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Article In:
The Social Semiotic Forum: Special issue of the Journal Language, Context and Text 6:1 (2024)
Edited by Elizabeth A. Thomson, Awni Etaywe, Ingrid Wijeyewardene and Penny Wheeler
[Language, Context and Text 6:1] 2024
► pp. 60–87

Acknowledging dispossession

A CDA/PDA perspective on discourse dealing with unceded land

| University of Sydney , Australia
| Ateneo de Manila University , Philippines

This paper illustrates what can be revealed by a linguistic analysis of the discourse strategies deployed in a bilingual text acknowledging the dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Mindanao (Philippines). The analysis draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) descriptions of English, which model language as a resource for making meaning. It explores the choices involved from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA), exposing language in the service of power, and positive discourse analysis (PDA), appreciating language as an instrument of social change. In doing so we exemplify the role of SFL-informed CDA/PDA in processes of reconciliation, including personal and public acknowledgements and apologies, alongside considerations of “making peace” with dispossessed Indigenous people through existing, renovated or emerging genres.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, positive discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, story genres, history genres
Article outline
  • 1.Unceded land
  • 2.Recognition
  • 3.Growing up in Davao
  • 4.Autobiography
  • 5.History
  • 6.Stiches and seams
  • 7.Whose history?
  • 8.Confession
  • 9.Critique and design
  • Permission
  • Notes
  • References
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