Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Academic Texts: A Potential Strategy in Addressing Challenges of Cross-border Provision of Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Mushi, Honoratha M. K (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Academic Texts: A Potential Strategy in Addressing Challenges of Cross-border Provision of Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Huria Journal, VIII (1). pp. 68-85. ISSN 0856 6739

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Abstract

Using discourse from written texts representing information about New Information Communication Technologies (NICTs) in distance education (DE) in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) the author shows how texts/discourse may be used to marginalize people who have systematically been made powerless. Awareness of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the ability to use it as an emancipatory tool are represented as techniques that may be employed to uncover marginalization and exploitation. Texts, including academic texts, are represented as avenues for colonizing minds as explored by CDA scholars such as Fairclough (1995), Van Djik (1993) and Kress (1989). Such colonization translates into other forms of colonization, which are the root causes of exploitation, marginalization, and subordination. The author provides practical examples of written text extracts, analyses the extracts using CDA and critically interprets the texts to show how CDA may be employed as a means to decolonize minds of peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa. CDA is represented to have the potency to open up for critical conceptualization of the real world as presented in written texts which influence how people live and act. In the context of this paper discourse is considered a social practice that influences other forms of social practices. Taking from Van Djik’s (1993) position, the stated influence is grounded on discourse as a symbolic practice that embodies the social environment that shapes “public mind”, “social cognition” ( p. 257) and the social actions that ensue from such minds and cognition. Furthermore, the author bases her prepositions on Fairclough’s (2004) perception of discourse as a tool that can be used to control the selection of certain structural possibilities and the exclusion of others and the retention of the selections in particular areas of social life.

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