Week 3: frame analysis

Cognitive discourse analysis

What is a frame?

Frames are everywhere around us. They are the conceptual models that

allow us to make sense of the world.

Can you choose not to use frames?

Can you choose not to use frames?

There is no such thing as “choosing” to use frames. You can learn how to recognize frames or not, but your understanding of discourse will be affected by discourse frames either way.

Examples of frames

• what: a container that typically holds liquids.

• properties: graspable (comes in a size and shape compatible with a typical human hand)

• associated body movements: reaching, grasping, lifting toward your mouth, drinking from it

• associated logic: • it must contain liquid in

order to drink from it • if you drink all of the liquid,

it will be empty • you cannot drink from it if it

is not located near to or in contact with your mouth

a cup

• what: an institution that contains people who improve the health of other people

• associated locations: the operating room, the emergency room, the recovery room, the waiting area, and patient areas

• associated roles: doctor, nurse, surgeon, orderly, patient, visitor, receptionist, janitor, etc.;

• associated actions: operations, taking temperature and blood pressure, checking charts, emptying bedpans

• associated logic: • you go there as a patient if you are

ill or injured • if you are in a hospital then your

health is improving

a hospital

„operating room” only makes sense when we know what a hospital is

What is frame analysis?Finding frames in discourse and understanding their consequences

• what they highlight

• what they hide

• what logic they demand

• who becomes the villain / the hero

challenges for frame analysis

challenges for frame analysis

One big challenge of discussing frames is that we have to use frames to reason about them. 

This means we have to evoke a conceptual model of something familiar to explain something that is not.

challenges for frame analysis

For example, if we describe the process of learning about and understanding frames as an uphill climb we are evoking the frame of a journey, more precisely a mountain hike.

This makes us expect difficulties (the hill is steep) but also believe that the journey is finite (the hill has a top you can reach). But learning about frames may not be either of these things!

are frames obvious and deliberate?

• the dominant story frame is rarely obvious and/or explicitly identified by the reporter or speaker

• many times reporters are not even aware of how a story is framed - it simply feels "natural" to cover stories in a certain way

• critical watching / reading is a habit you can develop to become aware of frames

conducting frame analysissource: How to do a frame analysis of news media

conducting frame analysissource: How to do a frame analysis of news media

This exercise shows you how different linguistic choices affect your understanding of the story. Read the three articles and think: who is the hero of the story? who is the villain? what are your feelings towards the people in the story? did your feelings change when you read different accounts of the story?

An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check. A neighbor responded to the cries of the infant and brought the child to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was treated and released into his mother's custody. The mother, Angie Burns of Milwaukee, explained softly, "I was only gone five minutes. I left the door open so my neighbor would hear him if he woke up. I never thought this would happen in the daylight."

Rats Bite Infant

An eight-month-old Milwaukee boy was treated and released from St. Joseph's Hospital yesterday after being bitten by rats while he was sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for exter-minations had been ignored by the landlord, Henry Brown. Brown claimed that the problem lay with the tenants' improper disposal of garbage. "I spend half my time cleaning up after them. They throw the garbage out the window into the back alley and their kids steal the garbage can covers for sliding in the snow."

Rats Bite Infant: Landlord, Tenants Dispute Blame

Rats bit eight-month-old Michael Burns five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods labeled the "Zone of Death." Health officials say infant mortality rates in these neighborhoods approach those in many third world countries. A Public Health Department spokesman explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs. The result, noted Juan Nunez, M.D., a pediatrician at St. Joseph's Hospital, is a five-fold increase in rat bites. He added, "The irony is that Michael lives within walking distance of some of the world's best medical centers."

Rat Bites Rising in City’s "Zone of Death"

• let’s see how different frames can be used to report the same story

• what words are used to evoke the frame?

words & frames

An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check. A neighbor responded to the cries of the infant and brought the child to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was treated and released into his mother's custody. The mother, Angie Burns of Milwaukee, explained softly, "I was only gone five minutes. I left the door open so my neighbor would hear him if he woke up. I never thought this would happen in the daylight."

Rats Bite Infant

What’s the frame?

What’s the frame?

Who is in the story?• teenage mother• child• neighbourWho is to blame? • ignorance, youth and lack of personal

responsibility

An eight-month-old Milwaukee boy was treated and released from St. Joseph's Hospital yesterday after being bitten by rats while he was sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for exter-minations had been ignored by the landlord, Henry Brown. Brown claimed that the problem lay with the tenants' improper disposal of garbage. "I spend half my time cleaning up after them. They throw the garbage out the window into the back alley and their kids steal the garbage can covers for sliding in the snow."

Rats Bite Infant: Landlord, Tenants Dispute Blame

What’s the frame?

What’s the frame?

Who is in the story?• landlord• tenants• childWho is to blame? • a child suffers in a dispute between landlord

and tenants

Rats bit eight-month-old Michael Burns five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods labeled the "Zone of Death." Health officials say infant mortality rates in these neighborhoods approach those in many third world countries. A Public Health Department spokesman explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs. The result, noted Juan Nunez, M.D., a pediatrician at St. Joseph's Hospital, is a five-fold increase in rat bites. He added, "The irony is that Michael lives within walking distance of some of the world's best medical centers."

Rat Bites Rising in City’s "Zone of Death"

What’s the frame?

What’s the frame?

Who is in the story?• health officials• expert (doctor)• childWho is to blame? • rat bites are a sympton of a public health

crisis facing a poor community - public policy is to blame

1) Establish the context - in what circumstances was the story reported? 2) What is the: medium, message, genre?3) What is the title of the piece? What story does it tell?4) Which frames are activated? 5) What’s the logic of the frames? Who is the protagonist/hero, who is the victim, who or what is to blame? 6) What is put in focus?

7) What stays hidden?

Step-by-step frame analysis

Task: political marketing

Watch this video: "The Story of Us".

Analyse the frames used in the video. You can base your analysis on the questions on the next few pages. source of the questions: politicseastasia.com

1. Establish the context:• What is the context of the video: when and where was it made, who

is the intended audience, what is the distribution channel and language • Background check: who/what organization produced the video and

what is their general political position? 2. The medium and the message. The medium in which information is

presented is the crucial element that shapes meaning. Reading an article online is not the same as reading it in a printed newspaper, or in a hardcover collection of essays; watching a video on youtube is different than watching it via facebook or on TV) • What is the medium you are analyzing?

3. The genre. Are you analyzing an editorial comment, and op-ed, a reader’s letter, a commentary, a news item, a report, an interview, an ad, an election spot, or something else? Establishing this background information will later help you assess what genre-specific mechanism your source deploys (or ignores) to get its message across. • What is the genre of the discourse piece?

4. What’s the title of the material? • Is it deliberate? What did the author intend it to mean?

adapted from: politicseastasia.com

5. What’s the story?• Is there a protagonist? Who is it (the viewer or someone else? • Who are the villains, who are the good guys? • What is the source of conflict?

6. Find the frames! • Watch the video once. Name the main topic(s) discussed. • Think about your impressions and emotions. What emotional reactions

did you have during the videos and when (liked an argument, disagreed/ agreed with a statement, felt a sense of need, urgency or danger, felt a sense of community etc.)

• Which words / images did you find most powerful? These are most likely to evoke frames. Can you identify the frames they evoked?

7. Examine the structure: look at the structural features of the texts. • Can you identify how the argument is structured: does the text go

through several issues one by one? Does it first make a counter-factual case, only to then refute that case and make the main argument?

• Consider how features of the video guide the argument, and what role the introduction and conclusion play in the overall scheme of things.

adapted from: politicseastasia.com

8. Identify linguistic and rhetorical mechanisms• Word groups: are there many words from a shared background? For instance,

military language, business language, or maybe the text resembles the way young people speak. Words make a difference! The same event can be described in terms of war eg. „we conquered the mountain” vs. religion „we were graced with the possibility to see the view from the mountain top”.

• Grammar features: who or what the subjects and objects in the various statements are. Do you see any patterns, for instance frequently used “we” and “they”? Can you identify who are the „good guys” and who are the villains? Is passive voice used? Passive voice deletes the actors from the situation, dissolving any responsibility! A statement like “we are under economic pressure” is very different from “X puts us under economic pressure”. Make these strategies visible through your analysis

• Rhetorical and literary figures: does the text contain: allegories, metaphors, similes, idioms, and proverbs? How do they shape the argument?

• Direct and indirect speech: does the text quote anyone? What is the context of the original quote? Is it taken out of context? What role does it play now?

• Modalities: see if the text includes any statements on what “should” or “could” be. Such phrases may create a sense of urgency, serve as a call to action, or imply hypothetical scenarios.

• Evidentialities: does the material present some statements as facts? Look for phrases like “of course”, “obviously”, or “as everyone knows”. What kinds of “facts” the text actually presents in support of its argument? One of the strongest features of discourse is how it “naturalizes” certain statements as “common sense” or “fact”, even if the statements are actually controversial.

adapted from: politicseastasia.com

9. Identify cultural references: Does your material contain references to other sources, or imply knowledge of another subject matter?

10. What can you learn from the way the piece was stylized? • linguistic choices (e.g. "gunned down" vs "accidently hit by stray

fire”) • modes of reference (e.g. "Obama" vs "President Obama”) • use of quotes and attribution ("avowed socialist Bernie Sanders";

"so-called Peace Movement") 11. Explain the underlying assumptions and logic of the frames

you discover:• What is the logic of the frames? • What do these frames imply is important (e.g., fund raising

success in political campaigns, common sense, medical coverage, justice, equality etc)?

• What do they take for granted? (e.g., if the stock market goes up it is good for the country)

12. What do these frames exclude from discussion? adapted from: politicseastasia.com

End of week 3