Screen shot of analysis of the representation of social actors from recent Language and Power Podcast episode This question—what is a social actor—is an important one that we, as people doing text and discourse analysis, should take seriously. It is a question that we should address before getting into the details and procedures on how and why we analyse the ‘representation’ of social actors in text and discourse. This is because understanding what we mean by ‘social actor’ w

Screen shot of analysis of the representation of social actors from recent Language and Power Podcast episode I’ve been analysing the representation of social actors in text and discourse for many years now. I first used Theo van Leeuwen’s system for analysing the representation of social acts for my PhD, which I completed in 2006. I found this system incredibly useful at the time and have continued to do so in many discourse analytical projects since. If anything, I find ana