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with the bricolage approach adapted for this research, this will result in power relationships
exposed within and between texts.
Combining the individual terms to form critical discourse analysis, two overarching
definitions of the methodology apply to this project. First is van Leeuwen’s statement,
“critical discourse analysis is, or should be, concerned with…discourse as the instrument of
the social construction of reality” (as cited in Jaworski & Coupland, 2006, p.28). Second, as
defined by Jaworski and Coupland, this approach:
…offers a means of exposing or deconstructing the social practices that constitute
‘social structure’ and what we might call the conventional meaning structures of
social life…The motivation for doing discourse analysis is very often a concern
about social inequality and the perpetuation of power relationships, either between
individuals or between social groups… (2006, p. 5)
An important aspect of CDA in education and historical studies, and particularly for this
project which deconstructs the representations of Indigenous peoples and British heritages in
History curriculum, is that it “…offers an alternative approach to the analysis of educational
disenfranchisement, enabling us to track governmental, institutional and professional
construction of deficit, disadvantage and deviance…” (Luke, 1997, p. 347). In addition the
four concepts that Wodak and de Cillia assert is integral to any CDA project “…the concepts
of critique, power; history; and ideology” (2006, p. 713) are integrated throughout this
project.
3.3 Description of Critical Discourse Analysis Approaches
As stated CDA is increasingly used as a cross-disciplinary methodological approach, with
“…many established disciplines” (Fairclough, 1989, p. 11) using this method. As the
potential of CDA as a tool of analysis across a range of fields has become apparent, it has
experienced wider application across a growing number of studies (Chouliaraki &
Fairclough, 1999; Parker & Burman, 1993; Potter & Wetherell, 1994; Luke, 1995-1996;
Luke, 1997). This wide application has also increased its susceptibility to come under attack
by those who prefer a more ‘pure’ or narrow linguistic theory (Tyrwhitt-Drake, 1999). CDA
for textbook analysis has been applied, for example, in a study of Japanese textbooks by
Christopher Barnard’s (2001, 2003a); and earlier in de Castell, Luke and Luke’s (1989)
Language, authority and criticism. Although Barnard’s (2001, 2003a) study investigates the
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