Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a useful framework to uncover and examine power relations and social inequalities reflected through discourses, language and texts. This is an introductory course on using CDA not just to analyse texts and discourses, but as a tool to conceptualise and develop research projects that aim to uncover or resist the reproduction of existing power inequalities.

Workshop participants learn to analyse the meanings and appreciate the socio-political contexts behind texts, especially in newspapers and public media. In examining how public knowledge and dominant narratives are being produced and reproduced, participants will be guided to think through the role that research development processes, as well as the dissemination of research findings, play in knowledge production that generate “facts” or “truths” in the public domain. In particular, research about marginalised groups and social services need to be mindful about how existing power relations are perpetuated through such research development. Participants are challenged to rethink and suggest ways to overcome or resist the perpetuation of narratives that maintain or deepen the oppression of marginalised groups through research.