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• “1. Focus upon a social problem which has a semiotic aspect” (2001, p. 125). This
research has adapted this more broadly, with the Appendix A: Contexts articulating the
‘social problem’ that provided the motivation to carry out this research, namely the
public debates regarding Australian history and culture carried out over a sustained
period of time.
• Stage two of Fairclough’s model reads:
2. Identify obstacles to it being tackled, through analysis of
a) the network of practices it is located within
b) the relationship of semiosis to other elements within the particular practice(s)
concerned
c) the discourse (the semiosis itself)
• structural analysis: the order of discourse
• interactional analysis
• interdiscursive analysis
• linguistic and semiotic analysis (2001, p. 125)
This stage is used in part prior to the analysis taking place, with Part C of this stage replaced
with the four stage process described in the following section. Parts A and B are described as:
“…approaches the diagnosis of the problem in a rather indirect way, by asking what the
obstacles are to it being tackled—what is it about the way in which social life is structured
and organized that makes this a problem which is resistant to easy resolution?” (Fairclough,
2001, p. 125). This occurs through Chapter 2: Literature Review where research conducted
unpacks aspects of the hidden curriculum present in school curriculum documents. This
includes making explicit the official knowledge which translates to and is sanctioned through
syllabus documents and then communicated to teachers through syllabuses, sourcebooks and
supplementary curriculum materials; and to school students through textbooks. The data,
then, becomes part of a network of practices around school discourses by deconstructing
representations of Indigenous Australians and British heritages.
• Stage three reads:“consider whether the social order (network of practices) in a sense
‘needs’ the problem” (2001, p. 126) is completed post intermediate analysis during
the final stage of analysis and during reflection of school curriculum discourses as
presented in the selected data. In what ways, if any, school curriculum
“....contribute[s] to sustaining particular relations of power and domination”
(Fairclough, 2001, p. 126) is mapped across the selected historical eras. This is linked
to Althusser’s and Gramsci’s notions of hegemony used to explain the role school
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