Understanding Discourse Analysis eBook

Understanding Discourse Analysis first intends to analyze a selected group of US presidential speeches building from the articulation between the study of decision-making psychological traps, understood from a discursive perspective, and the meta-theoretical principles of the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation theory. Continuing, the authors analyse extracts from Ghana’s education policy reform documents to exemplify the efficacy of critical discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary analytic tool and/or method for analysing written texts in critical policy research. The work of Marie-Anne Paveau, who has further developed the ideas of Michel Pêcheux, is addressed. Her notion of prediscourse is applied to show how it can productively contribute to our understanding of the creation and perpetuation of ideas. The diverse ways the connectives "wa" in Arabic and "and" in English get translated between the two languages are assessed, with focus on the discrepancies between the discourse functions of these two particles in both languages. The existing current of discursive analysis assumes that reality is involved in hegemonic and ideological processes, allowing for the analysis of cultural imbrications and dynamic processes between structure and human agency in the construction of reality. As such, the possibility of using critical discourse analysis in consumer studies is addressed.