The ability to critically analyze is very important for a person. In practice, this skill, when used in a timely manner, saves time and prevents rash acts that can only aggravate the situation, helps to unravel the tangle of causes and effects. However, critical analysis is a rather capacious concept. It is useful not only for detectives, but also applicable, perhaps, to all areas of human life. We will try to figure out its features and principles of operation.
What is it?
The concept of "critical analysis" appeared much later than its practice itself. Even the ancient philosophers Aristotle and Socrates used its principles in their works and research. The general classical definition of critical analysis is the assessment of the merits and demerits of certain positions, conclusions and ideas based on their correlation with one's own ideas or other theories and teachings,proven their value and effectiveness.
An honest and unbiased approach is required when interpreting the analyzed material. Therefore, the main criteria here are objectivity and comprehensive consideration.
Target
What is critical analysis for? Each research (scientific or practical) has certain tasks. In this case, to analyze critically means to check these problems for the quality of the solution, and also, using evidence, to confirm or refute the correctness of one's own or someone else's hypothesis.
From a personal point of view, critical analysis helps develop critical thinking, contributes to the formation of one's own reasoned opinion, increases cognitive activity, broadens one's horizons. Its foundations are often laid during the school period and are developed in universities.
Methods
The method of critical analysis implies a way to achieve the goal. It can be deductive and inductive. In the first case, the analysis of the situation develops from the general to the particular. That is, first the researcher puts forward a hypothesis, or an axiom. Then from the general statement the course of thought is directed to the consequence, or theorem. This is a private link. The simplest example of such a method would be:
- Man is mortal.
- Mozart is a man.
- Conclusion: Mozart is mortal.
In contrast to deduction, an inductive method has been created. Here critical analysis develops, on the contrary, from the particular to the general. The path to the conclusion is not built with the help oflogic, but rather through certain psychological, mathematical or factual representations. Distinguish between complete and incomplete induction.
In the first variant, the analysis is aimed at proving the statement for the minimum number of particulars that exhaust all probabilities. Another option monitors individual cases-consequences and reduces them to a general conclusion (hypothesis, reason) that requires proof. Cause and effect are the main elements on which critical analysis relies. An example of the inductive method can be seen in a series of detective stories by C. Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. Although the author himself mistakenly calls the detective's method deduction:
- Person N has poison.
- Person N is confused in his testimony.
- Person N has no alibi at the time of the crime.
- Therefore, person N is a killer.
The founder of pragmatism C. S. Pierce also considered the third type of reasoning as a method of critical analysis - abduction. In other words, it is the cognitive acceptance of hypotheses used to discover theoretical laws. At first, all concepts are abstract, not confirmed by experience. The path to the conclusion goes through a system of assumptions (hypotheses), tested by logical conclusions:
- Package: People are mortal.
- Conclusion: Mozart is mortal.
- Hence Mozart is human (missing link).
Structure and types
The structure of critical analysis is a clear algorithm of actions, as a rule, due tological links:
- First, the researcher needs to get acquainted with the picture of phenomena, idea, position. From this material it is necessary to release the main idea.
- You can decompose the situation into several key points and thesis depict the material as separate elements.
- For each item, you need to form your own vision, opinion, etc.
- At the next stage, you need to confirm your own interpretation, summarize the above theses.
Important moment! To prove your hypotheses, it is possible and even necessary to use external sources: analogy examples, conceptual apparatus, quotations, documents. All this will only confirm the objectivity and comprehensiveness of the study.
A significant role in the construction of conclusions is played by the materials themselves, situations or phenomena for which a critical analysis is being created. Its types can affect the scientific, social, political, practical spheres and the sphere of art.
Discourse analysis
At the end of the last century, linguistics professor Norman Fairclough founded critical discourse analysis. It was aimed at studying the changes in arguments, the mental premise, the text over time and interpretation options. In relation to sociolinguistics, Fairclough called intertextuality the main mechanism of such transformations. This is a technique when one text is correlated with elements of others (discourses).
Critical discourse analysis was largely formed under the influence of the ideas of the linguist M. Bakhtin, sociologists M. Foucault and P. Bourdieu. Another name for it is Text Oriented Discourse Analysis (or TODA). Its methodology covers the linguistic properties of the text, speech genres (address, dialogue, rhetoric) and sociolinguistic methods (material collection, processing, questionnaire survey, testing, etc.).
A distinctive feature of this type of critical analysis is that it does not pretend to be objective at all, i.e. it cannot be called socially neutral. In relation to politics, for example, the critical analysis of discourse aims to reveal the ideological structures of power, political control, domination by searching for discrimination strategies expressed in language. Thus, here it turns into an analytical tool that interferes with social and political practice.
Dutch linguist T. A. van Dijk devoted a lot of work to a critical analysis of discourse in the media. According to the scientist, its beginning was laid in ancient rhetoric. Today it is sourced from five key categories:
- Semiotics, ethnography, structuralism.
- Speech communication and its analysis.
- Speech acts and pragmatics.
- Sociolinguistics.
- Processing the psychological components of text.
Critical discourse analysis (description of news, social research, etc.) is based on these five “pillars”.
Literary
Literary critical analysis can also be called textually oriented. The difference with discourse lies only in the arrangementkey elements. The first (described above) type focuses on the formal side of the text, and the second - on the content.
Literary critical analysis takes place according to the classical algorithm. The key points for interpretation in it are: the plot, the place and time of the action, the characters, the theme, the idea and the personal point of view. From this position, three levels of research can be distinguished:
- Thematic repertoire (content side).
- Cognitive (depiction, storytelling, genre).
- Linguistic (language means by which the cognitive aspect is created).
Critical analysis should be hierarchical. The first and third levels are explicit categories (materially embodied). As for the cognitive level, it is determined by the two previous ones. Of course, each of the tiers can represent a separate study. However, upon closer examination, a strong relationship is established between them, the elements of each level will be present in the neighboring ones.
The need for this type of critical analysis, in addition to personal formation and the development of critical thinking skills, lies in the social need to distinguish aesthetically valuable works from a stream of mediocre ones.
Important moment! Literary-critical analysis is not a presentation of a literary text, but an analysis of its content components and a possible correlation with reality.
This is not a 'like' or 'dislike' rating. Appliedall types of critical path analysis must go through the mandatory stages of substantiation, proof of any assumptions and hypotheses related to the research material.
Informational
This type of critical analysis is used to evaluate news, goods and services (in marketing). It can be aimed at determining the quality, as well as the efficiency of income and expenses of an enterprise associated with changes in advertising parameters.
Why do we need such an assessment? Critical analysis of information in the case of marketing is aimed at saturating the market with quality goods, expanding, deepening the range. In relation to news (society, politics, etc.), it helps to check the quality of information regarding facts, time and place and interpret it into one's own point of view on events. This requires reliable sources that will become the arguments of the hypothesis. The purpose of this type of analysis can be a forecast of the development of events. In this case, the hypothesis is formed through psychological, social, cultural features-components.
Research Analysis
Critical analysis of research is inherent in the scientific field of human activity. To form an individual reasoned opinion about a particular problem, it is necessary to correctly set tasks and solve them. This is what this type of analysis does. Research work involves a whole range of activities and has much in common with critical discourse.
So, at the preparatory stage, there is a collection of material, the study of authoritativesources, the formation of the concept (construction) of the direction of development of thought and the filtering of important information elements. It must be remembered that the purpose of such work through critical analysis is to obtain new knowledge, and not to generalize existing truths.
The critique of the study has the following structure (or outline):
- target;
- problems and key issues;
- facts and information;
- interpretation and conclusions;
- concept, theory, ideas;
- hypotheses;
- consequences;
- own opinion, point of view.
For a scientific article, the rules of analysis may be different. Here, the source itself, the persuasiveness of its author's argumentation, the identification of inconsistencies, contradictions or violations of logic are often evaluated.
Principles
The principles of critical analysis largely depend on its type. Even at the dawn of the history of this type of study of objects and materials, the intuitive principle (or "inner insight") was used. This is an abstract approach, which consists in the discovery of new theoretical, empirical laws, the substantiation of new phenomena, tasks and concepts of reality. The downside of this principle of analysis is unconvincing, the possibility of options, unconfirmed assumptions.
In the critical analysis of discourse, a socially oriented principle is often applied. Its goal, as a rule, is the phenomena and transformations taking place in society. These include immigration, racial discrimination, nationalgenocide, extremism. The object of research is, of course, thematic texts and their influence on social thinking. Also, this approach to study helps to find and depict the true picture and convey it to society in order to avoid confusion for the reader in non-democratic discourses.
The same kind of critical analysis applies to the cognitive-oriented principle. It was widely covered by T. A. van Dyck and is based on the psychological features of the construction and presentation of material (discourse texts). This principle is widely used in news analysis (media). In addition, the analyst's attention should be directed to the narrative (consistent, interconnected) assessment of events, sign systems of speech communication (metaphors, collective symbols).
The principle of historicism is most often used in scientific and literary research. It is based on the study of the development of a certain phenomenon or object in space and time. However, this is a rather abstract characterization. In practice, this happens a little deeper and more globally. For example, a genre or technique (a literary concept) is taken as the basis - this is the purpose of the study. Then there is a collection of materials related to the topic (cognitive components). At the third stage, you can begin to study and filter information. The main point here is the chronology, the evolution of the phenomenon in a certain time period. Only after such an assessment can one proceed to conclusions, hypotheses and forecasts.
The key concept principle is one of the earliest incritical analysis. Most often it is found in art criticism (the works of Aristotle, Lessing, V. G. Belinsky). Conventionally, it can be designated as a scale of measurements and comparisons. Creating a system of concepts helps to literally decompose the text into structural components, trace their interaction and interconnection, and also reveal the meaning of one component for another. As a rule, this principle is mandatory, but secondary, since any study relies on the conceptual apparatus, regardless of the purpose of its application.
During any critical analysis, there may be different principles for considering the problem. Sometimes there is a synthesis of two or more. In this case, one is dominant, and the others are auxiliary. Thus, the principle of historicism is often combined with the principle of key concepts, and the intuitive is reinforced by the cognitive-oriented, etc.
Concepts
The concept in critical analysis is the study and evaluation of the main idea, the system of views of the author of the material on the problem. Norman Fairclough, in his book Language and Power, mentions the concept of synthetic personalization. An example of it can be political texts, in which the authors often address the people directly through second-person pronouns. The main task of the critical analysis of the concept is to determine the degree of impact of such techniques, their effectiveness in changing social thinking.
Regardless of the type of material, the author's concept is always considered as a way of communication with the reader, viewer or buyer.
