CHAPTER 2

Critical Discourse Analysis

Contents
Introduction
CDA: origins and programme
CDA and social theory
Theory and methodology: Norman Fairclough
The potentials of CDA
The cons of CDA
Introduction
• The leading scholars in CDA: Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Teun
van Dijk, and Paul Chilton
• Norman Fairclough has a background in systemic-functional
linguistics.
• Teun van Dijk in text linguistics and cognitive linguistics.
• Ruth Wodak in interactional studies.
• Paul Chilton in linguistics, semiotics, and communication studies.
• CDA historically emerged out of Hallidayan linguistics, but this, in turn, needs to be
contextualized.
• Post-Second World War developments in the study of language included the Chomskyan
revolution and a number of strong reactions against this revolution, often focusing on the
exclusion of social and cultural dimensions from the Chomskyan programme of
linguistics.
• The emergence of sociolinguistics in the early 1960s was a reaction in this sense, as well
as the result of an interdisciplinary dynamics in the social sciences of the day.
• Hallidayan linguistics, in turn, was inspired by a desire to incorporate social semiotic
functions into a theory of grammar (Butler 1985, 1995; Kress 1976).
• CDA was founded on the premisses that linguistic analysis could provide a valuable
additional perspective for existing approaches to social critique, and it attempted to
combine (at least a number of) these post-Second World War developments. In that sense,
the intellectual history of CDA is far wider and deeper than often suggested.
CDA: ORIGINS
• In historical surveys such as Wodak (1995), reference is made to the ‘critical
linguists’ of the University of East Anglia, who, in the 1970s, turned to issues such
as the use of language in social institutions and relations between language,
power, and ideology, and who proclaimed a critical and emancipatory agenda for
linguistic analysis. The works of Kress and Hodge (1979) and Fowler, Hodge,
Kress and Trew (1979) are seminal in this respect.
• The work of these critical linguists was based on the systemic-functional and
social-semiotic linguistics of Halliday, whose linguistic methodology is still hailed
as crucial to CDA practices because it offers clear and rigorous linguistic
categories for analysing the relations between discourse and social meaning.
• Martin reviews the usefulness of systemic-functional linguistics for CDA,
suggesting that CDA should apply systemic-functional notions more
systematically and consistently.
• Apart from Hallidayan linguistics, Slembrouck (2001) identifies
another profound influence on CDA: British Cultural Studies. The
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies (headed by
Stuart Hall) had a noticeable influence because it systematically
addressed social, cultural, and political problems related to
transformations in late capitalist society in Britain: neo-liberalism, and
racisms so on. Some of these topics have become foci of intense
activity within CDA. The Birmingham school of Cultural Studies also
introduced French post-structuralist theory in its analyses, and
together with the delineation of a domain of analysis, this pool of
theories was adopted by, for example, Fairclough.
• Fairclough’s Language and power (1989) is commonly considered to be
the landmark publication for the ‘start’ of CDA. In this book, Fairclough
engaged in an explicitly politicized analysis of ‘powerful’ discourses in
Britain (Thatcherite political rhetoric and ‘new economy’ advertisements)
and offered the synthesis of linguistic method, objects of analysis, and
political commitment that have become the trademark of CDA.
• Scholars identifying with the label CDA seem to be united by the common
domains and topics of investigation, a common aim of integrating
linguistic analysis and social theory, and - though in more diffuse ways --
by a preference for empirical analysis within a set of paradigms, including
Hallidayan systemic-functional linguistics and social semiotics,
conversation analysis, cognitive-linguistic approaches to metaphor,
argumentation theory, text linguistics, and discursive social psychology
The CDA programme
• In general, power, and especially institutionally reproduced power, is central to
CDA. The purpose of CDA is to analyse ‘opaque as well as transparent structural
relationships of dominance, discrimination power and control as manifested in
language’. More specifically, [CDA] studies real, and often extended, instances of
social interaction which take (partially) linguistic form.
• CDA states that discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned.
Furthermore, discourse is an instrument of power, of increasing importance in
contemporary societies. The way this instrument of power works is often hard to
understand, and CDA aims to make it more visible and transparent.
• In that sense, CDA sees its own contribution as ever more crucial to an
understanding of contemporary social reality, because of the growing importance in
the social order of discursive work and of discourse in relation to other practices.
• CDA focuses its critique on the intersection of language/discourse/
speech and social structure. It is in uncovering ways in which social
structure relates to discourse patterns (in the form of power relations,
ideological effects, and so forth), and in treating these relations as
problematic, that researchers in CDA situate the critical dimension of
their work. It is not enough to uncover the social dimensions of
language use. These dimensions are the object of moral and political
evaluation, and analysing them should have effects in society:
empowering the powerless, giving voices to the voiceless, exposing
power abuse, and mobilising people to remedy social wrongs
 CDA-practitioners tend to work on applied topics and social domains such as:
• Political discourse: i.e. the discourse of politicians
• Ideology: discourse is seen as a means through which (and in which) ideologies are being
reproduced. Ideology itself is a topic of considerable importance in CDA.
• Discourse on racism. Van Dijk stands out as a prolific author (1987, 1991, 1993b), but the topic
has also been covered by many others. Related to the issue of racism is a recent interest in the
discourse on immigration.
• The discourse of economics: In relation to this, the issue of globalization has been formulated as
an important preoccupation for CDA.
• Advertisements and promotional culture
• Media language
• Gender: especially the representation of women in the media
• Institutional discourse: the role of language in institutional practices such as doctor-patient
communication, social work, bureaucracy
• Discourse on Education: Education is seen as a major area for the reproduction of social relations,
including representation and identity-formation, but also for possibilities of change. Fairclough
and associates have developed a Critical Language Awareness approach that advocates the
stimulation of critical awareness with students of pedagogical discourses.
 CDA AND SOCIAL THEORY
• CDA conceives discourse as a social phenomenon.
• Fundamental to CDA is that it claims to take its starting-point in social theory.
• First, CDA displays a lively interest in theories of power and ideology. Most common in
this respect are the use of Michel Foucault’s (e.g. 1975, 1982) formulations of ‘orders of
discourse’ and ‘power/knowledge’; Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) notion of ‘hegemony’; Louis
Althusser’s (1971) concepts of ‘ideological state apparatuses’.
• The second direction that can be distinguished is an attempt to overcome structuralist
determinism. Inspiration here is usually found in Anthony Giddens’ (1984) theory of
structuration, where a dynamic model of the relation between structure and agency is
proposed. Giddens serves as the theoretical background to CDA’s claim that actual
language products stand in a dialectic relation to social structure, i.e. that linguistic-
communicative events can be formative of larger social processes and structures.
Obviously, when the relation between linguistic-communicative (or other semiotic) action
and social processes is discussed.
THEORY AND METHODOLOGY: NORMAN
FAIRCLOUGH
• Fairclough (1992a) constructs a social theory of discourse for which he claims
affinity with Foucault, and he provides a methodological blueprint for Critical
Discourse Analysis.
• Fairclough sketches a three-dimensional framework for conceiving of, and
analysing, discourse.
• The first dimension is discourse-as-text, i.e. the linguistic features and
organization of concrete instances of discourse. Choices and patterns in
vocabulary (e.g. wording, metaphor), grammar (e.g. transitivity, modality),
cohesion (e.g. conjunction, schemata), and text structure (e.g. episode
marking, turn-taking system) should be systematically analysed. The use of
passive verb forms or nominalizations in news reporting, for instance, can
have the effect of obscuring the agent of political processes.
• The second dimension is discourse-as-discursive-practice, i.e. discourse as something which is
produced, circulated, distributed, consumed in society.
• Approaching discourse as discursive practice means that after the analysis of vocabulary,
grammar, cohesion, and text structure, attention should be given to speech acts, coherence, and
intertextuality -- three aspects that link a text to its wider social context.
• Fairclough distinguishes between ‘manifest intertextuality’ (i.e. overtly drawing upon other texts)
and ‘constitutive intertextuality’ or ‘interdiscursivity’ (i.e. texts are made up of heterogeneous
elements: generic conventions, discourse types, register, style).
• An important aspect of ‘manifest intertextuality’ would be discourse representation: how quoted
utterances are selected, changed, contextualized.
• The third dimension is discourse-as-social-practice, i.e. the ideological
effects and hegemonic processes in which discourse is seen to operate.
• Hegemony concerns power that is achieved through constructing alliances
and integrating classes and groups through consent, so that ‘the articulation
and re-articulation of orders of discourse is correspondingly one stake in
hegemonic struggle’ (Fairclough 1992a: 93).
• It is from this third dimension that Fairclough constructs his approach to
social change.
• The way in which discourse is being represented, re-spoken, or re-written
sheds light on the emergence of new orders of discourse, struggles over
normativity, attempts at control, and resistance against regimes of power.
• To these three dimensions, Fairclough adds a threefold distinction in research methodology. CDA,
according to Fairclough, should make a progression from description, to interpretation, to
explanation (1989: 26).
• In the phase of description, CDA focuses on the textual-linguistic features of the material.
• Interpretation is concerned with the way in which participants arrive at some kind of
understanding of discourse on the basis of their cognitive, social, and ideological resources. The
interpretive phase already requires a degree of distancing between the researcher and the
participant, but the interpretation is still done by means of categories and criteria provided by
participants. Often, Fairclough argues, such interpretations display ideological framings --
participants ‘reproduce’ elements of social ideologies through everyday interactionally organized
interpretive procedures.
• That is why CDA requires a third analytical phase: explanation. In the explanatory phase, the
researcher draws on social theory in order to reveal the ideological underpinnings of lay
interpretive procedures. Social theory creates the distance necessary to move from ‘non-critical’ to
‘critical’ discourse analysis. It provides the larger picture in which individual instances of
communication can be placed and from which they derive meaning.
The potential of CDA
• Uncovers the deeper meanings, ideologies, and power relations that
underlie media texts and practices.
• Discourse analysis should result in a heightened awareness of hidden
power dimensions and its effects: a critical language awareness, a
sensitivity for discourse as subject to power and inequality. Language to
CDA is never a neutral object, it is subject to assessment, and evaluation.
• One can also easily join the call for increased dialogue between linguistic
analysis and other social-scientific endeavors.
• CDA rightly focuses on institutional environments as key sites of
research into the connections between language, power, and social
processes.
THE CONS OF CDA
• Critical reactions to CDA centre on issues of interpretation and context. More
specifically, critics focus on what they see as bias in the analyses and argue against
particular research tactics and methodological shortcomings.
• First, Widdowson notes the vagueness of many concepts as well as the vagueness of the
analytical models in CDA. CDA provides biased interpretations of discourse under the
guise of critical analysis. CDA does not analyse how a text can be read in many ways.
The predominance of biased interpretation begs questions about representativeness,
selectivity, partiality, prejudice, and voice
• Texts are found to have a certain ideological meaning that is forced upon the reader
• In a similar vein, Verschueren (2001) notes how CDA often demonstrates the obvious,
and does so from a particular analyst’s point of view which does not differ in substance
from that of the participants. One ideological frame is replaced by another -- a capitalist
framing of meanings is ‘criticized’ by substituting it with an anti-capitalist one.
• There is a linguistic bias in CDA. it can be subjective, as the interpretation of discourse can vary
depending on the analyst's perspective.
• CDA may not always provide clear solutions to social wrongs or inequalities identified in
discourse, as it primarily focuses on analysis rather than action
• It is confined to particular kinds of societies. Fairclough, Wodak, van Dijk, and Chilton have
produced magnificent analyses of discourse in their countries of origin and other countries from
what we could call the core of the world system. Fairclough (1989) is probably the best description
of a Foucaultian order of discourse in Great Britain during the Thatcher era. It is by all standards a
very good book, which makes many accurate observations about discourse in society. The problem
is that it makes such observations only about that one, very particular, society. There is no reason
to restrict critical analyses of discourse to highly integrated, Late Modern, and post-industrial,
densely semiotised First-World societies. There is even less reason to assume that descriptions of
such societies can usefully serve as a model for understanding discourse in the world today, for the
world is far bigger than Europe and the USA, and substantial differences occur between different
societies in this world.
• It is confined to a particular time-frame. There is hardly any analysis
of historical developments in CDA, and no inspiration is drawn from
authors who could contribute to such a historicising move.