Discussion Questions for Norman Fairclough’s Analysing Discourse
Chapter 2: Texts, Social Events and Social Practices(Version 2)

Introduction
Q1. Norman Fairclough says that social life is made up of various kinds of social events. He alsosays that social events have two main kinds of causes: (a) social structures and social practices
and (b) social agents [= people]. When news journalists report on an event (such as 9.11 or theIraq War), which of these two types of cause do they usually emphasize? Why?
Texts and social agents
Q2. Journalists are social agents. When they write a news story, how much freedom do they haveto ‘make meaning’ by ‘texturing’ texts, (that is, by establishing relationships between elements intexts)? For example, how much freedom do journalist have to describe the Iraq War as ‘aninvasion’ rather than ‘a war’, or the people responsible for 9.11 positively as ‘heroes’, ‘martyrs’ or‘freedom fighters’ (or more neutrally as ‘bombers’ or ‘attackers’) rather than ‘terrorists’?
Social events, social practices, social structures
Q3. NF describes orders of discourse as ‘the linguistic elements of networks of social practices’.
What ‘linguistic elements’ are involved in the social practice of television news programmes?
Q4. NF also describes orders of discourse as ‘the social control and organization of linguisticvariation’. Can you think of an example of how the language in texts such as TV news
programmes are socially controlled and organized? Who does the controlling and organizing, andhow do they do it?
Social practices
Q5. Look at the elements of social practice shown in the box on page 25. Can you give examplesof these elements that are articulated together in the social practice of ‘playing an online computer
game’ or ‘watching a movie in the cinema’?
Discourse as an element of social practices: genres, discourses and styles
Q6. Describe the genres, discourses and styles of the social practice of either (a) doing ‘karaoke’or (b) a newpaper report about a traffic accident.
Text as action, representation, identification
Q7. The first sentence of Example 9 (page 244) is: ‘Companies that are successful on the web
operate differently from their laggard counterparts’. Can you identify the Action, Representation

Edward Haig1

DQ for AD Ch2(v2)and Identification meanings in this sentence?
Dialectical relations
Q8. Consider the social practice of being a male TV news presenter (= ‘announcer’). Whatdiscourses, genres and styles are involved? How are they dialectically related (that is, how are thediscourses inculcated in the styles of presenters and how are the discourses enacted in the genresof presenters’ talk. And how are the styles and genres of presenters represented in the discourse ofnews presenting?
Q9. Repeat Q8, but for female news presenters. Are there any differences in discourses, genres andstyles, or in how they are dialectically related?
Mediation
Q10. What genres are regularly involved in the genre chain of reporting business news from theWall Street (New York) stock market in the Chunichi Shinbun in Nagoya? Does the report in thenewspaper represent the end of the genre chain? How might the chain continue?
Genre chains
Q11. What social practices are associated with the genre chain discussed in Q10?
Genres and governanceQ12. In 34B NF suggests that ‘the mass media’ are ‘a part of the apparatus of governance’. That is,
the mass media are a tool with which powerful groups in society (politicians, business leaders,etc.) control ordinary people. Do you agree? Why/Why not?
Genre mixing
Q13. Can you think of an example of a genre of media text which seems to be a ‘hybrid’ mixtureof genres?
Relational approach to text analysis
Q14. NF says his approach to text analysis is a ‘relational’ one. On page 35 there is a chart of thevarious levels of his analytical framework. What are the advantages and disadvantages of thisapproach for studying media texts? Can you think of a better way to study the media?

ENDEdward Haig2

DQ for AD Ch2(v2)