How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 085702891X ISBN 13: 9780857028914

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2012

Using a multimodal approach –graphic, vocal, written – How to do Critical Discourse Analysis guides students to an understanding of how language, power and ideology are negotiated in visual communication and media texts, from magazine and advertising, to YouTube and music videos. Authors David Machin and Andrea Mayr draw on discourse analysis, appraisal theory, stylistics and conversation analysis to present a systematic toolkit for doing language and image analysis. Using case studies and examples from a range of traditional and new media content, the book equips students with the necessary tools to analyze and understand the relationship between language, discourse and social practices.

About the Author:

David Machin is lecturer at Cardiff University.

Review:

How great to have this practical introduction to doing critical discourse analysis, especially one that provides examples of multimodal discourse analysis. Extremely useful for students in media and cultural studies who need tools for the study of text, talk and images. (Teun van Dijk)

The authors have truly achieved the impossible: to make extremely complex phenomena accessible for students and scholars alike. Thus, this textbook will provide a most helpful guide when looking for adequate ways to grasp and analyze the intricate interdependence of written, oral and visual forms of semiosis. (Ruth Wodak)

David Machin and Andrea Mayr have written a well informed book combining critical discourse and visual analysis. They present, in a very accessible way, a range of semiotic tools introducing readers to both theory and practice. Highly useful to students of communication studies in general. (Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard)

Media and cultural studies scholars have needed this book for some time - a critical and comprehensive introduction to the themes and tools of multimodal critical discourse analysis and, importantly, a clear framework for applying them in analysis. The book both summarises and develops a critical approach to analysing visual and linguistic communication, and should be mandatory reading for every student and scholar interested in examining how text and talk function. (John Richardson)

This book is a must for any student or scholar who is interested in ‘doing’ critical discourse analysis. At present, it is not easy to find a book like this one which is dedicated to providing a practical introduction to the analytic tools used by CDA practitioners...I am impressed by the fact that the authors explain extremely complicated phenomena in such an accessible way, which shows their excellent understanding of the subject in question.

(Song Guo 2014-02-18)