Critical Discourse Analysis (huckin) Notes.docx

To help students see beyond their own assumptions and frames of reference, you may wish to teach Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), specifically as Thomas Huckin outlines the approach in his essay “Critical Discourse Analysis.” As Huckin explains, CDA provides students with a useful methodology that moves them beyond merely pointing out logical fallacies and warrants to recognizing the strategies individuals employ, sometimes unconsciously, to hide their biases. These strategies include 

omitting facts

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foregrounding particular points that support your cause

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placing in the background those that don’t support your cause

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relying upon insinuation, presupposition, and connotations to sway people to your side

Students can analyze any number of “artifacts” using CDA: advertisements, television programs, films, songs, music videos, graffiti, museums, websites, toys, Facebook, etc. Source: Huckin, Thomas, Jennifer Andrusz, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric and Composition.” College Composition and Communication 64.1 (2012): 107-29. Print.