Feminist Critical Discourse

Analysis: Articulating a
Feminist Discourse Praxis
Presentation By Group 2 (Participants): Hafsa Ghias 11

Mehroos fatima 23

Fazilat Bibi 29

Saheefa Batool 37

Kainaat Jameel 45

Sawera Saleem 53

Dua Rauf 83

Maheen Malik 93

Aiman Ghaffar 95

Presented to: Dr. Fatima Zafar Baig

Subject: Language and Gender

Date: 5th of May, 2023.

List of contens
 Introduction to FCDA

 Why FCDA?

 Objections by Feminist Scholars

 Gender as Ideological Process

 Task of FCDA, Power Relations & (de)constructin of gender

 Feminist Studies and CDA

 Critical Reflexivity as Praxis

 Critical feminist analysis of discourse practice

 Examples given, Sexist language in ads and songs

Introduction to FCDA
This presentation brings CDA and feminist studies together in
proposing a ‘feminist critical discourse analysis’ which aims to
advance a rich understanding of the complex workings of power
and ideology in discourse in sustaining gendered social
arrangements.
 Problems
 First, feminist theories since the late 1980s have shown that
speaking of ‘women’ and ‘men’ in universal, totalizing terms
has become deeply problematic.
 Second, the workings of gender ideology and asymmetrical
power relations in discourse are presently assuming quite subtle
forms in modern societies, in different degrees and ways in
different communities.

Aims
The aim of feminist critical discourse studies is to show up the

 Complex
 Subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways

Which produce gendered assumptions and hegemonic power

relations,
 which are then;

 sustained
 negotiated
 and challenged in different contexts and communities.

Contributions
It contributes to (critical) language and discourse studies and

suggests the usefulness of language and discourse studies for the

investigation of feminist issues in gender and women’s studies.

Why a feminist CDA?

For over a decade, in several branches of language and

discourse studies, there has been a concerted move towards the

term ‘feminist’ in various sub-fields by feminist scholars

working in these areas, such as:

 ‘Feminist stylistics’ (Mills, 1995),

 ‘Feminist pragmatics’ (Christie, 2000), and
 ‘Feminist conversation analysis’ (e.g., Kitzinger, 2000).

In 1992, Cameron explained that one of her main objectives was

to ‘question the whole scholarly objective bias of linguistics and

to show how assumptions and practices of linguistics are

implicated in patriarchal ideology and oppression’ (1992, p. 16).

The need to claim and establish a feminist perspective in

language and discourse studies is to change male-stream

disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences

(Gordon, 1986; Harding, 1986; Spender, 1981).

Feminist CDA is concerned with analysis of various forms of

social inequality and injustice.

Objections expressed by feminist scholars

about CDA
Cameron wrote
‘[CDA] is one of those broadly progressive projects whose

founders and dominant figures are nevertheless all straight

white men, and Wilkinson and Kitzinger (1995) specifically

remark on these men’s failure to give credit to feminists by

citing their work. For sure, most feminist research in CDA is not

undertaken by ‘straight white men’, but by a diversity of

feminist women in a wide range of geographical locations, not

all of whom are white and heterosexual.

  Eckert, for instance, has noted how gender operates in a

more pervasive and complex way than other systems of

oppression . According to Eckert:

The power relations between men and women are similar to

those between dominated and subordinated classes and ethnic

groups, the day to day context in which these power relations

are played out is quite different. It is not a cultural norm for

each working class individual to be paired up for life with a

member of the middle class or for every black person to be so

paired up for life with a white person. However, our traditional

gender ideology dictates just this kind of relationship between

men and women.

 Writing in the early 1990s, Van Dijk, one of the leading figures
in CDA, remarked:
 ‘For CDA to become a prominent approach in the
humanities and social sciences, we should expect dozens of
books, hundreds of articles and conference papers, and special
symposia or conference sections yearly’ More than a decade
later, all these have been achieved and more: this journal is
testament to that, along with the growing number of CDA
books, articles, and international conferences

Feminist CDA, with its focus on social justice and

transformation of gender, is a timely contribution to the
growing body of feminist discourse literature, particularly in the
field of gender and language where feminist CDA has occupied
a surprisingly marginal position.

 Wilkinson and Kitzinger have noted that:

“there is really ‘no necessary coincidence between the

interests of feminists and discourse analysts’, In terms of
feminism and CDA in particular, there is actually much overlap
in terms of social emancipatory goals.

 Increasingly in CDA research, language is critically analysed

together with other semiotic modalities like visual images,
 layouts, gestures, and sounds, which makes for an enriching
and insightful analysis.

 Articulating a feminist discourse praxis

The central concern of feminist critical discourse analysts is with

critiquing discourses which sustain a patriarchal social order –

relations of power that systematically privilege men as a social

group, and disadvantage, exclude, and disempower women as a

social group.

 In other words, to speak from the position of a ‘woman’ is

not the same as speaking from the political perspective of

a feminist. To know as a ‘woman’ means to know from the

perspective of the structure of gender, whereas a feminist

perspective means that one has a critical distance on

gender and on oneself.

Gender as Ideological Process

⮚ Ideologies are representations of practices formed from

particular perspective in order to maintain unequal power

relations and dominance

⮚ Marxist theory in terms of class relations

⮚ Fairclough and wodakk,1997

Encompasses other relations of dominance

including gender

⮚ Feminist perspective:

People are divided into two classes

1-women

2-men

This division is based on hierarchical relation of

dominance and subordination

⮚ Sexual differences:

Gender structure imposes a social dichotomy of

labor and human traits on women and men, this varies

according to time and place

⮚ Naturalness of sex:

Grant in 1993 put it this way:

"It is true that structure of gender acts through and is

inscribed on sexed bodies , but the whole idea of two

sexes only has meaning because those meanings are

required by the genders structure in the first place."

⮚ Patriarchal dividend:
 Connell in 1995 privileges men as a social group

in terms of access of symbolic, social, political and

economic capital.

⮚ Spender in 1985 gave an example of the symbolic accrued

to men in English speaking culture is the way in which male

pronounce and nouns('he'/'man') has been given generic

status in the English language which by default always

assures men of visibility while simultaneously rendering

women invisible.

⮚ Gramsci in 1971 said that relation of dominance are largely

accomplished through discursive means

⮚ Weedon,1997 explained this in a way that asymmetrical

gender relations …

⮚ Connell in 1987,1995 argues that institutions are

substantively structured in terms of gender ideology so

that gender may not be important aspect in a particular

instance it is in the majority of cases

⮚ Pervasiveness and androcentric in many cultures and

discourses, not only men but also women are complicit

 through their habitual, differential participation in their

particular communities of practices

⮚ Various ways of institutionalization of gender inequality is

enacted:

Media, education, government, professional

settings

⮚ Deviations from gender appropriate norms are policed

and contained in the presence of a prevailing discourse of

heteronormativity

Task of Feminist CDA

The task of feminist CDA is to examine how power and

dominance are discursively produced and/or (counter-)resisted

in a variety of ways through textual representations of

gendered social practices, and through interactional strategies

of talk.

Complexity of power relations

“Overt forms of gender asymmetry or sexism, traditionally,

have included exclusionary gate-keeping social practices,

 physical violence against women and sexual harassment and

degeneration of women.”

Even though power maybe ‘Everywhere’ (as theorized by

Foucault), gendered subjects are affected by it in different

ways:

 Race/ethnicity, sociao class, sexual orientation, age, culture and

geography.
 "Gender oppression is neither materially experienced nor
discursively enacted in the same way for women everywhere."

"There is a need for feminist political action to be inflected by

the specifity of cultural, historical, and institutional

frameworks, and contextualized in terms of women's complexly

constructed social identities."

Discourse in the (de)construction of gender

The interest if feminist CDA lies in how gender ideology and

gendered relations of power get (re)produced, negotiated, and

contested in representations of social practices, in social

relationships between people, and in peoples's social and

personal identities in texts and talks.

 Gender relationality entails a focus on two kinds of

relationships:

 Identities as "women" and "man".

 Dynamics between forms of masculinity

Similarly, there needs to be a critical awareness of relations

among groups of women.

Within feminist CDA, both the ethnomethodologically-based

concept of 'doing-gender' and the post modernist idea of

'gender performativity' have a place.

Why feminist studies and CDA alike are open

to interdisciplinary research?
 Investigations of the interrelations between gender, power,

ideology, and discourse are necessarily complex and multi-

faceted.

Critical Reflexivity as Praxis

According to Giddens (1991), reflexivity is a generally

pronounced characteristic of late modern societies, by which

he means there is an increased tendency for people in this

period to utilize knowledge about social processes and

practices in a way that shapes their own subsequent practices.

A critical focus on reflexivity, as a phenomenon of

contemporary social life, must be an important facet in the

practice of feminist CDA.

Two areas of interest

 First, how reflexivity in manifested in institutional practices,
with implications for possibilities for change in the social and
personal attitudes and practices of individuals.
 Second, there needs to be on-going critical self-reflexivity
among feminists keen on achieving radical transformation of
gendered social structures.

Reflexivity of institutions is of interest to feminist CDA, both in

terms of progressive institutional practices engendered and in

terms of strategic uses of feminism to further non-feminist

goals. Awareness of feminist concerns about women’s

inclusivity and opportunity for just participation in the public

sphere is reflected in the implementation of women-friendly

programs in at least some organizations in some contexts.

For example:

It is now commonplace in many universities in the global

north/west and in some universities in the south/east to

include gender related modules such as ‘gender and language’

in linguistic programs in their curricula. The relative

acceptability and respectability of such studies in universities

today is in no small part due to the efforts of feminists. When

taught from a feminist perspective, such studies afford a space

for discussion and reflection on, for instance, gender and

language issues, and have the potential for raising critical

language awareness among students.

Unlike the above, there are also institutional reflexive practices

that recuperate feminist values of egalitarianism and

empowerment for non-feminist ends.

Aside from focusing on institutional forms of reflexivity,

feminists also need to be critically reflexive of our own

theoretical positions and practices lest these inadvertently

contribute to the perpetuation, rather than the elimination, of

hierarchically differential and exclusionary treatment of some

women. One issue in need of clarity is what we mean and

expect by the term ‘emancipation’. For feminist critical

discourse analysts, the ultimate goal is a radical social

transformation based on social justice that opens up

unrestricted possibilities for both women and men as human

beings; a discursive critique of the prevailing restrictive

structures is a step in that direction.

 Contemporary feminist theorists have pointed to the inherent

flaws in classical liberal notions of equality and freedom, as

premised upon an abstract universalism and ‘sameness’:

 First, equality from this perspective implies ‘same as men’,

where the yardstick is that already set by men. Instead of a
radical shift in the gender order, women therefore are required
to fit into prevailing androcentric structures. Many of the
problems encountered by modern women in the public sphere,
in spite of gaining access to education and paid employment,
are due to unchanging gendered social structures . Among the
difficulties are exclusion and alienation among peers and by
subordinates, the lack of female role models and self-
determined leadership styles for women managers,
suppression of nonmainstream voices in peer discussions, and
the double-shift work shouldered by women in the office and at
home. These social issues are in part also discursive in nature.
 Second, the dominant liberal ideology assumes the sameness
of all women. It has allowed middle-class, heterosexual,
western, white women to represent their partial experiences as
universally shared by all women, thereby ignoring the material
conditions and needs of non-western, non-white, lesbian,
disabled and poor women around the globe

Feminist CDA based on close analysis of contextualized

instances of texts and talk in a variety of local situations aims to

contribute to feminist politics in this way.

Of particular concern to feminist CDA is the global neo-liberal

discourse of postfeminism (Lazar, 2004). According to this

discourse, once certain equality indicators (such as rights to

educational access, labour force participation, property

ownership, and abortion and fertility) have been achieved by

women, feminism is considered to have outlived its purpose

and ceases to be of relevance.

Even in the case of the former, women’s rights and freedoms

cannot be assumed as a given, for these can be contested

through conservative backlash discourses and changing public

policies (e.g., the recent contestation of abortion laws by the

Bush government in the USA).

Also, rights and freedoms are neither total nor even;

For example,

a gendered wage gap continues to exist in a number of

these societies, as does systematic male violence against

women in a variety of forms and permutations, which curtails

women’s full social emancipation.

The discourse is partly a reactionary masculinist backlash

against the whittling away of the patriarchal dividend.

However, it is equally important to recognize that some third-

wave feminists (e.g., Walter, 1999; Wolf, 1993) also contribute

to this discourse, albeit in different terms. For them, this is a

time for celebrating women’s newfound power and

achievements; in Wolf’s(1993) account, this is the moment of

‘power feminism’. While it is important to acknowledge the

social, economic, and political achievements of a growing

number of young women in many industrialized societies

today, there is a need also to exercise critical reflexivity on the

matter.
Ironically, this represents a backsliding on (second-wave)

feminists’ efforts to put the ‘personal as political’ on the social

agenda.

Critical Feminist Analysis of a Discourse

Practice
Whereas much CDA research (including some of my own) has

focused on ‘serious’ political, professional, and news media

contexts and texts, little attention has been paid to consumer

advertisements, which are considered rather banal.

From a critical perspective, consumer advertising offers a

productive site for the study of cultural politics – relations of

power and ideology as they appertain to cultural processes and

practices in the public sphere

The advertisements discussed in this section are drawn from a

larger research project on the advertising of beauty and body

enhancement products

This section is concerned with how feminine (hetero)sexuality

is construed as women’s power

Gill (2003) expresses this as the re-sexualization of women in

contemporary popular culture and media, from a position of

sexual objectification to sexual subjectification. That is, instead

of presenting women as passive objects for men’s sexual

pleasure, there is a shift towards presenting women as sexually

autonomous, active, and desiring subjects

Such a shift entails a re-signification of the sexual terrain, such

that these representations are no longer a sign of women’s

exploitation, but of women’s empowermentThe popular

resexualized media images resonate with Wolf’s views of what

she calls a ‘power feminism’, which is ‘unapologetically sexual

The Unisense campaign ran three advertisements with equally

eye-catching visuals and captions depicting women’s sexual

power. Each of the advertisements represents a heterosexual

couple, where the woman, slender and beautiful, is visually

salient. In terms of spatial composition, either she is in front of

him (in one ad, she is casually reclining on a sofa in her silk

night dress, with a well-built man in the background bringing

her breakfast on a tray; in another ad, the woman stands ahead

with her back to the man, beckoning him with the crook of her
index finger), or standing on top of him, with a stiletto heel

resting on his bare back. The latter pose is reminiscent of an

infamous Lee Jeans ad that appeared in Britain in the 1990s, in

which a woman had her stiletto boot pressed into a man’s

naked buttock. Whereas the women in all the advertisements

are clothed (in a plain while chemise or in short black

dresses),the men are partially naked, drawing attention to well-

toned, muscular torsos. Visually, it is he who is sexually

objectified, not her, and becomes the object of the (straight)

female gaze.

Visual representations are equally arresting captions in the

form of imperatives: ‘Discover the power of femininity’. ‘Defy

conventions and . Make them work for it and ‘Heel. Take the

lead’ [the beckoning woman ad]. A signature line is common to

all the advertisements: ‘Discover the alpha female in you.’

The language invokes a curious mix of discourses of

empowerment (note the ideas regarding self-discovery and

challenging the status quo in ‘Discover the power,’ ‘Defy

conventions,’ and ‘Take the lead’) and dominance, which

invites the reading that women’s empowerment is dominance

over men (and vice versa).

This language, in the context of gender and sexual relations

between women and men, constructs women as agentive

subjects, assertive (even aggressive) and in charge. Sexually,

the alpha female is not coy and eager to please, but is the one

to call the shots on her terms. Whereas dominance is

established in quite crude, domesticating terms

ADVERTISMENT 2
Elizabeth Arden’s print ad for the fragrance ‘Provocative

Woman’ features actor Catherine Zeta-Jones, also visually

salient, against a deserted Wall Street-like backdrop, looking

sultrily into the camera, with lips parted, hair tousled, and legs

apart, in a figure-hugging black dress. Her shoulders are bare

and her dress is lifted to reveal a thigh. Next to the thigh, on

her right, a brief statement with modality of high certitude

‘Men will melt’ is printed in descending fashion, which moves

the eye downwards towards the ankle-deep water in which she

steps. From the relationship between image and text, clearly a

causative structure is implied – namely that her sexual

presence has reduced all men in the vicinity into water swirling

at her feet.

According to Williamson’s (1978) classic semiological

analysisThe statement ‘Men will melt’ in the advertising

context, therefore, carries the illocutionary force of a promise

or guarantee to female consumers, as if such power over men

is a coveted goal and within reach of any woman

Postfeminist advertising suggests that patriarchal ideologies of

gender in terms of women’s powerlessness and oppression are

outdated. Instead, this is fast becoming a women’s world, in

which relations of power are shifting in favour of women. Such

representations, however, far from supporting the feminist

cause, are quite detrimental to it. Feminists’ concern for

women’s empowerment is appropriated and recontextualized

by advertisers, evacuating it of its political content and instead

infusing meanings quite antithetical to feminism.

In the popular postfeminist scenario, men are made over as the

new subordinate group.

Such representations also reduce the quest for women’s social

empowerment to that merely of bodily or sexual

empowerment. Even then, not all women can be powerful in

this way; only ‘beautiful’ women can rule over men.

Conventional beauty for women, as defined by the media and

evident in my data, is young, able-bodied, heterosexual(ized),

tall, slender, light-skinned, and with straight hair, which selects

out a diversity of races/ethnicities.

Use of Sexist Language in Commercials and

Songs : Application of FCDA
Women objectification in Bollywood songs
Raja beta banke maine jab sharafat dikhai

Tune bola hatt mawali bhaw nahi dia re,

ABCD padhli bahut

Achi baatein karli bahut,

Thandi aahein bhar li bahut

Ab karunga tere saath

Gandi baat

MAIN TOU TANDORI MURGHI HOON YAAR KATKALE SAIYAN ALCOHAL SE

Aegyo in Kpop
THE END