Discussion Questions for Norman Fairclough’s Analysing Discourse
Chapter 3: Intertextuality and Assumptions
1. Introduction
Q1. In Paragraph 40A, NF writes: “What is ‘said’ in a text is ‘said’ against a background of whatis ‘unsaid’ but taken as given.” Try to find some examples of this in a Japanese or English
newspaper report?
2. Difference and dialogicality
Q2. Using the same newspaper report as in Q1, try to identify which of the five ‘scenarios’ oforientation to difference it contains (Paragraph 41B). (NOTE: It may contain just one scenario, butmore likely it will contain a mixture of scenarios.)
Q3. [NOTE: This group of questions is taken from my Notes for Chapter 3 (about Paragraph43B)] Which of Fairclough’s interpretations do you think is best? How can we decide? Do you
feel comfortable with this lack of clarity about which Scenario the text belongs to? Shouldn’t
Fairclough try to be more precise, for example by providing clearer criteria and analyzing the text
more closely? Or is that level of clarity impossible or inappropriate for this kind of analysis?
3. The public sphereQ4. Do the TV companies in your country ever have ‘debate’ programmes about important
political topics? Do you think such programmes are an effective ‘public sphere’? Why/why not?
4. Hegemony, universal and particular
Q5. If Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is correct (NOTE: This is a big assumption, since
many people do not think it is correct!!), then the successful use of power by dominant people
depends on achieving the active consent (or at least the passive acquiescence) of the dominatedpeople (Paragraph 45A). Do you think the media has any role in helping the dominant people
achieve this consent or acquiescence of the dominated people?
5. Intertextuality
Q6. Using the same newspaper report as in Q1, try to identify what texts and voices are included
in it and which are excluded. Are there any examples of (a) quotations/direct reporting; (b)reported speech/indirect reporting; (c) unattributed intetextuality? Are there any significant
absences of texts or voices in the report? What is the relation between the author’s voice and theattributed voice of others? In conclusion, do you think the report has a high level of dialogicality,or not?

Q7. [NOTE: This group of questions is taken from my Notes for Chapter 3 (about Paragraph53B)] Is it surprising that a British radio broadcast will have a pro-western /anti-Libyan bias? In
general is it surprising that national broadcasters have a bias in favour of their own country? (e.g.
think of how differently the Japanese media and western media represent the issue of whale
hunting). It may not be very surprising, but is it a good or a bad thing?
6. Assumptions
Q8. Using the same newspaper report as in Q1, can you identify any existential, prepositional orvalue assumptions in it? What linguistic features of the text ‘trigger’ these assumptions? (seeParagraphs 55C and 56A) Which assumptions are the most ideological? Are the value assumptions
mainly explicit or mainly implicit? (see Paragraph 57A)
7. Ideologies and assumptions
Q9. In Paragraph 59B, Fairclough writes: ‘to claim that [(for example) the existence of souls] is
an ideological assumption, one would need a plausible argument that it is indeed effective, alongwith other related [religious] propositions and beliefs, in sustaining relations of power. This
would need to be based on a complex social scientific analysis of the relationship between
religious beliefs and power relations … Certainly, one cannot simply look at a text, identify [its]assumptions, and decide on textual evidence alone which of them are ideological.’How, more specifically, can the social analysis help? What sort of evidence would be necessary?
What sort of methods are needed for gathering such a kind of evidence? How should the evidence
be interpreted? [NOTE: This group of questions is taken from my Notes for Chapter 3 (aboutParagraph 59B)]
8. Other types of assumptions
Q10. Using the same newspaper report as in Q1, can you find any examples of (a) logicalimplications; (b) standard conversational implicatures; (c) non-standard conversational
implicatures?
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