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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.

Purpose – In this chapter we highlight the potential of critical and poststructural paradigms and associated qualitative research approaches for future research in strategy. In addition, we aim to contribute to the proliferation of applications of qualitative methodologies as well as to facilitate the diversity of qualitative inquiry approaches in the strategy field.

Methodology/Approach – Building on insights from standpoint theory, we discuss the importance and necessity of cultivating critical and poststructural paradigms in strategy. Furthermore, we review three related qualitative inquiry approaches (i.e., discourse analysis, deconstruction, and genealogy) and develop suggestions for their utilization in future strategy research on emerging market economies.

Findings – We highlight key concepts of critical and poststructural paradigms as well as of the selected approaches and provide a variety of examples relevant to strategy research to illustrate potential applications and analytic considerations.

Originality/Value of chapter – Critical and poststructural paradigms and related research methodologies are underutilized in strategy research; however, they are important contributions to paradigmatic and methodological diversity in the field generally and necessary approaches for developing our understanding of strategy phenomena in the context of emerging market economies specifically.

This chapter explores the use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) within higher education research. CDA is an approach to studying language and its relation to power, ideology and inequality. Within CDA, texts are not analysed in isolation, but as part of the institutional and discoursal practices in which they are embedded. Within the broad field of educational research, CDA has been increasingly used to explore the relationship between language and society; higher education research appears to be experiencing a similar turn to CDA. The chapter begins with an overview of CDA, outlining its origins, and discussing its position as both a theory and a method. A review of CDA-related higher education research follows. The review aims to show the scope and potential of CDA in the study of higher education. The chapter closes with recommendations for future work to develop and extend the use of CDA within higher education research.

Building on the proposition that Bernstein's ideas are due for a revival in higher education research, the call for studies in which theory is put to use and for policy studies to engage in textual analysis, this chapter argues for the affordances of the theoretical underpinnings of Bernstein's pedagogic device and critical discourse studies in investigating connections between policy and practice. Drawing on the sociology of pedagogy and applied linguistics, this chapter aims to explore the theoretical complementarities of the chosen approaches for exploring how policy ideas move through time and space. A focus on the notion of recontextualisation enables an understanding of how influences beyond the discipline itself, including policy discourses, can shape learning, teaching and assessment practices. The illustrating case examines policy on learning and teaching and how these ideas are recontextualised from national policy through to institutional policy and individual practices. The critical or questioning angle of both approaches in seeing ideas, including policy, as never value-free but as situated within their sociopolitical context can shed light on how policy ideas make their way into universities and in whose interests.

The professional discourse on academic library planning and design is examined. A critical realist philosophical stance and a constructionist perspective constitute the theoretical framework that, paired with Fairclough's methodology for critical discourse analysis, is used to examine the constitution of interpretative repertoires and of a discourse constructing the academic library as a learning place. The information commons, learning commons, and library designed for learning repertoires are described and the effects of discursive activity are analyzed. Three types of effects are presented: (1) the production by the LIS community of discourse on academic libraries of a sizable body of literature on the information commons and on the learning commons, (2) the construction of new types of libraries on the commons model proposed by Beagle, and (3) the metaphorization of the library as business. The study concludes that the existing discourse takes a facilities management perspective dominated by concerns with technology, equipment, and space requirements that does not address the physical, psychological, and environmental qualities of library space design. Consequently, it is suggested that architectural programming techniques should be used in library planning and design that consider the architectural features and environmental design factors contributing to the making of a place where learning is facilitated.

Over the past two decades, scholars have noted an increasing global convergence in the policy and practice of education that predominantly contains Western ideals of mass schooling serving as a model for national school systems (Bieber & Martens, 2011; Goldthorpe, 1997; Spring, 2008). A number of transnational organizations contribute disproportionately to global educational discourse, particularly the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through its international comparative performance measure, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This study conducted a critical discourse analysis of the OECD document PISA 2012 Results: Excellence through Equity (OECD, 2013) to examine the ways that PISA and the OECD conceive of educational equity in a global context. Given the growing convergence of global educational policy, the way that transnational educational organizations address equity has crucial implications for the ways that the world intervenes in schooling to promote or diminish equitable outcomes. Analysis revealed that the OECD and the PISA foreground economistic notions of educational equity, which diminishes the role of other factors (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, immigration status, language) that mediate equity in schools. Findings and implications are discussed.

This chapter develops a new reference for local government accountability in socioenvironmental issues based on the views of leading socioenvironmental nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) in Indonesia. This study introduces an alternative view related to the government accountability model by focussing more on the socioenvironmental issues, which tend to be marginalised due to the dominance of [neo]liberal economic development and New Public Management paradigm in the praxis of government. A Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method has been applied to annual reports from three main socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia ranging from 2015 to 2018. This study found that there are three important notes for the local government's regulation, practice and accountability's activities to be in a line with the sustainable paradigm and the views of these NGOs. First and the foremost, the government's policy should give attention to public needs and ecological standards. Secondly, the rights and obligations related to the environmental issues should be transparent and accountable. Lastly, the government should release the accountability reports in full disclosure document and make the reports publicly available for various stakeholders. In particular, the accountability reports play a role as a tool for people to monitor the government's activities in socioenvironmental issues. This research implies an alternative view in the context of socioenvironmental accounting literature enrichment. It also provides valuable input to other governments, especially in developing countries and countries with economic growth that are highly reliant on the natural resources sector, in order to manage and account for their natural wealth in a more responsible and sustainable manner. Likewise, this research offers an alternative discourse of socioenvironmental accountability from the view of socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia.

Sleep apps installed on smartphones are increasingly being used to help people overcome sleep problems. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the discourses that underpin discursive constructions of the potential sleep app user in sleep app marketing communication. According to critical marketing theory, discursive constructions of the potential consumer in marketing communication promote the potential consumer’s identification and alignment, priming the potential consumer to consider positively the product being marketed. In that sense, marketing (of sleep apps, or indeed anything) is culturally significant, as it provides templates for forms of identity, and affects the meanings and objects that circulate within a culture.

A data set consisting of the promotional material that was used to market acclaimed sleep apps was analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). The following discourses were identified in the data: disempowerment, pathologisation, ignorance, behaviourism, responsibilisation, mindfulness, seduction, convenience or common sense, empowerment and individualisation. These discourses indicate how sleep apps are legitimised as technical appendages to be installed into people’s phones and integrated into their lives. They also underpin the discursive identities that summon potential consumers into alignment. This chapter contributes to our understandings of the discursive mechanisms that lie behind the growing uptake of sleep apps. It also demonstrates the value of combining discourse analysis with relevant critical theory to gain insights into the emerging phenomenon of app culture.

This chapter briefly explores selected English and general education policy documents, curricula, and textbooks within the context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and examines how they have changed pre- and post-21st century. First, a policy document related to education in KSA in general (pre-21st century) is analyzed along with an English language teaching (ELT) policy document of the same period. Next, two general policy documents post-21st century are explored, followed by one related to ELT policy. Finally, one post-21st century document related to higher education is discussed. The “network of practices” within which these documents are situated are first detailed, as well as the structural order of the discourse, and some linguistic analysis of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures (Meyer, 2001). Issues which might be problematic to the learning and teaching identities of the students and teachers interpreting these documents are also highlighted. Finally, we consider whether the network of practices at this institution and KSA in general “needs” the problems identified in the analysis and critically reflect on the analysis.

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a social ontology pioneered by Dorothy Smith, the Canadian feminist-sociologist. Conceptualizing discourse as social relations that are organized by the activities of people and are empirically investigable, IE has been increasingly employed by researchers outside of sociology in fields such as education and health. The goal in these cases has often been to explicate the effects of power flowing through textually mediated discourses that work to reconfigure local practices to align with official policy mandates. Yet the discourse analysis performed in much IE to date has not paid close linguistic attention to the way specific actors utilize texts in an active appropriation of what Smith calls the “ruling relations” constituting official discourses. Using data from an IE of student equity practices in Australian higher education, this chapter illustrates how a Fairclough-inspired critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the “orders of discourse” assembled within a relay of university and government texts is able to provide useful analytical purchase on how equity policies are actively appropriated within a university outreach practice. It demonstrates how the accomplishment of student equity outreach involves the hybridizing of equity and excellence discourses in ways that bolster the dominant position of an Australian university. This working together of distinct IE and CDA approaches offers possibilities for more nuanced accounts of individual and collective agency in the process of semiotic and social change.