The Text as a Critical Object: On Theorising Exegetic Procedure in Classroom-Based Critical Discourse Analysis

The thesis is concerned with a recontextualisation of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for educational purposes. It examines CDA from the perspective of existing conceptual frameworks and procedures for the critical analysis of texts and offers an alternative theorisation of CDA for a university context. Beginning with an outline of the circumstances in which the study evolved, the thesis examines and reformulates the meaning of a critical practice by reappraising perceptions of ideology, knowledge, power, discourse, and emancipation in CDA. This it does particularly in relation to the CDA of Norman Fairclough. One reason CDA is critical is due to its association with the critical social theory of thinkers such as Marx, Althusser, Gramsci and Foucault. This has provided CDA with theoretically developed critical conceptions of society and of discourse. At the level of the text CDA has relied on a procedural model derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The position of the thesis is that SFL is not a critical social theory and that a ‘critical’ theorisation of procedure at the level of the text is therefore absent in CDA. The thesis suggests a possible development of this space in which critical exegetic and discursive procedures are theorised from the perspectives of M. Foucault, T. W. Adorno, J. Derrida and J. Habermas. It argues for the opening of a dialogue between these thinkers in the interests of an educational practice which is centred on the text. These theoretical strands are woven together to produce a procedural framework for the critical reading and discussion of texts. This is applied to a defined university context and the results documented. The procedural practice which the framework exemplifies is termed treating the text as a critical object (TACO). This offers an alternative model of exegesis for teachers, students, and non-specialists to use in the sociological/semiotic/linguistic and critical analysis of texts