Moral evaluation in critical discourse analysis.

Discourse analysis can reveal what texts leave out, and how texts transform and evaluate the social realities they represent butcriticaldiscourse analysis must alsoevaluatethe findings of discourse analysis, and, this paper argues, this cannot be done on discourse-internal grounds alone. To develop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 140 - 154
Main Author: van Leeuwen, Theo
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Apr2018
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:Discourse analysis can reveal what texts leave out, and how texts transform and evaluate the social realities they represent butcriticaldiscourse analysis must alsoevaluatethe findings of discourse analysis, and, this paper argues, this cannot be done on discourse-internal grounds alone. To develop this argument, the paper will first discuss how critical discourse analysts might establish whethermisrepresentations have taken place, and then how they might assess whether such misrepresentations legitimate and promote unacceptable forms of inequality, in other words, how discourses might be morally evaluated. Special reference is made to the issue of ‘marriage equality’ as it has recently played out in Australia.