10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15511
This study outlines an integrated new perspective on the relationship between critical discourse analysis (CDA) and positive discourse analysis (PDA). CDA typically attempts to unveil the uses of language and semiosis in the service of power and is best known for its foci on ideologically driven discrimination (gender, ethnicity, class, and related social variables). Yet, CDA has not offered accounts of alternative forms of social organisation, nor of social subjects, other than by implication (Kress 1996). Concisely, ‘critical’ in CDA does not equate to ‘neutral critical thinking’, but to negative criticism of the power/language relationship. A different orientation is provided, among others, by Kress (2000) and Martin (2004). Martin’s perspective on “language and semiosis […is] oriented not so much to deconstruction as to constructive social action, through PDA [2004:180-181]”. Other instantiations of PDA, where the potential of linguistic and discourse analysis for facilitating positive intervention in social issues is considered, can be found in Macgilchrist (2007), Bartlett (2012) and Rogers (2017). More specifically, the former investigated strategies for propelling marginal discourses into the mainstream news media, while central notions in Bartlett’s and Rogers’s vision are to give voice and access to dominant discourses to less privileged, racialised social groups, and then to re-shape such discourses. Largely, topic selection makes the major difference between CDA and PDA: by selecting only discriminatory discourses to be deconstructed, there is no scope for positive critical thinking, whereas, from a PDA orientation, new transformative meanings can emerge.
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Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis – Commonalities and Differences
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Lucia Abbamonte
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Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"
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topic selection
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Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis – Commonalities and Differences
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Updating Discourse/s on Method/s                                            mediAzioni 34 (2022)
                                                                                  ISSN   1974-4382


          CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND POSITIVE
          DISCOURSE ANALYSIS – COMMONALITIES AND
                        DIFFERENCES
                                    LUCIA ABBAMONTE
                 UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DELLA CAMPANIA LUIGI VANVITELLI

lucia.abbamonte@unicampania.it



Citation: Abbamonte, Lucia (2022) “Critical discourse analysis and positive discourse
analysis – commonalities and differences”, in Lucia Abbamonte and Flavia Cavaliere
(eds.)    Updating   Discourse/s   on    Method/s,    mediAzioni    34:     A55-A76,
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15511, ISSN 1974-4382.



Abstract: This study outlines an integrated new perspective on the relationship between
critical discourse analysis (CDA) and positive discourse analysis (PDA). CDA typically
attempts to unveil the uses of language and semiosis in the service of power and is best
known for its foci on ideologically driven discrimination (gender, ethnicity, class, and
related social variables). Yet, CDA has not offered accounts of alternative forms of social
organisation, nor of social subjects, other than by implication (Kress 1996). Concisely,
‘critical’ in CDA does not equate to ‘neutral critical thinking’, but to negative criticism of
the power/language relationship.
        A different orientation is provided, among others, by Kress (2000) and Martin
(2004). Martin’s perspective on “language and semiosis […is] oriented not so much to
deconstruction as to constructive social action, through PDA [2004:180-181]”. Other
instantiations of PDA, where the potential of linguistic and discourse analysis for facilitating
positive intervention in social issues is considered, can be found in Macgilchrist (2007),
Bartlett (2012) and Rogers (2017). More specifically, the former investigated strategies for
propelling marginal discourses into the mainstream news media, while central notions in
Bartlett’s and Rogers’s vision are to give voice and access to dominant discourses to less
privileged, racialised social groups, and then to re-shape such discourses. Largely, topic
selection makes the major difference between CDA and PDA: by selecting only
discriminatory discourses to be deconstructed, there is no scope for positive critical
thinking, whereas, from a PDA orientation, new transformative meanings can emerge.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis; dominant discourses; positive discourse analysis;
transformative meanings; topic selection.



Copyright © 2022
The text in this work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.                                            A55
A56                                                                             ABBAMONTE


                                                  Stories are the secret reservoir of values:
                                                 change the stories individuals and nations
                                                                live by and tell themselves,
                                               and you change the individuals and nations.
                                                                            (Ben Okri 1996)



1. Introduction and aims

This study attempts to outline an integrated perspective on the relationship
between critical discourse analysis (CDA) and positive discourse analysis (PDA)
in the light of some considerations on the notion of “analysis”.
    CDA typically attempts to unveil the uses of language and semiosis in the
service of power and is best known for both its foci on ideologically driven
discrimination and its quite ambitious aims to expose and ultimately resist social
injustice. Apparently, “critical” in CDA does not equate to “neutral critical
thinking” but to negative criticism of the power/language relationship.
Predictably, this stance raised a prolonged critical debate (e.g., Stubbs 1997;
Toolan 1997; O’Halloran 2003; Widdowson 2004, Blommaert 2005), which
included accusations of choosing instances of discourse that could confirm the
ideological orientations of the analysts resulting in them ultimately relying on
one theory, e.g. systemic function linguistics (SFL), at the expense of others.
    More relevantly to the purposes of this study, CDA has not offered accounts
of alternative forms of social organisation, nor of social subjects, other than by
implication (Cazden et al. 1996). In this seminal article, the New London Group
showed how the multiplicity of communication channels and lingua-cultural
diversity made it necessary to overcome the limitations of traditional pedagogies
by re-designing approaches and modes of meanings in an inclusive way.
    The different orientation towards PDA is provided, among others, by Kress
(2000), Martin (2004) Martin and Rose (2003). Other instantiations of PDA, in
which the potential of linguistic and discourse analysis for facilitating positive
intervention in social issues is considered, can be found in the works of
Macgilchrist (2007), Bartlett (2012, 2017), Rogers (2018), Stibbe (2017) and
Hughes (2018), among others. This study considers aspects of, and notions in,
this emerging research domain while also looking for both commonalities and
variation between CDA and PDA, with attention given to the new potential
transformative meanings which can emerge.


2. The CDA pathways

The interconnectedness of discourse, power and ideology is a founding tenet
of CDA and can easily be traced back to the issue of discourse construction in
connection with the dominating ideology, as described in depth in Roland
Barthes’s and Michael Foucault’s works. More specifically, Norman Fairclough
took his trajectory from the latter and from Pierre Bourdieu’s vision in shaping
his own comprehensive and influential approach to CDA. Indeed, the plural foci
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    of CDA, ranging from the morpheme up to global social systems/realities and
    their transitions (e.g., to varying extents, from systemic functional linguistics and
    socio-cognitive discourse studies to the discourse-historical approach or corpus-
    based studies, as well as pragmatics and media studies, appraisal and evaluation
    studies,     rhetoric,      metaphor,      education,    multi-modality/mediality,
    ecolinguistics…), make it impossible to refer to its variety of approaches and
    applicability, including multimodal and multi-cross-media levels, in the present
    paper without unpardonable omissions1.
        Hence, concisely, we can say that CDA is best known for its attention to
    ideologically driven discrimination and gender, ethnicity/race, privilege, class
    and related geo-historical social variables. It aims at exposing normalised
    conventional social practices/structures that perpetuate inequality from a
    broadly libertarian perspective. In Fowler’s words, such an analysis consists in

            a careful analytic interrogation of the ideological categories, and the roles
            and institutions and so on, through which a society constitutes and
            maintains itself and the consciousness of its members […] All knowledge,
            all objects, are constructs: criticism analyses the processes of construction
            and, acknowledging the artificial quality of the categories concerned,
            offers the possibility that we might profitably conceive the world in some
            alternative way. (1981: 25, my bold)

    To give an overview of the social engagement and interdisciplinary agenda
    shared by many CDA researchers and practitioners, here follows a concise
    synopsis of CDA’s primary concerns and notions, such as change in discourse2.

              Table 1. CDA – Norman Fairclough – an overview
        CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: THEORY, METHODOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS
        THEORY
        Discourse (or “semiosis”, Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer 2004) is an essential
        element of the social process which is dialectically related to other elements
        (Harvey 1996). The social process as a whole is construed in discourse, and
        particular construals can, contingently, be “operationalized” in the social process as
        a whole, contributing to its social construction. […] Three important categories are:
ü       Discourses: ways of representing
ü       Genres: ways of acting (interacting, relating)
ü       Styles: ways of being (identities).
        […] The focus for analysis is relations between discourse and other elements of the
        social process—which entails discourse analysis within trans-disciplinary research
        [… These are as follows:]
§       Representation—contributing to knowledge etc.
§       Misrepresentation
§       Rhetoric—discourse used to persuade you of a certain view of reality to legitimize e.g.
        policy choices


    1
      For a comprehensive and in-depth discussion, see, among others, Jaworski and Coupland 2014,
    Flowerdew and Richardson 2017.
    2
      Excerpted (verbatim) and much abridged both from Fairclough’s seminars in Naples, Italy
    (February 20, 2007), at the Istituto Orientale di Napoli (“Global capitalism, terrorism and war:
    a discourse-analytical perspective”) and the Università Federico II (“Critical discourse analysis:
    theory, methodology and applications”) and from Fairclough 2005 (my bold).
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§ Ideology—discourse can contribute to the constitution, dissemination and
     reproduction of ideologies, which have a systemic function, sustaining relations of
     power
§    Social construction of social reality—discourse can generate imaginary representations
     of how the world will be or should be within strategies for change, which, if they
     achieve hegemony, can be operationalized to transform these imaginaries into
     realities […]
     Dual focus in CDA
•    The relationship between abstract social structures and concrete social events is
     mediated by “social practices”, relatively stabilized forms of social activity
•    CDA focuses on both discourse as an element of social events: i.e. “texts”, and
     discourse as an element of social practices (institutions, organizations, fields): “orders
     of discourse”
•    An order of discourse is a social structuring of linguistic/semiotic difference, which
     is constituted as a relatively stable articulation of discourses, genres and styles
•    One part of textual analysis is “interdiscursive analysis”—how discourses, genres
     and styles are articulated together in texts; the other is linguistic and other forms of
     semiotic analysis
     Discourse and social change
•    Social change can be seen as changes in boundaries and relations between social
     practices and social structures
•    Social change is in part change in discourse
•    And changes in discourse can be “operationalized” (materialized, enacted, inculcated
     in new identities) in broader social change
•    Change in texts, and in the longer-term changes in orders of discourse, can be seen as
     changes in discourses, genres and styles, and in the articulation of discourses, genres
     and styles.
     “Recontextualization” and re-articulation of discourses, genres and styles
•    Changes in discourse as part of social change involve the “recontextualization” of
     discourses—movement across boundaries from one context, one practice, to another
     (see Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 93-95 etc.)
•    Recontextualization is colonization and appropriation
•    As appropriation, the recontextualized discourse is worked into new relations with
     existing discourses (i.e. re-articulation, including interdiscursive hybridity in texts)
     and so transformed.
     METHODOLOGY
     Research topics
     Not specifically/exclusively to do with language—topics in social research which have
     interesting semiotic aspects, and allow a semiotic “point of entry”
     Examples: globalization, “transition”, new public management, politics of
     Thatcherism or New Labour, the public sphere, immigration and asylum, global
     warming, gender identities… [and also “neo-liberalism”, “information society”,
     “knowledge-based economy” and “learning society”. I shall focus here on the version
     of CDA I have been using in more recent (partly collaborative) work (Chiapello and
     Fairclough 2002; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 2000a, 2000b, 2003,
     2004; Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer 2004)].
     Constructing “objects of research” (Bourdieu)
     The “construction of the object” is “no doubt the most crucial research operation and
     yet the most completely ignored”. The conventional sociological division between
     theory and methodology as two separate instances should be “completely rejected”:
     [… since] it is only as a function of a body of hypotheses derived from a set of
     theoretical presuppositions that any empirical datum can function as a proof or, as
     Anglo-American scholars put it, as evidence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:225, italics
     in the original). [Through a trans-disciplinary process] CDA research projects

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   construct objects of research, hypotheses/research questions, in dialogue with
   relevant theorists/researchers in fields of social research, or relevant bodies of
   theory/research, designed for a semiotic “point of entry” into the research topic.
   Methods
   Which methods of data collection and analysis are used (and which categories in
   textual analysis) depends on the object of research. CDA as such is best not regarded
   as a method, but as a field of study with diverse approaches which share certain
   broad principles […] My approach—general method:
1. Social analysis
2. Interdiscursive analysis of texts and interactions
3. Linguistic (visual-semiotic etc.) analysis of texts and interactions […]

 Although CDA seems to leave open the possibilities of alternative representations
 of reality and of a positive/corrective action, its distinctive feature appears to be
 a critical attitude vs. the power-language relationship. As Martin and Rose
 (2003) commented, “the main focus of CDA work has been on hegemony, on
 exposing power as it naturalises itself in discourse and thus feeling in some sense
 part of the struggle against it (2003: 264)”. In their view, CDA did not promote
 a complementary focus on success stories in the communities, hence, the need
 for PDA arose.
     From a different perspective, the lack of alternative visions was also made
 clear by M. A. K. Halliday in his seminal New Ways of Meaning: The Challenge to
 Applied Linguistics (1990) with some effective examples. In his words,

       The grammar of “big” is the grammar of “good”, while the grammar of
       “small” is the grammar of “bad”. The motif of “bigger and better” is
       engraved into our consciousness by virtue of their line-up in the grammar.
       […] Growthism and classism are our two major ideological menaces; and
       ideologies are constructed in language. But the linguistic perspective suggests
       one further consideration: that we shall not solve one of these problems
       without also solving the other. (1990: 165, 170, my bold and italics)

 Accordingly (and paradoxically), the lexical effect of an expression like
 “zero/negative population growth”, which refers to a highly desirable
 phenomenon from the ecological perspective of sustainability, is not positive.
 Concisely, the motives of growth [good] vs. shrinkage [bad] are deeply
 “engrammatised”,3 as are the unboundedness of our material resources, the
 passivity of the inanimate environment (which is designated with the pronoun
 “it”) and the uniqueness of humankind instead of our continuity with our
 environment. We (should) know that such resources are finite, but, apparently,
 we are less equipped to perceive slow-motion crises than sudden events or
 catastrophes. Yet, in our days, the connection between ‘shrinkage’ and
 sustainability is increasingly mentioned as a necessity, as, for example, in the
 article To Take Climate Change Seriously, the U.S. Military Needs to Shrink (De La
 Garza 2022).


 3
   However, in specific domains, the connotations can change. For example, petite, slim, tiny, small-
 sized are compliments when referred to a woman and often preferred to big, robust, large,
 oversized...
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A60                                                                             ABBAMONTE


     Therefore, anticipating the PDA views (see below), Halliday identified the
need to promote linguistic change through a regular exercise of lexical choice at
various levels, such as first and second language teaching, clinical linguistics,
artificial intelligence, sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and language in relation
to culture. This was a remarkable challenge for applied linguistics, which he
considered to be socially accountable.


3. The questions of scientific neutrality and the scope of linguistic analysis

Indeed, CDA has a strong ideological foundation and a tendency to become
engaged in societal issues, and among its declared goals are those of exposing
inequalities and criticising the exercise of power that produced them from a
liberal-progressive perspective. Since “critical” does not equate to “neutral
critical thinking”, this attitude may appear in contrast with the common
scientific claim of objectivity:

      Scientific objectivity is a property of various aspects of science. It expresses
      the idea that scientific claims, methods, results—and scientists themselves—
      are not, or should not be, influenced by particular perspectives, value
      judgments, community bias or personal interests, to name a few relevant
      factors. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2020)

Yet, apparently, it can be challenging for human minds to really achieve
“objectivity”. Cognitive and psychological sciences have investigated and proven
in a variety of ways how emotions and bias affect judgement and decision-
making (Beattie 2008; Han et al. 2007; Watson and Spence 2007). Additionally,
“The ideal of objectivity has been criticized repeatedly in philosophy of science,
questioning both its desirability and its attainability” (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy 2020). The issue is overwhelming, involving virtually all domains of
human research, action, behaviour and choices. As we shall see, the domain of
PDA is far from being free from ideological orientation or bias. Indeed, a strong
ideological commitment, albeit from a different perspective and with different
aims, is what defines PDA. For the purposes of the present study, it should suffice
to say that although the selection of topics and discourses to analyse is driven by
the interests and ideologies of the individual researcher, their research methods
and the representation of their results can and should be “objective” or, in other
terms, intellectually honest (Abbamonte 2018).
     Another debated issue is how far the field of action of language/discourse
analysts can extend. Of late, there is a growing emphasis not only on
interdisciplinarity but also on the expected transitivity of the social commitment
of linguists. It may be useful here to quote the cautious words of Ruqaiya Hasan:

      While in theory the relation of context of situation to context of culture
      seems clear, the description of the options in the context of culture has never
      been articulated in any detail. Perhaps one is tacitly saying with
      Hjelmslev that, at this point, the sociologist and/or anthropologist will
      take over. Certainly, linguists as linguists are not able to analyze—or are at

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CDA AND POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS                                                     A61


      least limited in the extent to which they can analyze—the crucial properties
      of culture […]. Perhaps it is worth adding that, in a functional stratal theory
      of the type that I take SF to be, where the theoretical model attempts to
      model the permeability of human conditions of social existence and the
      system of verbal semiosis, there will inevitably arrive a stage where the
      highest stratum would not be wholly describable in terms of language.
      (1995: 267–268, my bold)

Furthermore, according to the sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist Jan
Blommaert, if discourse is considered as contextualised language, then discourse
analysts should move from linguistics to “a social science of language-in-society”
(2005: 235). More specifically, in relation to the potential issue of speciously
biased readings and the limited range of characteristics selected for analysis, he
also raised the question of linguistic bias in CDA, i.e. its nearly total reliance on
SFL for lexico-grammatical descriptions, the selection of discourse/texts without
considering the types of discourse that did not appear, and its inability to
effectively account for both the social dynamics behind the production of the
texts under analysis and the social consequences of their production.
    Tentatively, we could agree that as appealing as the idea of linguists
promoting change or successfully accounting for multi-layered ethno-socio-
historic-cultural-economic dynamics (etc.) may be, one should consider that such
outcomes can only come through interdisciplinary cooperation and/or tangible
engagement in some kind of social action and/or political activism.


4. The need for PDA, or the search for new stories to live by

While CDA’s engagement has mainly consisted in de-naturalising the uses of
language/semiosis that perpetuate any form of discrimination without offering
(productive) accounts of alternative forms and visions, what defines PDA is the
ambition of producing change through discourse and discourse analysis.
     Again, the need to promote change through language use was clearly
formulated by Halliday (1990), who was convinced that linguists can make the
difference through achieving a deeper comprehension of the potential of
language for doing either good or bad. Based on the tenet that language evolved
as the resource whereby human beings construe experience, he highlighted the
need for managing language at certain times, i.e., when it has to take on new
functions, by extending its power to mean in particular domains and/or types of
social activity. Halliday was deeply sensitive to a series of societal issues, such
as racism, sexism, classism, etc., and environmental issues with the consequent
need to change human attitudes to sustainability:

      [T]he grammar presents them [the natural resources] as if the only source
      of restriction was the way that we ourselves quantify them: a barrel of oil, a
      seam of coal, a reservoir of water and so on—as if they in themselves were
      inexhaustible. […] Production is a major semantic confidence trick; […] we
      don’t produce anything at all—we merely transform what is already there
      into something else, almost always with some unwanted side effects. (1990:
      164, 169, my italics)
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Halliday was poignantly aware of how, through pollution and by steadily
increasing our population, humankind was (is) consuming resources, such as
agricultural soil and fresh water supplies, rather than producing something
desirable, to the (predictable) point of destroying the planet. Thus, he turned to
language (to the English language, to be precise) as a powerful medium and
means to produce change. In his systemic-functional perspective, the lexico-
grammatical continuum, from vocabulary to the inner layers of grammar,
functions as the central processing unit for construing ideational meanings and
mapping them onto the interpersonal meanings which build and enact social
relationships. Hence, we, as speakers, should promote change through a regular
exercise of choice within the system, since

      classism, growthism, destruction of species, pollution and the like […] are
      not just problems for the biologists and physicists. They are problems for the
      applied linguistic community as well. I do not suggest for one moment that
      we hold the key. But we ought to be able to write the instructions for its use.
      (ibidem)

Subsequently, the need for change within the linguists’ community was
highlighted both by Kress (2000) and by Martin (2004), Martin and Rose (2003).
More specifically, Jim Martin, in his article “Positive Discourse Analysis:
Solidarity and Change”, stated that PDA provides “a complementary face of CDA
… oriented not so much to deconstruction as to constructive social action. […]
A window on the construction of values … through a discourse which we can
use both to monitor and design change” (2004: 184–197). From Martin
viewpoint, we need examples of analysis of positive change stories, such as the
redefinition of gender relations, or environmental issues.
     From this standpoint – the need for the analysis of positive discourse as a
means to comprehend change and the proposal of naming it “PDA” – Martin
maintains that just as analysts try to comprehend how power and power relations
generate and are reproduced through discourse from a critical perspective
(CDA), investigations should be broadened “to include … discourse that inspires,
encourages, heartens”, as he had already proposed earlier on (Martin 1999: 51–
52). Therefore, pleading for positivity in the face of negativity, Martin suggested
the need for “a complementary perspective, on language and semiosis, which
functions to make the world a better place” (2004: 179). For example, he
considered the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Bringing Them Home
report (1997) as a suitable topic for PDA. The report was the result of the
National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Children from Their Families, and it marked significant progress in the healing
itinerary of many Stolen Generations (aboriginal) members. It was written in a
positive style, privileging aboriginal voices and including first-person
testimonies, thus creating empathy and a movement in public opinion towards
reconciliation. In Martin’s vision, PDA has to be a proactive and transformative
kind of discourse analysis, such as can be found in Youth Justice Conferencing
in Australia. Indeed, restorative (or healing) justice exchanges can be suitable

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topics for PDA, especially if considered in the (socio-historically) localised
contexts of the many nations and communities where they take place (in the US,
Canada, the UK, Italy, etc.) through the work of individuals and groups to
promote positive change (Abbamonte 2014; Abbamonte and Cavaliere 2013).
    An interesting proposal for propelling marginal discourses into the
mainstream news media can be found in “Positive Discourse Analysis: Contesting
Dominant Discourses by Reframing the Issues” by Felicitas Macgilchrist (2007).
Since news stories generally do not contest the dominant frames, she showed,
through a case study approach, how five strategies (logical inversion, parody,
complexification, partial reframing and radical reframing) could successfully
contest the mainstream discourse. Thus, in her view, a useful application of PDA
emerged: identifying which reframing/s resonate more with editors and enacting
them in order to get marginal or dissonant discourses to be selected for
mainstream publication.
    Yet, dominant discourses can also be appreciatively considered in given
geopolitical contexts. For example, in a PDA study, Ting Su (2016) showed how
a speech delivered at the National University of Singapore (on November 7,
2015) by the Chinese President Xi Jinping successfully used positive expressions
of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation to evoke the youths’ emotional resonance
and introduced other voices and stances (heteroglossia), thus establishing a
dialogue with his audience, to promote cooperation:

      Finally, it can be seen that President Xi devotes to promoting China’s
      cooperation with Singapore. He is ready to handle the dispute and conflict,
      based on mutual respect and the spirit of seeking common ground while
      reserving difference, continuously enriching the strategic partnership and
      paving a win-win road of the equality and mutual trust. The speech
      conveys the positive signals, such as friendship, respect, cooperation as
      well as peaceful development, which benefits the people of all the countries.
      (Su 2016: 800, my bold)

In a more dialectical way, Tom Bartlett4, in his “Towards Intervention in Positive
Discourse Analysis”, illustrated that while CDA attempts “to engage with real-
world problems by bringing to light obstacles to social justice, by highlighting
where discourse goes wrong” (2009: 134), it does not show how people can find
their own voices and challenge the status quo of the typical power-language
relationships. Indeed, this is what PDA does “by highlighting where discourse
works”. He then suggests that PDA should be reinforced through a more
ethnographic approach by framing the effective discourses within their societal
contexts with a focus on the mores and communication modes. Thus,
contributing solutions should become more feasible. Going into more detail,

4
  Bartlett considered CDA as a broad umbrella word/approach that includes many aspects of
critical linguistics and whose defining feature is “the move away from the analysis of individual
decontextualised texts to look at the sociocultural factors that lie behind the production of
particular types of texts”. He also referred to Chouliaraki and Fairclough’s framework (1999: 60)
for CDA, consisting in identifying a problem and the ways to overcome the obstacles to tackling
it and reflecting on the analysis. Indeed, he emphasised the transitive dimension of CDA,
mentioning, for example, how Ruth Wodak managed to identify problematic areas in doctor-
patient interactions and to make useful suggestions which medical professionals often adopted.
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Bartlett quoted Martin’s contribution to shaping PDA (see above) and referred to
the work of Sally Humphreys on adolescents’ blogs, which laid the emphasis on
how powerful such non-school based activities can be.
    In Bartlett’s view, if we accept the idea that societies need to find common
ground, then CDA notions of false ideologies to expose are not as useful as
considering ideologies as a way of connecting communities. Accordingly, the
notion of intertextuality is foregrounded not so much “as a means of the dominant
bloc extending their view of society into an ever greater range of social activities,
but also as a means for alternative voices to get themselves heard in mainstream
discourses” (Bartlett 2009: 139).
    Concisely, CDA and PDA share many concerns (issues of agency, control over
discourse, i.e., power behind language, etc.) and tools, but view them from
declaredly different perspectives. From a PDA perspective, linguistic analyses
can be used to reveal ideas, aspects of shared understandings and personal
relationships and to get things done within specific groups. Through the analysis
of a selection of texts (with a focus also on the in/exclusive use of pronouns,
modals, etc.), Bartlett (2009) showed how the PDA stance can better identify
what discourse works in specific contexts5 and empower the voices that can tackle
and solve the problems. Yet, later on, he observed that

      While PDA situates complete texts within the broad sociopolitical context of
      their production and the polemic to which they contribute, the analysis of
      the interplay of complex linguistic features remains resolutely textual […and]
      there seems to be a reliance on the trained linguist to provide the evaluation
      of the different texts and the linguistic resources employed rather than a
      concentrated approach to assessing the evaluation and uptake of these texts
      within the target communities themselves […]. To extend the project of PDA,
      then, it is surely necessary to integrate textual and contextual analyses of
      communicative practices and to account for the link between language features
      and social structure. (2012: 8-9, my bold and italics)

Apparently, Bartlett did not consider PDA sufficiently transitive-proactive, and
he felt that the limitations of the textual bias in CDA persisted in PDA. Yet, such
a bias could be overcome through the sociolinguistic concept of voice, i.e. “the
means of behaving appropriately through language” (2012: 15), or, more
specifically, a way of speaking that conveys the speakers’ socio-cultural
backgrounds and interpersonal relations, thus “creating new discourse styles that
are comprehensible, empathetic and legitimate across intercultural divides” (2012:
32). His agenda for PDA practice

      takes these issues on board in order to move beyond analysing counter-
      discourses with the same textually oriented methods that CDA has used to
      critique hegemonic discourses and onto an analysis of how these discourses
      function in their specific context and how an understanding of their
      workings might contribute to the design of alternative discourses that are
      viable within that context. (2012: 38, my bold)

5
  For example, discourses about sustainability, drawn from field work in Guyana, between the
local Amerindian community members and the experts of international development
organizations are comparatively analysed.
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It is an appealing agenda that, however, does not seem to fully address the issue
of the scope for linguistic analyses, as signalled by Hasan and Blommaert (see
above).
     The fortunes of PDA have been affected by various kinds of criticism and
characterised by low-tide periods. Yet, after a period of “latency”, from 2010
onwards, new attention has been given to PDA as an interventionist type of
analysis and participation in sites of social change (Martin 2012), with a focus
both on how people get organised to make themselves heard and on the resources
for implementing future aims. Actually, in the contemporary semiosphere and
mediascape, which are increasingly defined by the affordances of our polymedia
resources and the growing number of channels that can become personally
expressive media (e.g. YouTube), this “re-distribution” of knowledge/s and re-
shaping of the power-language relationship are to be expected.
     Also inspired by Martin, Arran Stibbe (2017) acknowledged that the
tendency of ecolinguistics (EL)6 to criticise the dominant discourse of our
unsustainable industrial civilisation (i.e. the negative impact of language in
encouraging ecologically destructive behaviours) is only the first step. It is worth
noting that PDA and EL share many concerns and, above all, a proactive stance
– not simply scientific discourse analysis but dynamic agendas of transitive
actions. Thus, the next step should be to find new discourses on which to base
society. Apart from Martin’s insistence on the need to move beyond the focus on
semiosis in the service of abusive power and reconsider power communally,
among the other acknowledged influences on Stibbe’s elaborations is Halliday’s
attention to the constraining lexico-grammar of our language (see above). This
stance also refers back to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, further explored by Goatly
(1996) and Mühlhäusler (2001), who concluded that ordinary language
(Standard Average European) cannot adequately represent the scientific reality
of ecology. In this vein, a number of linguists are quoted to the effect of
displaying a number of alternative phrasings of the humankind-environment
interaction (Ponton, this volume), such as “native vegetation removal” instead
of “clearing”, “free-living non-human” instead of “wildlife”, or “cow-enslaver”
instead of “dairy farmer” (phrasings that have also attracted some irony).
     In Stibbe’s vision, which explicitly refers back to Lakoff and Johnson’s
ground-breaking work Metaphors We Live By (1980), the search for new stories
to live by, as PDA could be defined (Stibbe 2017: 170), is paramount, thus
participating in the increasingly widespread awareness of the importance of
stories and story-telling at a societal level to promote change. Stibbe was also
inspired by the poet and novelist Ben Okri (1996) who considered the stories as
a reservoir of values: “nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed
themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future
consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own
truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings (1996:21)”.
     Furthermore, in the inspired writings of some scientists, such as Rachel
Carson, Aldo Leopold and Loren Eiseley, Stibbe found a kind of positive discourse

6
 For a specific reflection on ecolinguistics and its relation to Positive Discourse Analysis, see D.
M. Ponton, this volume.
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whose linguistic features portray the world in ways that encourage respect for
nature. Other notable examples are William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”,
which attributes agency to nature, representing it as the Actor participant of
clauses, or Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, which Martin
considered as a message of hope, wisdom and grace. Still, the discourses of the
scientist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva (analysed in Alexander 2003)
are quoted as possible topics for the analysis of positive discourses. Concisely, in
Stibbe’s view, PDA is “a search for new ways of using language that tell us very
different stories from those of the current industrial civilization – stories that
encourage us to protect the ecosystem that life depends on and build more socially
just societies” (2017: 170, my italics). From this specific perspective, which
strongly connects the protection of the environment to social justice, he referred
to the insights of a number of linguists, ranging from van Dijk to MacFarlane,
and a variety of topics, such as the issue of eating as an agricultural act, slow
food, or the study of Native American discourses in search of favourable
representations of the natural world (beautiful, tame, bountiful) vs. the dominant
western definitions (wild, infested, savage). Yet, it is also essential for PDA to
preserve a critical stance for highlighting negative aspects of dominant
discourses, which is more easily achieved when considering issues of racism than
of ecological sustainability. Furthermore, the body of research which critically
analyses the mainstream negative discourses that support the current
unsustainable civilisation has not yet been matched by a body of research
looking at positive, inspirational discourses.
     Apart from the awareness-raising discourses supporting environmental
sustainability, elective topics for PDA are the discourse/s of popular, aboriginal
and native culture/s, as well as the discursive interactions that unfold in
restorative justice circles, many kinds of (dialogue-based) social activism,
educational practices and their dissemination, etc. A major emphasis is laid on
interventionist research and its role in serving communities. J. M. F. Hughes
(2018) recently extended the potential of PDA interventionist and emancipatory
research to include the discourse analysis of neurodiversity discourse as a tool
for disability rights activists interested in challenging cognitive ableism.


5. Applied, appliable PDA resources – a case study

The research and works of Rebecca Rogers are an interesting example of how
PDA can be socially proactive and interventionist, through strong educational
and social engagement, at a multimodal-media level. Rogers is an educational
researcher specialising in literacy studies and critical discourse studies, with foci
on the socio-political contexts of literacy education and ethnographic traditions.
In Reclaiming Powerful Literacy Practices: New Horizons for Critical Discourse
Analysis (2018), she expanded the analysis framework to the multimodal
learning/teaching process.




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CDA AND POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS                                                         A67


     Interestingly, Rogers promoted a six-month project (Spring 2015) focusing
on racial literacy7 for a class of teacher education students in the Normandy
school district (Ferguson), which was among the poorest and most segregated in
Missouri. Her initiative took place after a prolonged, violent protest had erupted
in Ferguson when, on August 9, 2014, the body of a black teenager, Michael
Brown (a graduate of Normandy High School), fatally shot by a white police
officer, was left in the street for four hours. Brown, a model student with no
criminal background, was unarmed. It was a high-profile case that received huge
news media coverage in a long chain of similar events. The community was
infuriated, and riots were met with an unprecedented use of police force.
     Rogers’s initiative of encouraging a positive reaction to those dire events by
using multimodal discourse analysis to provoke and study racial literacy appears
to realise the reinforced ethnographic approach Bartlett invoked. The context of
Ferguson was engaged as a point of departure, showing how discourses of race
were intertwined within and between local, institutional and societal domains.
In Rogers’s words, racial literacy has to do with learning and building meanings
about racism in its psychological, interpersonal and structural dimensions and is
a collaborative endeavour of becoming – “a slow-motion semiotic practice”, in
Halliday’s terms.
     In that “teachable moment”, public schools in Ferguson were reinforcing
their counselling services to cope with students’ anxieties after two weeks of
violent protests in their community, and plans to make a learning opportunity
out of these race-based tensions were taking shape. A new proactive approach
was thus displacing the typical attitude of many area school leaders who advised
teachers to stay neutral and avoid discussing race, apparently, rather than to
analyse racism as a long-standing phenomenon. In that changing social climate8,
at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley (Ferguson, MO), a
multifaceted event took place with a high iconic value, starting from its very
denomination – Drawing FergUSon Together: A Vision of Peace.
     Within the initiative of interest for linguistic and multimodal
communication, we find Using Story Circles to Engage in Courageous Conversations
(by Casey Tuths, Rebecca Rogers et al.) and, in particular, Reading, Writing and
Responding with Ferguson: Critical Literacy in Action (by Rebecca Rogers and Cara
Richeé). From a proactive perspective, Rogers and Richeé both claimed that the
Black Lives Matter movement could also inspire the work of educators. Their
central aims were to investigate institutional forms of racism, including
segregated schools and the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as the subtly
constraining neoliberal takeover of schools in low-income communities, in order
to facilitate the building of social justice-oriented curricula (for more details, see
Abbamonte 2018).



7
  Rogers illustrated her project in a paper presented at the Cadaad Conference at the University
of Catania, Italy, on September 5-7, 2016. The images in this section are taken from her PPT
presentation, which she kindly made available (and remains available on request), and were
made from publicly available non-copyrighted documents.
8
  A variety of suggestions for teachers and teaching materials were proposed, among which are
Emdin 2014; Schulten et al. 2014; Granata 2014; Morningside Center 2014.
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     In that re-educational context, grounding her 2015 project in expansive studies
of learning and critical race theory, Rogers intended to utilise the potential of
discourse analysis to provoke change through cooperative transforming
practices, such as representing and interpreting the healing initiative of a number
of artists, Painting for Peace in Ferguson9, through a collage (made by her class group)
and creating a storyline that addressed racism. Here follow three pictures
representing her class members and their collaborative collage-making activity.




                            Picture 1. Rogers’s class of teacher education




                   Picture 2. Activities of Rogers’s class of teacher education



9
  A series of images, shots from murals and child-friendly verse were collected in a drawing book
for children by Carol Swartout Klein, published on February 21, 2015.
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CDA AND POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS                                             A69




                    Picture 3. Collage by Rogers’s class of teacher education

The class activity was also video-recorded, and the multimodal responses of the
participants to the unfolding racial issues, which included the re-voicing of
unnamed (non-participant) white people, were assessed.
     As a form of racial literacy in action, a storyline addressing racism and
narrating racial justice intervention was created during the semester (see below).
It is a multimodal performative story that cannot be suitably represented in a
written paper, but it is interesting to notice (or deduce) how meanings were
created and chained across gestures, gazes, movements and spoken words.




                                     Picture 4. Storyline 1.

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                                     Picture 5. Storyline 2.




                                     Picture 6. Storyline 3.

The function of these pedagogic multimodal narratives is, according to Rogers,
to create a space for practising racial literacy by voicing multiple perspectives
and critiques. For example, she pinpointed the unfairness of tracking students’
records and suspensions that “stick with them” until (or if) they graduate,
especially for African American boys. Concisely, racial literacy focuses on

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CDA AND POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS                                                           A71


meaning-making rather than knowing, and this includes vulnerability and the
exercise of imagination. Although aspects of CDA are recognisable, the major
emphasis is on transforming the existing racially unbalanced situation and
promoting positive change rather than on critiquing obstructionist or bigoted
attitudes.
     In her 2018 volume, Rogers illustrated the shift towards PDA, which
functions as a reconstructive discourse analysis and focuses on discourses of hope,
transformation and liberation, referring to activities such as 6th graders designing
a social justice museum exhibition or the above-mentioned teacher education
students, who implemented racial literacy in response to the death of Michael
Brown.10 Rogers’s emphasis is not on the “method” but rather on positively
oriented examples with the potential to shape discourse analysis. Such attention
to examples, cases and their contexts rather than methodological and formal
concerns is common to many EL works.11


6. Conclusion

Largely, topic selection is the major difference between CDA, which is interested
in opposing the dominant mainstream discourses supporting an unsustainable
society, and the positive focus of PDA. By selecting only discriminatory
discourses with their pervasive patterns of linguistic features to be
deconstructed, there is no scope for positive critical thinking, whereas, from a
PDA orientation, new transformative meanings can emerge through the voices
of less privileged or racialised social groups. Across our web-wired, porous
mediascape, where professional journalists navigate alongside the less
disciplined voices of people variously engaged in the events, efforts could be
made to make such voices enter the mainstream communication (through blogs,
forums, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. and eventually the news media).
     For example, Rogers emphasised the great educational potential of the free
circulation of such audio-visual race-based narratives as those produced by
artists and educators and pupils in Ferguson, claiming agency for themselves and
providing a positive response to the death of Michael Brown, the protracted riots,
the lootings and the harsh police repression. Rogers explained how PDA does not
emphasise academic methods per se but, broadly, liberates creative energy for a
healthy revaluation of social mores.
     Interestingly, in a similar vein, a representative of the news media, Nancy
Gibbs, observed:

10
   A similar study in a different context (a public school on the north coast of Colombia) was
carried out by Calle-Diaz in 2019, “Possibilities of building peace through classroom discourse:
A positive discourse analysis”.
11
   Concern about strict adherence to pre-established theories and methods can vary across the
analytical schools. Yet, as Ruth Wodak (2011, 2015) pragmatically observed, while “grand
theories” often serve as a foundation, in specific analyses, “middle-range theories” frequently
supply a better theoretical basis. The safest course, so far as discourse analysis specifically is
concerned, seems to select the more adequate analytical resources for the texts/discourses to be
investigated from among the available disciplinary tools and frameworks, or to gradually re-
shape, implement and develop such resources, according to the textual features at stake.

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      Critical stories are journalism. […] But a bias against the positive fuels
      cynicism in both public officials and voters. […] And it misses the story.
      […] In the worst of times, we feel small and defensive and risk averse and
      tribal. As opposed to the expansive, embracing, oxygenated opportunity of
      optimism.
      If we don’t write about what is working as well as what isn’t, whether in
      state and local government, in the private sector, in the vibrant,
      entrepreneurial, immensely potent philanthropic arena, we are missing one
      of the greatest stories of our times. (Gibbs 2017, my bold)

An even more progressive position is advanced by Bill Gates (2018):

      Reading the news today does not exactly leave you feeling optimistic. […
      Yet,] on the whole, the world is getting better. This is not some naively
      optimistic view; it’s backed by data. Look at the number of children who
      die before their fifth birthday. Since 1990, that figure has been cut in half.
      […] In 1990, more than a third of the global population lived in extreme
      poverty; today only about a tenth do. A century ago, it was legal to be gay
      in about 20 countries; today it’s legal in over 100 countries. Women are
      gaining political power […] and the world is finally starting to listen when
      women speak up about sexual assault. […] Being an optimist doesn’t mean
      you ignore tragedy and injustice. It means you’re inspired to look for
      people making progress on those fronts, and to help spread that progress
      more widely. […] So why does it feel like the world is in decline? I think
      it is partly the nature of news coverage. Bad news arrives as drama, while
      good news is incremental—and not usually deemed newsworthy. (Gates
      2018, my bold)

Gates attributed to the journalistic voices the habitus to accommodate the
natural human attitude to focus on threats and bad news, whereas to be better
able to promote positive change, one needs “to see good things happening.”
Accordingly, news coverage should be more balanced and prioritise
achievements as well, such as, say, the institutional discourse/s on green
transition and human rights.
    Indeed, it is not always easy to create a distinction between PDA and EL,
since the latter also recommends finding new forms of language with different
linguistic features embedded in their grammar in order to move on from negative
discourses. Apart from EL’s greater emphasis on the need for critiquing
discourses of consumerism, superficial “greenspeak” (vaguely reminiscent of the
Orwellian “newspeak”) etc., the difference between them can be found in topic
selection, since PDA’s range of topics is wider, while EL favours the analysis of

      nature writing, indigenous stories, new economics and humane
      organisations to discover clusters of linguistic features that come together to
      convey positive stories about the place of humans in the natural world.
      The ultimate aim is to promote these clusters of features so that they can
      become widespread alternatives to the dominant discourses of industrial
      civilisation. (Stibbe 2017: 176-177, my bold)

Although it is difficult to outline final distinctions, since we are dealing with
evolving and intertwined domains of research, Table 1 below may be useful to
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broadly recap the tendential differences and commonalities among CDA, PDA
and EL.

       Table 2. Differences and commonalities between CDA, PDA and EL in our
evolving semioscape, at a glance (the circle symbol indicates the weak presence
of the feature).
                   Characteristic                      CDA          PDA       EL
 Perspectives      Critical stance (vs. unequal       ü         o         ü
                   power/language relations)
                   Positive stance (emphasis on                 ü         ü
                   solidarity)
                   Ethnographic approach              o         o         o
                   Non-neutral                        ü         ü         ü
                   attitude/ideological
                   commitment
                   Interdisciplinary                  ü         ü         ü
                   Interventionist                    o         ü         ü
 Activities        Re-construct/ transform            o         ü         ü
                   De-construct                       ü         o         o
                   Meaning-making/ hope               o         ü         ü
                   Re-framing                         o         ü         ü
 Objects/topics of Texts/discourses            that             ü         ü
 analysis          encourage
                   Texts/discourses            that   ü                   o
                   perpetuate injustice
                   Nature vs. industrialisation       o         ü         ü
                   discourse
 Focus             Progressive texts/discourses –               ü         ü
                   features
                   Oppressive,             abusive    ü                   o
                   texts/discourses – features
 Aims              Social critique                    ü         o         o

                        Social change                 o         ü         ü

 Methods                SFL-based                     ü         ü         ü
                        Examples>methods              o         ü         ü

The possible extent and implications of both the interventionist attitude and the
pluri-disciplinary aspects entailed in the social dynamics behind the production
of the selected texts/discourses and the social consequences of their production
are sensitive issues (Hasan 1995; Blommaert 2005). Concisely, among the
possible questions, how far can linguistic/discourse analysis go while staying
credible? Seemingly, to move forward from the linguistic research domain and
conduct interdisciplinary research, other specialists need to be involved;
moreover, if linguists chose to become activists, forms of socio-political activism
would have to be enacted.




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https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15511
