Anabela Carvalho (2008) Mediated discourse and Society - Rethinking the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis.pdf

This is a scientific article, not an ebook

The analysis of journalistic discourse and its social embeddedness has known significant advances
in the last two decades, especially due to the emergence and development of Critical Discourse
Analysis. However, three important aspects remain under-researched: the time plane in discourse
analysis, the discursive strategies of social actors, and the extra- and supra-textual effects of
mediated discourse. Firstly, understanding the biography of public matters requires a longitudinal
examination of mediated texts and their social contexts but most forms of analysis of journalistic
discourse do not account for the time sequence of texts and its implications. Secondly, as the
media representation of social issues is, to a large extent, a function of the discursive construction
of events, problems and positions by social actors, the discursive strategies that they employ in a
variety of arenas and channels ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ journalistic texts need to be examined. Thirdly,
the fact that many of the modes of operation of discourse are extra- or supra-textual calls for a
consideration of various social processes ‘‘outside’’ the text. This paper aims to produce a
theoretical and methodological contribution to the integration of these issues in discourse
analysis by proposing a framework that combines a textual dimension with a contextual one.
KEYWORDS comparative-synchronic analysis; Critical Discourse Analysis; discursive effects;
discursive strategies; historical-diachronic analysis; time