Critical Discourse Analysis and Orientalism

Critical Discourse Analysis is a way of analysing text (usually language) and 'CDA' is far more concerned with what text actually does rather than what it means. Stuart Hall describes it as the ‘production of knowledge through language’ (Hall, 1992, p 291). 

Critical Discourse Analysis has a particular interest in the relationship between power and language, it considers the political, gender, media and institutional discourses that testify to more or less overt relations of struggle and conflict. 

'Language is also a medium of domination and social power. It serves to legitimate relations of organised force. In so far as the legitimations do not articulate the relations of force that they make possible, in so far as these relations are merely expressed in the legitimations, language is also ideological. Here it is not a question of deceptions within language, but of deception with language as such'. (Habermas, 1977, P. 259)

The key theorist in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis is the French philosopher and social theorist, Michel Foucault. His book L'Archèologie du Savoir, or The Archeology of Knowledge, published in 1969 seeks to analyse and describe the history of discourse and instead of analysing the preconceptions about historical unity or continuity, Foucault describes the process of discourse in all its thresholds, differences and varieties: 

'The premise of the archaeological method is that systems of thought and knowledge [...] are governed by rules, beyond [...] grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period'. (Gutting, 2013)

Foucault was concerned with how social discourses created concepts that change over time such as medicine, sanity and insanity, and sexuality. His primary principle was that there is not some ‘thing’ called sexuality/sanity etc. that exists prior to discourse. Discourses, create and sustain them.

In their publication, theorists Fairclough and Wodak discuss the main principles of Critical Discourse Analysis, they summarise and explain:

1. How CDA addresses social problems, 
2. How the power relations are discursive, 
3. Discourse Constitutes Society and Culture, 
4. How discourse does ideological work, 
5. How discourse is historical, 
6. How the link between text and society is mediated.
7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory 
8. Discourse is a form of social action. (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997, p. 271-280)

One of the most famous branches or products of discourse analysis is Orientalism.

'Orientalism' is a Western product and process. Through discourse analysis's construction of the 'East', we 'understand' Eastern countries and cultures in a politically motivated way. 

Through definition and construction of 'the Other', ‘we’ the West, define and construct ourselves. The ‘East’ only has meaning in contrast with the ‘West’. Orientalism is simply a framework or a 'lens' that we use to understand the unfamiliar or the strange. It is a lens that is used to make the people of the 'East' appear different and threatening in comparison to those in the 'West'.

'From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself.' (Said, p. 283)

Said conducted a wide-ranging survey and through it found many tropes and comparisons with the West in relation to 'the Orient':

• The Orient as feminine, whereas the West is masculine,
• Decadent, yet we are controlled,
• Barbaric, yet we are civilised,
• The Orient as traditional, yet we are modern,
• Oppressive, yet we are progressive. 

Although Said's definition and analysis of Orientalism is arguably accurate and real, it has been accused of cherry-picking moments in history (Lewis, 1982) and there has been criticism due to the 'vacillation between discussing the Orient purely as a construction and positing the Orient as real place which the West has misrepresented' (Bhaba 1994, 72; Young 2001, P. 391) and while it may be a key discourse in relation to popular media, it may not be as hegemonic and unyielding as some theorists may think. 

Bibliography

• Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The location of culture. London and NY: Routledge.
• Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In van Dijk, T. A. (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction: A multidisciplinary introduction (Vol 2, pp. 258-84). London: Sage Publications Ltd.
• Gutting, G. (2013). Michel Foucault. [online] Plato.stanford.edu. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/#3.2 [Accessed 7 Mar. 2017].
• Habermas, J. 1977. Erkenntis und Interesse. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
• Hall, S. 1992. The West and the rest: discourse and power. In: Hall, S., and Gieben, B, eds. Formations of power. Cambridge: Polity.
• Lewis, B. (1982). The Question of Orientalism. 1st ed. [ebook] The New York Review of Books. Available at: https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/307584/original/The+Question+of+Orientalism+by+Bernard+Lewis+%7C+The+New+York+Review+of+Books.pdf [Accessed 7 Mar. 2017].
• Said, E. [1970]. 1995. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin