A Critical Discourse Analysis of Taiwan's National Debate on Economic Ties with China

台灣一場全國性辯論的批判性言談分析

批判性言談分析(Critical Discourse Analysis) 將語言視為是一種社會實踐（social practice)。藉由研究與分析書面或口語文本，批判性言談分析被使用於揭發權力、支配和不平等的來源。再者，有別於其他的言談分析方法，批判性言談分析是用來描述、說明及解釋語言和社會之間的關係。數十年來，批判性言談分析被用在各種類別的研究，像是媒體言談和教育之相關議題。在本研究中，運用van Dijk的社會認知模式來分析一場台灣全國性的辯論--兩岸經濟合作架構協議（ECFA）。本研究結果符合批判性言談分析的主要概念：支配、不公平待遇、權利與控制在文本中的呈現。

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) views language as “social practice” (Fairclough & Wodak 1997:258), studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to unfold the sources of power, dominance, and inequality (van Dijk 2001). CDA is used to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between language and society, which is much different from other discourse analysis methods (Rogers 2004). The major goals of CDA are to “critically analyze those who are in power, those who are responsible, and those who have the means and the opportunity” to deal with social problems (van Dijk 1986: 4). Among many CDA theorists, van Dijk’s (1993) socio-cognitive model has been widely referenced and applied in the analysis of media discourse. However, there is little research analyzing debate discourse by van Dijk’s model. Therefore, the discourse in this study was analyzed using van Dijk’s model in order to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between language and power in the national debate on the issue of Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) held in Taiwan. The ECFA debate is about 142 minutes long, held on April 25, 2010. The reason for holding this national debate was to familiarize the Taiwanese people with the contents of the ECFA and to publicize the benefits of signing it with Mainland China. The data of the ECFA debate was analyzed based on van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model and then categorized into three themes: discourse representing Us versus Them, evasion, and diversity of the discourse. Through the above analysis, the study is to reveal that dominance and power are manifested in language (Wodak 2001; Van Dijk 1993, 2001).