Critical analysis: types, methods and concepts

The ability to critically analyze is very important for a person. In practice, this skill, when used in a timely manner, saves considerable time and warns of ill-considered actions that can only exacerbate 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. With its features and principles of work, we'll try to figure it out.

What?

The concept of "critical analysis" appeared much later than its actual practice. Even the ancient philosophers Aristotle, Socrates used his principles in his writings, studies. A common classic definition of critical analysis is the evaluation of the merits and demerits of certain positions, conclusions and ideas on the basis of their correlation with their own ideas or other theories and doctrines that have proved their worth and effectiveness.
An honest and unbiased approach is necessary in interpreting the material analyzed. Therefore, the main criteria here are objectivity and in-depth consideration.

goal

Why do we need a critical analysis? Each research (scientific or practical) has certain tasks. In this case, analyzing critically means checking these tasks for the quality of the solution, and also using evidence to confirm or disprove the correctness of one's own or another's hypothesis.

From a personal point of view, critical analysis helps develop critical thinking, fosters the formation of one's own reasoned opinion, increases cognitive activity, broadens the horizon. Its foundations are often laid in the school period and are developed in universities.

Methods

The method of critical analysis implies a method of achieving 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 a general statement, the course of thought is directed toward the corollary, or theorem. This is a private link. The simplest example of such a method can be the following:

• Man is mortal.
• Mozart is a man.
• Conclusion: Mozart is mortal.

In opposition to deduction, an inductive method was created . Here the critical analysis develops, on the contrary, from the particular to the general. The path to conclusion is not built by logic, but rather through specific psychological, mathematical or factual representations. There are complete and incomplete induction.

With the first option, the analysis is aimed at proving the statement for the minimum number of particularities that exhaust all probabilities. Another option is to monitor individual cases-consequences and reduce them to a general conclusion (hypothesis, reason) that requires proof. Cause and effect are the main elements on which critical analysis is based. An example of an inductive method can be observed in a series of detective stories by K. Doyle about "Sherlock Holmes". Although the author himself mistakenly calls the method of the detective a deduction:

• The person N has a poison.
• Man N gets confused in the testimony.
• A person N does not have an alibi at the time of the crime.
• Therefore, N is a killer.

The founder of pragmatism, CS Pearce, 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 conclusion is through a system of assumptions (hypotheses), verified by logical inferences:

• Package: People are mortal.
• Conclusion: Mozart is mortal.
• Consequently, Mozart is a man (a missing link).

Structure and types

The structure of critical analysis is a clear algorithm of actions, usually caused by logical connections:

• First, the researcher needs to get acquainted with the picture of phenomena, the idea, the position. From this material it is necessary to release the basic idea.
• It is possible to decompose the situation into several key moments and abstract the material as separate elements.
• For each item it is necessary to form your own vision, opinion, etc.
• The next step is to confirm your own interpretation, summarize the above theses.

An important point! To prove their hypotheses, it is possible and even necessary to use external sources: examples-analogies, conceptual apparatus, quotations, documents. All this will only confirm the objectivity and thoroughness of the research.

An important role in constructing conclusions is played by the materials themselves, situations or phenomena for which a critical analysis is created. Its types can affect the scientific, social, political, practical sphere and the sphere of art.

Discourse analysis

At the end of the last century, the linguistics professor Norman Fairclough founded a critical discourse analysis. It was aimed at studying the changes in arguments, the thinking premise, the text in time and the interpretation options. With reference to sociolinguistics, Fairclough referred to intertextuality as the main mechanism of such transformations. This is a technique when one text correlates with elements of other (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 is textually oriented analysis of discourse (or TODA). Its methodology covers the linguistic properties of the text, speech genres (treatment, 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 at all pretend to be objective; It can not be called socially neutral. With regard to politics, for example, a critical analysis of discourse aims to reveal ideological structures of power, political control, domination by searching for discrimination strategies expressed in language. Thus, here it turns into an analytical tool, interfering in public and political practice.

The Dutch linguist Van Dijk has devoted a lot of work to the critical analysis of discourse in the field of the media. According to the scientist, the beginning of it was laid still in the ancient rhetoric. Today, it is served by five key categories:

• Semiotics, ethnography, structuralism.
• Speech communication and its analysis.
• Speech acts and pragmatics.
• Sociolinguistics.
• Processing of psychological components of the text.

On these five "whales" and based on a critical discourse analysis (description of news, social studies , etc.).

Literary

Literary-critical analysis can also be called text-oriented. The difference with discourse is only in the arrangement of key elements. The first (described above) kind of emphasis is on the formal side of the text, and the second - on the content side.

Literary critical analysis occurs 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 (image mode, narrative, genre).
• Linguistic (linguistic means, thanks to which the cognitive aspect is created).

Critical analysis should follow a hierarchy. The first and third levels are explicit categories (embodied materially). As for the cognitive level, it is determined by the two preceding ones. Of course, each of the tiers can represent a separate study. However, with a detailed examination between them a strong relationship is established, the elements of each level will be present in the neighboring.

The need for this type of critical analysis, in addition to personal formation and mastering the skills of critical thinking, lies in the social need to distinguish aesthetically valuable works in a mediocre stream.

An important point! Literary-critical analysis is not an exposition of an artistic text, but an analysis of its content components and possible correlation with reality.

This is not an assessment of "liked" or "did not like". For all types of analysis of the critical path must pass mandatory stages of substantiation, evidence of any assumptions and hypotheses associated with the material of the study.

Information

This type of critical analysis is used to evaluate news, products and services (in marketing). It can be aimed at determining the quality, as well as the efficiency of income and expenditure 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 and deepening the range. With regard to news (society, politics, etc.), it helps to check the quality of information on facts, time and place and interpret it in their own point of view on events. In this case, reliable sources are needed, which will become the arguments of the hypothesis. The purpose of this type of analysis can be and forecast the development of events. In this case, the hypothesis is formed through psychological, social, cultural features-components.

Analysis of the study

Critical analysis of research is inherent in the scientific sphere of human activity. To form an individual reasoned opinion on a particular problem, a correct statement of problems and their solution is necessary. This is precisely what this kind of analysis does. Research involves a whole range of activities and in many ways echoes critical discourse.

Thus, at the preparatory stage, material is collected, authoritative sources are studied, the concept (construction) of the direction of development of thought is formed and the important information elements are filtered. It must be remembered that the purpose of such work through critical analysis is to obtain new knowledge, and not a generalization of already existing truths.

Critical analysis of the study has the following structure (or plan):

• 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 analysis rules can be different. Here, the source itself, the persuasiveness of the author's argumentation, the identification of inconsistencies, contradictions or violations of logic are often assessed.

Principles

Principles of critical analysis largely depend on its type. At the dawn of the history of this type of study of objects and materials, an intuitive principle (or "inner insight") was used. This is an abstract approach, consisting in the discovery of new theoretical, empirical laws, the justification of new phenomena, tasks and concepts of reality. The downside of this principle of analysis is flimsy, the possibility of options, the unconfirmed assumptions.

In a critical analysis of discourse, a socially-oriented principle is often applied. His goal, as a rule, is the phenomena and transformations taking place in society. These include immigration, racial discrimination, national genocide, extremism. The object of research are, of course, thematic texts and their influence on social thinking. Also this approach to learning helps to find and depict the true picture and bring it to the socium in order to avoid confusion of the reader in undemocratic discourses.

For the same type of critical analysis, the cognitive-oriented principle is also applicable. He was widely covered by TA. Van Dijkom and is based on psychological features of construction and submission of a material (texts-discourses). This principle is widely used in the analysis of news (media). In addition, the analyst's attention should be directed to a narrative (consistent, interrelated) assessment of events, sign systems of verbal communication (metaphors, collective symbols).

The principle of historicism is most often used in scientific and literary studies. It is based on the study of the development of a particular phenomenon or object in space and time. However, this is a rather abstract characteristic. In practice, this happens a little deeper and more global. For example, based on the genre or technique (literary concept) - 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 interval. Only after such an assessment can we begin to draw conclusions, hypotheses and forecasts.

The principle of key concepts is one of the earliest in a critical analysis. Most often he meets in art criticism (works of Aristotle, Lessing, VG Belinsky). Conditionally it can be designated by a scale of measurements and comparisons. The creation of a system of concepts helps to literally decompose the text into structural components, trace their interaction and interrelation, and also to reveal the value of one component for another. As a rule, this principle is mandatory, but secondary, since any research is based on a conceptual apparatus regardless of the purpose of its application.

In any critical analysis, there may be different principles for addressing the problem. Sometimes there is a synthesis of two or more. In this case, one is dominant, and the other is auxiliary. Thus, the principle of historism is often combined with the principle of key concepts, and the intuitive is supported by cognitive-oriented, etc.

Concepts

The concept in critical analysis is the study and assessment of the main idea, the author's system of views on the problem. Norman Fairclough in the book "Language and Power" mentions the concept of synthetic personalization. An example of it can be political texts, in which authors often address directly to the people through the second person pronouns. The main task, which the critical analysis of the concept sets itself, is to determine the degree of influence of such methods, their effectiveness in changing social thinking.

Regardless of the kind of material, the author's concept is always considered as a way of communicating with the reader, the viewer or the buyer.