Jan Blommeart is an Africanist, ethnographer, and synergistic critical discourse analyst. Taking the terms in reverse:
Discourse &emdash; “language in society”, not just language use but also the sum of communicative acts, and these acts situated in context.
Critical &emdash; the performance of analyses that “expose and critique existing wrongs in one’s society &emdash; analyses that should be ‘brought home’” (4).
Synergistic &emdash; drawing from multiple sources, e.g., Hymes, Fairclough, Bauman, Bernstein, Bourdieu, Wallerstein, Bahktin, Foucault, Habermas, Hall, Hanks, Scollon. He particularly notes Norman Fairclough, British Cultural Studies (the Birmingham School), and French poststructuralism (23).
Ethnography &emdash; “an approach in which the analysis of small phenomena is set against an analysis of big phenomena . . . and both . . . can only be understood in terms of one another” (16).
An Africanist perspective: “in the age of globalization, it is worth having a look at materials from the peripheries of the world system” (20).
The central problem of this approach is to locate the relationship between a text (the microsocial) and its context (the macrosocial).
Critical Discourse Analysis
by Steph • May 8th, 2005
from ideologies to civilizations?
by Steph • September 6th, 2004
In her article on Critical Link (previous post), Maria Rosaria BURI references Samuel P. Huntington‘s book, Who Are We? The Challenges to American National Identity. The book seems to be an exploration of the changing geopolitical situation in which Huntington argues that “‘civilizations’ are replacing ideologies in international relations and politics” (Buri).
Buri recommends this book for community interpreters.
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