The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Title: Corpus linguistic approaches to critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) views language as both discourse and social practice, focusing on the relationship between language and ideology. It employs qualitative methods to examine lexicogrammatical and discoursal choices made to express social processes and phenomena. CDA has been criticised for its methodological weakness, lacking in academic rigor and representativeness, and its failure to make generalisations of research results. In response, corpus linguistics, primarily used for studying the patterns of linguistic features in corpora, has been used to bolster CDA research. A challenge of integrating these approaches to discourse studies is to decide which aspects of social processes and social phenomena can be best served by corpus analysis. In this talk, I will address this question by presenting some of my recent corpus-based CDA research studies and discussing implications for further research.

Bio

Winnie Cheng is Associate Dean, Faculty of Humanities, Professor of English and Director of Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE), Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is a Founding Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, discourse intonation, ESP, intercultural pragmatics and communication, professional and organizational communication, and writing across the curriculum.