Norman Fairclough
I began work on CDA in the early 1980s (for my first use of the term, see 'Critical and descriptive goals in discourse analysis', Journal of Pragmatics 9 1985) with the aim of linking my academic work to my political activities. CDA for me has always focused on language/discourse as an element in the production, maintenance and transformation of the existing socio-economic order and in political struggles for a better order. The lecture Critical Discourse Analysis in a Time of Crisis, available on this webpage, distinguishes, in a rough-and-ready way, with a focus on Britain, three main phases in the social history of the past 40 years or so associated with different programmes for CDA research which are evident in my work. First, the last part of the 'post-war consensus' which came apart in the 1970s, and research focused mainly on (the ideological character of) discourse in the maintenance of social relations and structures of power (e.g. my Language and Power, 1989). Second, the neo-liberal transformation of capitalism over the next 30 years or so, and CDA research mainly focused on how discourse figures in these economic, political and social changes, with some attention (though not enough) to resistance to neoliberalism in its discourse dimension. These concerns have occupied me most, with a programmatic book (Discourse in Social Change) published in 1995 (see also my book with Lilie Chouliaraki, Discourse in Late Modernity 1999), and various more focused studies (eg of the marketization of higher education, of New Labour, of globalisation) reflected in the revised and extended second edition of Critical Discourse Analysis (2010) as well as New Labour, New Language? (2000) and Language and Globalization (2006). Associated with this phase is a focus on the trans-disciplinary nature of CDA research, the need to work with social scientists in other areas (see my paper with Andrew Sayer and Bob Jessop 'Critical realism and semiosis' in Joseph & Roberts Critical Realism and Deconstruction, Routledge 2004, my paper with Phil Graham 'Marx as a critical discourse analyst' in Estudios de Sociolinguistica 3 2002, and Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, Routledge 2003). The third and most recent phase is the crisis of this neoliberal variant of capitalism from 2007/8 onwards, and a shift in the focus of CDA research to discourse within strategic struggles over which direction to take to try to transcend the crisis. I have drawn upon the 'cultural political economy' of Jessop and Sum, but this work has centred upon a collaboration with Isabela Fairclough to bring argumentation theory and analysis into CDA (see our Political Discourse Analysis, Routledge 2012), a development which Isabela advocated in earlier publications. I should add that it is not simply a matter of one research programme replacing another, earlier concerns (e.g. with ideology) are maintained, though the way in which they are addressed may shift.
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A revised version of this paper appears as a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, Routledge 2018, chapter 1, pp 13 - 25. The focus upon dialectical reasoning and political action differentiates this chapter from one in an earlier Routledge Handbook (Fairclough 2012).
correctness’ (PC) in terms of three questions: a socio-historical question, a theoretical question and a political question as follows. (1) Why this apparently increasing focus in politics on achieving social and political change through changing culture and changing language – what has happened socially that
can explain the ‘cultural turn’ and the ‘language turn’ in politics, in social and political theory, and in other domains of social practice? (2) How are we to understand the relationships among culture, language and other elements of social life and social practices – how are we to understand the relationship
between change in culture and language, and social change? (3) For those who are politically committed to substantive social and political change (whether on the right or on the left), what place can a politics centred around culture and language have in a political strategy which is to have some chance of success?
The article concludes with a discussion of strategies and tactics for contesting critiques of ‘PC’.
A revised version of this paper appears as a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, Routledge 2018, chapter 1, pp 13 - 25. The focus upon dialectical reasoning and political action differentiates this chapter from one in an earlier Routledge Handbook (Fairclough 2012).
correctness’ (PC) in terms of three questions: a socio-historical question, a theoretical question and a political question as follows. (1) Why this apparently increasing focus in politics on achieving social and political change through changing culture and changing language – what has happened socially that
can explain the ‘cultural turn’ and the ‘language turn’ in politics, in social and political theory, and in other domains of social practice? (2) How are we to understand the relationships among culture, language and other elements of social life and social practices – how are we to understand the relationship
between change in culture and language, and social change? (3) For those who are politically committed to substantive social and political change (whether on the right or on the left), what place can a politics centred around culture and language have in a political strategy which is to have some chance of success?
The article concludes with a discussion of strategies and tactics for contesting critiques of ‘PC’.