The Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis Framework

Abstract

This chapter offers a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic framework for the critical analysis of higher education policy texts, and of the processes and motivations behind their articulations, grounded in considerations of relationships and flows between language, power and discourse. Theoretically the framework draws on critical discourse analysis, which provides a systematic framework for exegesis, analysis and interpretation, uncloaking the ways in which language (and other semiotic modes) work within discourse as agents and actors in the realisation, construction and perception of relations of power. The framework itself comprises two elements: one concerned with contextualising and one with deconstructing. The contextualisation element of the frame comprises three parts: temporal context, policy levers/drivers and warrant. The second element of deconstruction engages with text and discourse using a number of analytical lenses and tools derived from critical discourse analysis and critical literacy analysis.

Citation

Hyatt, D. (2013), "The Critical Higher Education Policy Discourse Analysis Framework", Theory and Method in Higher Education Research (International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 41-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3628(2013)0000009006