30 A Preliminary Diction Study
Government Units (LGUs) to develop a Gender and Development (GAD)
code in their respective localities based on consultation with their women
constituents; (4) increase women’s representation in third level positions
in government to achieve equal gender balance within the next five years
while the composition of women in all levels of development planning
and program implementation will be at least 40 percent; (5) provide equal
access and elimination of discrimination in education, scholarships and
training and outlaw “expulsion, non-readmission, prohibiting enrollment,
and other related discrimination of women students and faculty due to
pregnancy out of marriage” and; (6) promote the equal status of men and
women on the titling of the land and issuance of stewardship contracts and
patents (“LawPhil Project: Philippine Laws and Jurisprudence Databank”).
In order to study the text of the Magna Carta for Women, this
essay utilized Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the tool of scrutiny. CDA is
a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way that
social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. CDA takes
an explicit position, and thus seeks to understand, expose and ultimately
resist social inequality (Dijk 22-25). It is an interdisciplinary approach to
the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and
focuses on the ways social and political domination are reproduced by text
and talk (Wodak 12). CDA has been deployed as a method of analysis
throughout the humanities and social sciences. It is neither a homogeneous
nor necessarily united approach. Nor does it confine itself only to method.
The single shared assumption uniting CDA practitioners is that language
and power are entirely linked.
Norman Fairclough, the prominent mover behind the CDA
approach, developed a three-dimensional framework for studying discourse,
where the aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another:
analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice
(processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis
of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice (Fairclough 3436). A legislative piece, in this light, is likewise seen as an overlapping of
these three linguistic phenomena: it is an example of a written language text
which is legally defined as the embodiment of the social life as unfolding in
various socio-cultural and political discourse practices.
Language use, discourse, verbal interaction, and communication
belong to the microlevel of the social order. Power, dominance, and
inequality between social groups are typically terms that belong to a
macrolevel of analysis. This means that CDA has to theoretically bridge the
well-known “gap” between micro and macro approaches. There are several