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ensures that the ideological understandings that inform the research are declared, thus
avoiding potential for accusation of bias in not only reporting of findings but also of
conducting analysis of data. This ensures that ideologies inherent in texts emerge from the
data, not imposed into it. In addition, through carefully planned, articulated and executed
stages of analysis, a gap between analysis and conclusion should not occur. Questions to
respond to for both preliminary and intermediate data analysis stages of the research are
explicitly outlined in the research design and conduct section of this chapter, a further
measure to avoid shaping conclusions through the lens of personal preconceived notions of
what the research data should reveal. Furthermore, the historian Marwick’s caution that
researchers must develop a strategy is adhered to in this project, both in the collection and
analysis of sources. According to Marwick,
…it cannot be stressed too much that before embarking on primary research,
historians have to develop a strategy. A strategy is essential for ensuring that
research is systematic, and that time is not wasted on random investigation…Having
a strategy is very different from having a predetermined thesis, or some a priori
theory or ideology. We all have preconceptions and preliminary ideas – and these
may, indeed, have come from our readings in the secondary source. Most historians
are familiar with that point in the archives, or perhaps when one is reflecting later on
what one has discovered in the archives, when early misconceptions begin to be
replaced and new and more convincing interpretations begin to take their place.
(2001, p. 163)
In addition, there is also a need to establish a clear and focused analysis that avoids relying on
established rhetoric and simplified understandings of power relationships and struggles that
exist in social structures. Blommaert criticizes this aspect of CDA, and although this criticism
is potentially unfair as it treats CDA researchers as having a juvenile approach to social
discourses, it is nevertheless important to respond to so that a clear case can be established
for how this project avoids falling into a trap of rhetoric. By claiming, “in CDA, discourse is
accompanied by a narrative on power and institutions, large portions of which are just copied
from rank-and-file sources or inspired by received wisdom” (2001, p. 15), Blommaert makes
the assumption that CDA merely uses data to communicate pre-established understandings of
power discourses; therefore viewing the world as a set of binaries, rather than understanding
that discourses of power are much more intricate and also contain hidden elements of power.
His assumptions in this regard, can clearly be understood through his endnote addition of “in
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