Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice. Scholars working in the tradition of CDA generally argue that (non-linguistic) social practice and linguistic practice constitute one another and focus on investigating how societal power relations are established and reinforced through language use.

Critical discourse analysis emerged from 'critical linguistics' developed at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s, and the terms are now often interchangeable.Sociolinguistics was paying little attention to social hierarchy and power. CDA was first developed by the Lancaster school of linguists of which Norman Fairclough was the most prominent figure. Ruth Wodak has also made a major contribution to this field of study.

In addition to linguistic theory, the approach draws from social theory — and contributions from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu — in order to examine ideologies and power relations involved in discourse. Language connects with the social through being the primary domain of ideology, and through being both a site of, and a stake in, struggles for power. Ideology has been called the basis of the social representations of groups, and, in psychological versions of CDA developed by Teun A. van Dijk and Ruth Wodak, there is assumed to be a sociocognitive interface between social structures and discourse structures. The historical dimension in critical discourse studies also plays an important role.

Although CDA is sometimes mistaken to represent a 'method' of discourse analysis, it is generally agreed upon that any explicit method in discourse studies, the humanities and social sciences may be used in CDA research, as long as it is able to adequately and relevantly produce insights into the way discourse reproduces (or resists) social and political inequality, power abuse or domination. That is, CDA does not limit its analysis to specific structures of text or talk, but systematically relates these to structures of the sociopolitical context. CDA has been used to examine political speech acts, to highlight the rhetoric behind these, and any forms of speech that may be used to manipulate the impression given to the audience. However, there have been flaws noted with CDA. For example, it has been said that it is simultaneously too broad to distinctly identify manipulations within the rhetoric, yet is also not powerful enough to appropriately find all that researchers set out to establish.

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