Critical Discourse Analysis: The CDA Approach

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The grammatical and the words choices are very important in writing. They affect the way we present our ideas. So the writer can reach what he/she wants and influence his readers. Every writer has different assumptions, beliefs and ideologies about the world and how it should be. Their grammatical and lexical choices help us to understand their different views and ideologies. The language of written texts helps readers to understand the writers' experiences, their reasons, their differences and communicative effects so that written texts can demonstrate the relation between reality and language through lexicogrammatical features. The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA Approach) has been developed to analyse the text in term of the lexicogrammatical…show more content…
Under the systemic functional approach, the text is seen as a construct of multiple types of meanings which relate to: the nature of the social action in which the text operates (experiential meanings/field), the roles and relationships of those involved in the communication (interpersonal meanings/tenor) and the communicative form the text takes (textual meanings/mode). This text is a political article which is published in the Guardian newspaper. Its title is: “Israel reopens al-Aqsa mosque compound before Friday prayers”. The subject matter of the article stimulates the writer to use specific words which are related to its field such as (Israel, al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem, the Palestinian president, the streets of east Jerusalem, shooting, police of a Palestinian and killing) and so…show more content…
Main processes are: a physical action (a material process), a communicative process (verbal), a cognitive, perceptual or emotional process (mental), a description, possessions, classification or identification (relational). In text 1, the material actions play a central role, and the number of the material processes is 8 (out of 13) most of them are concrete verbs. They indicate a physical doings and actions related to the event which is “reopening of Al-Aqsa Mosque”. For example: reopening, shooting, killing and other actions processes related to such event. The use of these verbs indicates that the event which the writer is talking about is associated with people, and this event happens in a real time. On the other hand, the number of the verbal processes in text 1 is less than the number of the action processes. Here there are only 3 verbal processes, which also indicate that they do not play a central role in the text as they are used here to provide description and information only. Whereas the mental process used here in a little number which is only 1 process and the relational processes used 1 time likewise. The types of processes that used here indicated the writer ideology about Al-Aqsa closure’s reasons and its reopening. Therefore he used many action verbs to indicate the physical actions of people in such event as well. However, in the second text there is multi use of

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