Browsing by Subject "Critical discourse analysis"

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    A critical discourse analysis of practical problems in a foundation mathematics course at a South African university
    (2016) Le Roux, Kate; Adler, Jill
    Mathematical problems that make links to the everyday and to disciplines other than mathematics—variously referred to as practical, realistic, real-world or applied problems in the literature—feature in school and undergraduate mathematics reforms aimed at increasing mathematics participation in contexts of inequity and diversity. In this article, we present a micro- and macro-analysis of a prototypical practical problem in an undergraduate mathematics course at a South African university. This course offers an alternative route to a mathematics major for students considered disadvantaged by enduring educational inequalities in South Africa. Using a socio-political practice perspective on mathematics and critical discourse analysis—drawn from Norman Fairclough’s critical linguists—we describe what mathematics and mathematical identities practical problems make available to students and compare this to what is valued in school mathematics and other university mathematics courses. Our analysis shows that these practical problems draw in complex ways on sometimes contradictory practices in the wider context, requiring the student to work flexibly with the movement of meaning within and across texts. We raise for further consideration the possible consequences of this complexity and offer suggestions for practice that take into account issues of power.
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    South Africa's Socio-Techno Divide: A critical disourse analysis of government speeches
    (2009) Chigona, W; Pollock, M; Roode, J D
    This paper aims at contributing to the debate about the digital divide. We first focus on what to us constitutes the root problem: the typical approaches to the development of people through and by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). In contrast to governmental, political and technological attempts that focus almost exclusively on providing access to digital communication technologies, and expect "development" naturally to flow from that, we argue for a focus on "development" which is based on our notion of sustainable socio-economic development. We refer to "technocentric approaches" when the approaches propose and pursue technological interventions and show little regard for the actual needs of the people involved. At the other end of the scale, where the focus is on people and their developmental needs, we will speak of "sociocentric approaches". This presents us with a different divide, which we will refer to as the "socio-techno divide". We argue that it is this divide that has to be addressed - not the digital divide - and then present an analysis of the socio-techno divide. This analysis takes the form of two types of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), namely Foucauldian and Habermassian. The analysis of the South African government's rhetoric illuminates the issues that need our attention and indicates an agenda for constructive engagement about the use of ICT for development in the Third and Fourth worlds.