Started from the bottom now we here

This week, I noted a persistent theme of levels or scales of discourse in CDA. While I find this to be theoretically useful, I am less certain as its utility in analyzing or simply making sense of talk or text (especially when considering social change). Anderson (2015) present three scales of discourse: micro-interactional, meso-institutional, and macro-social. Again, these make sense generally, and appear to be useful in accounting for sociocultural and historic influences as shaping discourses. For example, if ideology is theoretically/philosophically pertinent, micro-level talk is informed by meso- or macro-level discourses -- ideology appears to be "the things we all just more or less agree on" in our day-to-day talk.  So if a phenomenon exists on multiple levels of discourse, we should analyze it as such. Agreed. However, what does this buy us if micro-scale discourses only gain meaning "against the backdrop of what counts more broadly" (p. 18). In other words, micro-scale interactions simply fill the jugs provided by larger scale discourses. I find this a little lacking. Where do meso-level policies and historic categorizations come from if not micro-level talk? If we approach this post-structurally (which I think CDA is...), meso- and macro-discourses cannot just appear from the ether nor are they created by permanent or inherent social structures. Anderson (2015) claims that ideologies permeate lived realities at multiple scales of discourse; to me, the question is: how to these scales permeate each other? If anything, we should consider discourse as mutli-scalar and the interactions between scales as reciprocal.

I found similar problematic issues with França de Souza Vasconcelos (2012). The moment of crisis certainly made visible underlying differences in power, the presence of intersubjectivity, and the potential to create shared understanding. Moreover, the talk reflected/refracted larger societal structures, relationships, and systems, while simultaneously demonstrating non-normative, critical local classroom power structures based in dialogue. In this context, the existence of oppressive power structures were not natural or neutral, instead they were locally constructed and contested. And so, if this event was perhaps made possible by a democratic and dialogical classroom cultivated by Greg (which to be honest, I need more support for), we have achieved three conclusions: i) a critical speech moment occurred, ii) it unearthed previously invisible assumptions, and iii) was made possible by fostering a specific classroom environment. So, is the take away "do it like Greg?" That might sound a little cynical, but I feel CDA should do more than illustrate and examine -- it should transform.

Social change as top-down

Taking these two readings together, and with the help of Woofitt, CDA targets the role of discourses in developing and guarding social, cultural, and political inequities. And so, the goal to is, to some extent, mobilize social and political change. Personally, I find this goal to be in conflict with the top-down approach of CDA. How can we expect CDA to be socio-politically transformative if it gives agency to the meso- and macro-level structures of society? Especially if these levels of discourse are uninfluenced by local talk. In what ways is top-down social analysis (e.g., exposing injustices) actionable in bottom-up social change? I can't help but think the means do not meet the ends. Is conversation analysis a useful method in understanding how language is used within and across levels of discourse? Considering the goals of CDA, incorporating elements of CA can theorize language as a resource that allows individuals' to position their talk relative to positions across scales of discourses. Analytically, this might provide a lens that prioritizes the organization and structure of everyday, local talk as capable of shaping broader ideological discourses.