis in a broader framework of social practices and social structures, on the other. Moreover, the book would remind linguists of the generally neglected necessity that CDA is to be established as a social scientific research procedure applicable by nonlinguists as well. Researchers in social sciences and humanities, as part of the intended audience of the book, may also benefit from the book. It would provide them with invaluable insights into the social functioning of language and how linguistic analysis might contribute to a better understanding of social structures, although they might not be very likely independently to apply CDA as a research method solely based on this book. The book is, therefore, a resource definitely worth reading by students and researchers in various areas of social sciences and humanities in general, and in linguistics and applied linguistics in particular.
