How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction

"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 who need tools for the study of text, talk and images." - Teun van Dijk, Pompeu Fabra University "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, Lancaster University How do media texts manipulate and persuade us? How do language and images play out the ideas, values and identities? This book shows readers exactly how language, power and ideology are negotiated in media texts, from magazine and advertising, to YouTube and music videos. Presenting a systematic toolkit of theories, concepts and techniques for doing language and image analysis, students learn how to dig deep into discourses and the media landscape. With case studies and examples from a range of traditional and new media content, the book equips students to understand the relationship between language, discourse and social practices.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: How Meaning Is Created Making Active Choices: Language as a Set of Resources Analysing Semiotic Choices: Words and Images Presenting Speech and Speakers: Quoting Verbs Representing People: Language and Identity Representing Actions: Transitivity and Verb Processes Concealing and Taking for Granted: Nominalization and Presupposition Persuading with Abstraction: Rhetoric and Metaphor Committing and Evading: Truth, Modality and Hedging Conclusion: Doing Critical Discourse Analysis and Its Discontents Glossary

About the Author :
David Machin is Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of Corpus and Applications, Shanghai International Studies University.  He publishes in a range of academic fields applying multimodal critical discourse analysis to provide unique insights.  His books include Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2020), Doing Visual Analysis (2018), Visual Journalism (2015) and The Language of War Monuments 2013). He is coeditor of the journal Social Semiotics, which publishes researching which uses multimodal critical discourse analysis and is on the editorial board of a range of leading journals in the field.  Andrea Mayr is currently Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Zayed University, UAE, where she works in the fields of Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodality, with a particular focus on crime and deviance, social exclusion and (digital) media activism. In her widely used books and peer-reviewed journal articles she applies mostly linguistic methods to the study of multimodal communication, such as in Language and Power (2019).

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.