Applied Linguistics 19/1 136-15!

The Author 1998

REVIEW ARTICLE
The Theory and Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis
H G. WIDDOWSON
C R Caldas-Coulthard and M Coulthard (eds ) Texts and Practices
Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis Routledge 1996
N Fairclough Critical Discourse Analysis Longman 1995
R Hodge and G Kress Language as Ideology 2nd Edition Routledge
1993
What is most plainly distinctive about critical discourse analysis (henceforth
CDA) is its sense of responsibility and its commitment to social justice This is
linguistics with a conscience and a cause, one which seeks to reveal how
language is used and abused in the exercise of power and the suppression of
human rights In a grossly unequal world where the poor and the oppressed
are subject to discrimination and exploitation such a cause is obviously a just
and urgent one which warrants support And it has struck a chord, playing as
it does on the academic conscience with its worries about its relevance to
social life CDA has inspired a reconsideration of the purposes of language
description, and it has pursued its own purposes with vigour, acting upon its
own definition of discourse as a mode of social action
The significance of a scholarly enquiry can be judged, in part at least, by its
yield of publications, and in this respect CDA is very important indeed Its
practitioners have been very productive, and the books referred to here are
only a small sample of what has appeared in pnnt over the past ten years or
so These are of special note, however, in that they can be taken as an
authoritative representation of the state of the art in CDA, for all those who
have been most prominent in promoting it figure here as authors We might
accordingly expect that if we are looking for enlightenment about the
pnnciples of this highly influential approach to linguistic analysis, these books
are likely to provide it
Certainly there is no shortage of linguistic analysis All three books provide
plentiful examples What is most immediately stnking about the procedures of
analysis (to this reviewer at least) is how reminiscent they are of the
interpretative ingenuity one associates with the discourse of literary criticism,
though this (intertextual) association, and what it might imply, is not
recognized by the analysts themselves, of which more later But meanwhile,
the more general question arises as what theoretical pnnciples are made
operational in these analytic procedures, what, actually, are the analyses
examples o/> All three books also provide plentiful discussion of the theory
that motivates, and supposedly gives warrant to the practical analysis Thus,
we are told (in the Preface) that Texts and Practices contains 'the most recent

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H G WIDDOWSON 137
theoretical statements of the major thinkers along with illustrative analyses'
(p xi) And Fairclough (one these major thinkers) refers in the introduction to
his own collection of papers to the need in CDA for ' the development of a new
social theory of language which may include a new grammatical theory'
(p 10) It is rightly recognized in all of these books that without such
theoretical support, the particular analyses {no matter how ingenious and
weil-intentioned) reduce to random comment of an impressionistic kind
Since it is clearly so crucial to establish the informing theoretical pnnciples
upon which CDA is based, this review will mainly concentrate on inferring
from these books what these principles might be
It seems appropriate to begin with Fowler Not only does he provide the
lead paper in the theoretical section of Texts and Practices, but he was (as he
tells us) one of the prime movers of critical linguistics (Fowler et al 1979) It
seems reasonable to expect that if we are. looking for an account of the
pnnciples of CDA, here is where we shall find it Fowler hints at the
association with literary studies He informs us that cntical discourse work
was influenced in the early years by ' the hermeneutic side of literary
cnticism' (p 4) But he is worried that this might be a 'damaging admission'
Why this should be thought a damaging admission is not explained, and
Fowler gives no indication as to what this influence was, or how literary
hermeneutics were exploited The suggestion is that cntical linguistics was
doing the same kind of thing as literary cnticism, but doing it better 'We',
he says, 'like the literary cntics were working on the interpretation of
discoursethough equipped with a better tool-kit
1
' What then was this tool-
kit''
Fowler suggests that CDA is an exercise m 'instrumental linguistics' The
term comes from Halliday, and Fowler seems at first sight to take it as
synonymous with Halliday's functional linguistics This, we are told, 'provides
the theoretical underpinning for cntical linguistics' (p 5)
1
But the under-
pinning turns out to be somewhat insecure, for later we learn that functional
linguistics is rather too complicated for application, and that
in practice, critical linguists get a very high mileage out of a small
selection of linguistic concepts such as transitivity and nominahsation
(P 8)
This would suggest that analysis is not the systematic application of a
theoretical model, but a rather less ngorous operation, in effect, a kind of ad
hoc bncolage which takes from theory whatever concept comes usefully to
hand Instrumentality, then, refers not to the design of the descnptive model
itself, but to its expedient use as a tool-kit In this sense you can put any
model to instrumental use, and indeed Fowler himself suggests that there is a
vaned assortment of other ideas which might be pressed into service they
include Gnce's co-operative pnnciple, relevance theory, schema theory,
prototype theory, and even the entirely non-functional theory of transforma-

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138 REVIEW ARTICLE
tional-generative grammar 'It is just a matter,' according to Fowler, 'of
bnnging them within the critical linguistics model' (p 11)
But this presupposes that there is already a critical linguistics model that
these vaned concepts are to be brought into So what is it, and what theory
informs i f We are not told Certainly, it would take a good deal of ingenuity
to integrate all of these concepts, along with (selections from) functional
grammar, to form a coherent theory of language to underpin the critical
linguistic enterprise It may be that the term ' model' is being used here,
somewhat ldiosyncratically, to mean a collection of expedient practices, which
need only a tool-kit, and no theoretical warrant whatever
This is not, however, the view of other major thinkers represented in this
volume They are very much concerned with the theoretical validation of
their practice Kress is one In his paper he says quite explicitly
It has become essential to take a decisive step towards the articulation
of the theory of language, or communication, of semiosis, which is
implied in these cntical language activities, to develop an apt theory of
language <p 15)
What then would such an apt theory consist oP It is difficult to tell But in
Kress's account two concepts figure prominently in its definition representa-
tion and transformation Representation is*a Halhdayan term which refers to
the process of semiotic abstraction whereby reality is ideationally encoded
Different communities will develop their own semiotic conventions, in respect
to language and other signs, which correspond with their preferred ways of
representing the world In Halliday's terms, there will be differences in
meaning potential, or, in Kress's terms, representational resources So far, the
theory of language seems to be a familiar functional' one What then of
transformation
7
This notion, of course, figures in (early versions of) a
formalist Chomskyan grammar One might then at first imagine that the
apt theory of language being developed is to be a synthesis of formalism and
functionalism two hitherto distinct, indeed opposing, traditions of linguistic
enquiry But, on closer scrutiny, this does not seem to be the case, for
transformation is also defined in functional terms We are told that the
development of representational resources provides the means to transform
reality they constitute what Kress himself calls 'transformative potential'
Since representation is already, by definition, an encoded version of reality,
and since, also by definition, any alteration of perceived reality is necessarily
representational, transformation is the process whereby one representation
impinges on another and modifies it The theory of language suggested here,
then, is a theory of semiotic change in language as brought about by its use
But there is no explanation as to how this change is brought about Thus we
are shown different configurations of verbal and visual features in certain
newspapers and told that these necessarily represent particular subjectivities,
particular ways of conceiving of the world, and that these necessarily bnng
about a transformation of how the world is conceived by the reader

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H G WIDDOWSON 139
In short, this set of senuotic features, of representational resources,
suggests and implies, and I would wish to say, over the longer penod
produces a particular disposition, a particular habitus and, in so doing,
plays its part in the production of a certain kind of subjectivity, a
subjectivity with certain onentations to 'rationality' (p 25)
But others, I think, would wish to say that the occurrence of certain senuotic
-features in instances of actual use does not of itself constitute evidence of
subjectivity or of any orientation to 'rationality' It is not enough to assert that
it does as a matter of conviction
It would appear that what the theory presented here really amounts to is
the reaffirmation of the familiar Whorfian notion of linguistic determinism,
but applied not only to cognition in respect of the language code, but m
respect to its use in communication as well It is based on what might be
referred to as the functional fallacy This is the assumption that the meanings
which are semantically encoded in the language, and which can indeed be
seen as functionally motivated in their historical provenance, are projected
intact into pragmatic use Thus, given a text, you can not only read off the
representational subjectivity of its producer, but also assume the subjectivity
of the receiver, and read off what Kress refers to as its transformational effects
as well The question anses as to how these effects are to be attributed to the
purely formal concept of transformation in the Chomsky sense And here we
must turn to the earlier work in Language as Ideology
According to the authors, this is the second edition of a book of the same title
which appeared in 1979 The term 'second edition' would normally be
understood as refemng to a revised version, undertaken to bring the original
into line with current thinking But this is not a revised version The text of 1979
is intact, with the dated examples and arguments retained It is true that the
bibliography contains entries after 1979, but these are, almost without
exception, publications of the authors and their associates, and they do not
appear in the 'sources and references' section appended to each chapter Here
work in the 1960s and 1970s is still referred to as recent So this is not a second
edition in the usual sense, but a reprint of the first What the authors have done
is to add a postscript in the form of a lengthy last chapter But this is not a critical
evaluation of what has preceded but a confirmation of its essential validity
One can acknowledge that Language as Ideology was innovative when it first
appeared, and did indeed initiate work in cntical analysis In this respect it can
be considered an historical document, and as such not to be tampered with
(though it is somewhat unusual for authors themselves to decide on the
histoncal status of their own work) Nevertheless, one would think that, with
the benefit of hindsight, the authors might have acknowledged its short-
comings, as a necessary function of its time, and comment explicitly on the
extent to which it has been superseded by subsequent developments It is
perhaps not unreasonable to expect that those who advocate critical reading
might apply this process to their own texts

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140 REVIEW ARTICLE
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the authors do not think that there
have actually been any subsequent developments worthy of note Certainly
the basic approach to analysis taken in the repnnt is endorsed in the appended
chapter, and this, essentially, consists of ascribing representational subjectivity
to linguistic features m the text This is not, however, a straightforward task
For, not infrequently, this subjectivity is taken to be a function of linguistic
features which are not actually there but only virtually present, not part of the
text at all but of the sentences which are denvable from the text The
significance of a text in respect to its representational subjectivity is therefore
so deeply embedded that it needs to be pnsed out by careful structural
analysis And this is where transformations come in For with them one can
reveal intentions subtly disguised in complex structures, concealments, and
deceptions incorporated in transformationally denved sentences
But we should note that the concept of transformation has itself been
transformed to make it more instrumental, or more operationally effective as
part of the tool-kit for analysis In Chomsky's conception, transformations
apply to underlying stnngs so that all sentences are transformed In the Hodge
and Kress conception, they convert one kind of sentence into another This
would seem to imply the existence of neutral non-transformed sentences
which are, by definition, innocent of any representational significance There
are two difficulties here In the first place, in the absence of any theoretical
substantiation of this new concept of transformation as converting one kind of
sentence into another, there is no way of identifying a neutral sentence as
distinct from a transformed one Some sentences are transformed, some are
not, but which is which
7
It seems to be a matter of descriptive convenience
Secondly, even if we were able to identify the neutral sentences, their very
existence means that it is in pnnciple possible, by a judicious avoidance of
transformation, to produce language which is entirely free of representational
subjectivity But this contradicts the cntical linguistic tenet that there is no
neutral language all of it is loaded, 'ideologically saturated' as Kress puts it
(Kress 1992 174)
In a chapter of Language as Ideology, telling entitled Transformations and
Truth, we are told that 'transformations always involve suppression and/or
distortion' (p 35) Suppression and distortion of what? Presumably some
complete and undistorted truth that can in pnnciple be expressed, but only by
means of basic untransformed sentences If you keep to these, then truth is
guaranteed, but as soon as you resort to transformation, you suppress and/or
distort it Always Formal transformations are always functionally significant
The authors are unequivocal about this
We take a strongly realist position and regard all transformational
analyses as hypothetical reconstructions of psychologically real
processes,
and they ate 'recent' and 'up to date' work in their support (p 35) This work
is dated 1972, 1974, and 1977 True, this was relatively recent in 1979, when

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H G WIDDOWSON 141
the book first appeared But the fact that it appears unaltered in 1993 implies
that it is still relevant, and, in the absence of any disclaimer to the contrary,
that the authors remain as strongly realist as ever
What then does it mean to be realist here
7
The authors talk about
transformations being psychologically real, and so would seem to accept
without question the validity of the derivational theory of complexity This
theory, prominent in the 1960s, proposed an equation between structural and
psychological complexity, so that the constituent depth of a sentence, as
determined by the grammatical model current at the time, corresponded with
the cognitive demand in processing it The theory proved ephemeral It lost its
point when transformations themselves disappeared from the grammatical
model on which it depended, and with them, of course, disappeared the criteria
for establishing one structure as more basic or neutral than another But
empirical support for the theory had turned out to be elusive anyway The
main problem was that it required subjects to process the internal structure of
sentences in isolation from any external contextual factors These factors would
constantly intrude so that a syntactically complex structure (like the passive,
for example) turned out to be easy to understand if there was some kind of
contextual accompaniment What the subjects were required to do was to
engage in psychological analysis while avoiding pragmatic interpretation, and,
not surprisingly, they found this essentially unrealistic task difficult to do
But it is precisely this kind of unrealistic analysis that is required by the
realist position meanings are intrinsically encoded and remain intact
Whatever contextual influence may attend the pragmatic use of such
linguistic forms is an irrelevant distraction which must be discounted
Indeed, it is just this kind of contextual influence which prevents people
from realizing what meanings are subtly encoded in language, and so they
have to be converted into subjects and instructed in analysis And yet this
analysis, which depends on a denial of pragmatic factors, is said to reveal not
merely (and not mainly) meanings which are semantically inscribed in
sentences but those which are expressive of speaker intentions and attitudes
Transformations do not only result in subordination but in suppression, they
do not only delete information, they distort it Always Transformations are,
then, anthropomorphically pragmatic and always represent the exercise of
power
In the final chapter of Language as Ideology this realist analysis is endorsed
and further exemplified But it is now explicitly identified as an approach to
reading This reprinted book, we are told, 'presents an approach to reading, a
hermeneutic strategy' (p 160) and this naturally raises the question of the
current status of this approach The very fact of unrevised reprint suggests that
it is still seen to be valid, but then what does this final chapter, entitled
Reading Power, have to say about this approach to reading
7
There is a
recognition that the onginal book did not adequately acknowledge the scale
and complexity of textual and discursive processes and of the need to put
these 'into a wider frame' (p 158) This suggests that a more adequate

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142 REVIEW ARTICLE
hermeneutics of reading is to be revealed (perhaps even one related to the
' hermeneutic side to literary criticism' in which, according to Fowler, CDA
had its origins) But the extensive textual analysis that follows still applies the
previous approach, for all its inadequacy We still have ideological meanings
read off from textual features, linguistic forms 'conveying', 'carrying',
'constructing', or 'representing' significance, and we still have talk of
iinguistic-ideological' moves, as if these were necessarily the same thing
What this 'wider frame' might be remains a mystery
What makes reading critical, on this account, -is that it is analytic The
process is essentially, it seems, one of semantic re-animation, 'scanning
for enigmatic traces of process frozen in text, fossils of power preserved in
linguistic amber' (p 159) The image is not a happy one For if this power is
indeed fossilized, it ceases to be powerful it is dead and nothing short of
miraculous intervention can bnng it back to life to exercise an influence on
the reader But for me to say this, it might be objected, is to place too much
significance on a particular choice of words Texts are not meant to be
picked apart in this way But it is precisely this picking apart that constitutes
critical reading All I am doing here is subjecting the fragment of text to the
very process of reading that the authors advocate, and which they
themselves employ in their own analyses scanning the text for traces and
fossils
The assumption in Language as Ideology is that meaning is contained in text,
but deeply embedded and not readily accessible to the reader It has to be
pnsed out by linguistic analysis, and the more detailed the analysis, the more
meaning is revealed, subtly implicated in syntactic structure Thus interpreta-
tion is a direct function of analysis Quite apart from the fact that the
principles of analysis are themselves unclear, the idea that reading is a matter
of linguistic analysis is itself something of a fossil It is (to say the least) curious
that this essentially formalist notion should be restored to life in an approach
to language descnption which claims to be functional For what the critical
theory of language turns out to be is the reassertion of a transmission view of
meaning whereby significance is always and only the reflex of linguistic
signification
But this is not what Kress and his fellow thinkers say it is Over and over
again, in all three of these books, there is the insistence that you cannot read
significance straight off from the text, but that it is a matter of relating texts to
their conditions of production and consumption But what they say is not
what they do Fairclough in the introduction of his own collection of papers
admits
The principle that textual analysis should be combined with analysis of
practices of production and consumption has not been adequately
operationahzed in the papers collected here (p 9)
But this is not a minor matter to be mentioned in passing If these discursive
practices have not been adequately taken into account, the textual analyses are

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H G WIDDOWSON 143
correspondingly inadequate, precisely because they are dissociated from the
contextual conditions which lend them pragmatic significance This admission
would seem to invalidate the whole critical operation And in practice, it is not
just a matter of these conditions being inadequately taken into account, they
are not taken into account at all The producers and consumers of texts are
never consulted Thus, no attempt is ever made to establish empirically what
writers might have intended by their texts Their intentions are vicariously
inferred from the analysis itself, by reference to what the analyst assumes in
advance to be the writer's ideological position Nor is there any consultation
with the readers for whom texts are designed Their understanding is assigned
to them by proxy, which in effect means that the analysts use the linguistic
features of the text selectively to confirm their own prejudice
The following can be taken as an example of the tactic Van Dijk's
contribution to critical discourse theory in Texts and Practices is a paper about
the way power is exercised by controlling access to,different discourses There
is nothing contentious about the general point indeed it seems obvious that it
is of the very nature of any society to establish self-enclosed communities,
where access to the defining discourse is controlled by conditions of
membership and where solidarity necessanly carries implications of power
It can be argued that if all discourse communities were equally accessible, the
difference between insiders and outsiders would disappear, and with it any
basis for defining such communities as distinct, or of talking about social
structure at all
What is relevant to CDA is how the texts of a particular community
exemplify.and exercise this control of access Van Dijk takes an example from
the Sun This is an article with the headline
BRITAIN INVADED BY AN ARMY OF ILLEGALS
Van Dijk notes that the metaphor here explicitly signals where the paper
stands on the issue of immigration, and confirms its right-wing position
Nobody, I imagine, would want to quarrel with that However, there are
features of the text following the headline which, on the face of it, are not
consistent with this bias
Bntain is being swamped by a tide of illegal immigrants so desperate for
a job that they will work for a pittance slaving behind bars, cleaning
hotel rooms and working in kitchens
Van Dijk notes that such expressions seem to be 'a suggestion of
commiseration with the immigrants' But this is inconvenient for his case
So he interprets the phrase working for a pittance as implying that 'since
immigrants will do any job for any wage, they compete with white British
workers' {p 99), and makes no comment at all on the expressions so
desperate for a job or slaving behind bars One would have thought that the
second of these in particular might call for some comment The term slaving

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144 REVIEW ARTICLE
(with its cognates slave and slavery) has intertextual echoes with the
discredited discourse of overt racism which the newspaper would presum-
ably wish to avoid And is there not an ironic ambiguity here in the term
behind bars, with its implication of imprisonment
7
It could, after all, be easily
avoided (serving/toiling in bars) Might one not say that there is textual
evidence therefore that the Sun is not so rabidly racist as might at first
appear, that these phrases are perhaps unwitting liberal chinks in its rightist
armour
7
And if not, why not
7
The answer is, of course, that Van Drjk is
looking only for textual confirmation of a bias he has attnbuted to the source
of his text in advance Everything that appears in the 5MM IS necessarily
racist So in effect, what Van Dijk is doing here is controlling our access to
this text by imposing his own discourse upon it
One might, of course, object that I am trying to place too much prominence
on a phrase or two But (as we have it on the authority of Kress) this is just
what critical discourse analysis is meant to do scanning texts for traces which
might otherwise escape notice There is, after all, little point in its telling us
what is all too apparent anyway It is the subtlety of covert significance we are
looking for, and this might be found lurking in*the slightest linguistic nuance
Thus, employing this process of critical scanning I have here drawn attention
to a particular collocation {slaving behind bars) as a possible trace of colonial
conscience, and so of a less racist attitude than is evident in the rest of the
text This may seem unlikely on the face of it, but we are not looking at the
face of it, but at what lies beneath
Furthermore, I can here also claim the authority of Fairclough for my analysis
For he too gives particular weight to the occurrence of a single collocation in
comments he makes {in extending a previous analysis in Downing 1990} on a
text fragment from a South Afncan newspaper about a black student
demonstration and its suppression by the police The fragment reads
Exactly how and why a student protest became a killer not may not be
known until the conclusion of an elaborate enquiry that will be earned
out by Justice Petrus Cilhe, Judge President of the Transvaal
'The key expression,' Fairclough tells us 'is, of course, killer riot' Why 'of
course'
9
Because the collocation, he claims, carries the implication that black
Afncans are barbarous, and so marks the text as expressing a position
favourable to the white authorities His analysis reads as follows
Riot, as I have suggested, places the responsibility on the students, and
killer implies not just the production of fatalities on this occasion {fatal
not would have done that), but the involvement in the not (and
therefore the existence among the students) of those whose nature is to
kill (which is the reputation of 'killer whales', and which is implied in
locutions like 'he's a killer', 'killer on the loose') (p 196)
The implication inferred here is based entirely on the assumption that the
collocate of killer always denotes something ' whose nature is to kill' But is

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H G WIDDOWSON 145
this in fact the case
7
Fairclough consults a concordance to find out and comes
up with the following finding
There are two instances of killer dust, one each of killer earthquake, killer
hurricane, killer rabbit, and killer sub All of these involve the notion of
that whose nature or function is to kill
He then adds 'There is also one instance of killer instinct' (p 213)
So why, one wonders, was this last instance simply added as an aside, and
not included with the others Perhaps it is too obvious a counter-example But
there are counter-examples too among those collocations which are offered as
evidence By what stretch of the imagination can it be said that it is of the very
nature or function of dust to kill
7
And rabbits
7
Killer .rabbits is a comic
collocation which exists only in the fantasy world of Monty Python How can
we take any analysis senously which is based on such a distortion of data, and
which slips counter evidence into an aside where it might escape notice
7
The
fact is, at least as revealed by the corpus referred to, there is no collocational
evidence at all for Fairclough's interpretation of killer not as the 'key
expression' in this passage Actually a more convincing candidate for key
status would be elaborate, which Fairclough chooses to ignore entirely For a
glance at a concordance here will reveal that it commonly collocates with too
and is predominantly used in a perjorative sense on collocational evidence,
you do not generally commend an inquiry by calling it elaborate So the use of
the word in this text could be taken to imply a certain scepticism, and to
position the writer in opposition to the authorities Fairclough does not, of
course, point to this possible implication It does not suit his case, so he
suppresses it, and conviction carries the day
If this were just an occasional lapse or aberration, it would not matter
much But this disregard of inconvenient textual features seems to be endemic
in the cntical approach And it occurs again within a page of the previous
example Fairclough takes another text fragment from the passage previously
treated by Downing
Fnghtened and perhaps in real danger of their lives, the police simply
leveled their carbines and Sten guns and fired at point-blank range
The word perhaps might be taken to imply an uncertainty that the police were
actually in real danger of their lives and so call into question the legitimacy of
their action, but Fairclough dismisses it as just 'a nod in the direction of
journalistic circumspection', put in only for the sake of appearances So it can
be discounted Simply, on the other hand, is, according to Fairclough, quite
different This does represent an ideological position it is a 'hedge' which
'implies' absence of malicious intent or premeditation, and comprehensible
human error', and-so mitigates the police action Why these two words should
have such radically different implications and why simply should cany this
heavy weight of significance we are not told No concordance is consulted in
this case If it were, one might find evidence to suggest, with equal

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146 REVIEW ARTICLE
plausibility, that the use of the word here implies that the police behaved with
callous indifference One might suggest, furthermore, that this interpretation
is indeed bome out by the features of the clause in which it appears
Fairclough asks
What, indeed, is the significance of choosing the police simply leveled their
carbines and Sten guns and fired at point blank range rather than the
semantically adequate the police fired at point-blank range
7
What indeed? One might plausibly argue that reference to carbines and Sten
guns makes specific how heavily armed the police were, and that saying that
these were levelled suggests deliberate and controlled movement which is not
consistent with hasty spontaneous action induced by fright, or the
representation of 'comprehensible human error' One might suggest too
that this is bome out by point-blank range, which is a phrase commonly used to
refer to callous and deliberate violence against a defenseless victim On this
account, the choice of words does not reflect favourably on the police at all
But Fairclough does not notice these things What he notices is the
significance of the word simply, and his account is different What then is
the significance of choosing the first of these expressions {the police simply
leveled their carbines and Sten guns and fired at point-blank range) rather than the
second (the police fired at point-blank range)
7
According to Fairclough
It strikes me that the former, along with the initial minor clauses,
embeds the shooting in a police-centred narrative, which mitigates it
<P 197)
What strikes a particular reader, even one as astute as Fairclough, is hardly
conclusive evidence of how ideological significance is written covertly into
texts It is evidence only of what the reader reads into it Fairclough, in
common with his cnticai colleagues, sets out to expose how language is
exploited in the covert insinuation of ideological influence But they do this
by the careful selection and partial interpretation of whatever linguistic
features suit their own ideological position and disregarding the rest Here is a
kind of transformation which does indeed, in the words of Hodge and Kress
'involve suppression and distortion'
What kind of theory, then, provides a basis for these practices? One of its
tenets is that which I mentioned earlier, and which is frequently adduced in
these volumes, namely that no use of language is ideologically neutral, that
every text, from a political tract to a train ticket, is expressive of a particular
discourse, and bears evidence of some hegemonic intent Every text is in some
sense a conspiracy, to be exposed by analysis The difficulty is that it is hard to
see how such an analysis can ever be systematically undertaken For if all
language is so loaded, so 'ideologically saturated', then there is no
redundancy every feature of the text carries its ideological charge, and this
will interact with others in all manner of ways So how do we know under
what textual or contextual conditions one feature takes on particular saliency

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H G WIDDOWSON 147
and overrides the others
7
How do we know when a particular 'trans-
formation', or a particular word or collocation (simply, killer not, behind bars)
has such a covert ideological force that it overrides other linguistic features
and is indeed the key to textual significance
7
According to Fairclough (in the
context of his own analyses discussed above)
Linguistic analysis identifies a creative collocation, and intertextual
analysis points to the provenance of us elements in different discourses
of race and the social (p 196)
But how do you identify a collocation that is creative without extensive
reference to a concordance which will indicate the collocational norms (a
question raised in Stubbs 1994)
7
There seems little point in looking things up
in a concordance as a random tactic, particularly if you then disregard the
information that is inconvenient And how do you know what relative weight
to'attach to this creativity alongside all the other linguistic features of the
text
7
They cannot all be equally charged with ideological significance, so how
do you know which of them are activated and which are not
7
These questions are crucial (cntical indeed) for Fairclough's enquiry into
intertextuality, which figures prominently in his collection of papers The idea
that texts are commonly heterogeneous and do not conform to a fixed
schematic pattern is hardly original What is original is the assertion that, by
means of such heterogeneous texts, the discourses of the powerful exercise
their influence by the hegemonic insinuation of features of other discourses
Thus people are hoodwinked into supposing that a discourse is co-operative,
when in fact it is subtly coercive This can be taken as a socio-political version
of accommodation theory (cf Giles and Coupland 1991} though this theory is
never mentioned The obvious descriptive problem, however, is how you
identify the heterogeneity 'The intertextual properties of a text are realized'
we are told 'in its linguistic features' (p 189) But which ones
7
If all texts are
heterogeneous, then, obviously enough, none of them can be fully
representative of a specific type So how do you know which of their features
are definitive for a particular text type
7
And further, how do you know which
are activated in creating a particular discourse effect
7
The idea that all texts
are heterogeneous has long been familiar, but equally familiar has been the
problem of pinning down the heterogeneity This, of course, is the traditional
problem of code switching and style shifting, which has been extensively
discussed in the sociohnguistic literature, to which, again, no reference is
made in this volume There seems little point in vaguely invoking Bakhtin
and the idea of multiple voices if you have no way of identifying which voice
is which If you claim that different linguistic features serve to identify distinct
discoursal voices, then there ought to be some systematic means of
identification (a point made in Widdowson 1996)
As we have seen. Fowler observes that in practice cntical discourse analysts
have found Halltday's functional grammar congenial but have used it
'instrumentally', as a tool-kit, getting 'high mileage' (as he puts it) from

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148 REVIEW ARTICLE
transitivity and nominalization This raises the intriguing question as. to
whether the 'high mileage' is a matter of intrinsic potential, whether there are
grammatical features, perhaps those associated with redundancy and
ambiguity, which do, in their very encoding, have a greater ideological
valency, are more readily activated to carry significance and more resistant to
contextual influence One way of looking into this possibility would be to
make a systematic analysis of the occurrence of a particular linguistic feature
{grammatical or lexical) across a range of different texts The computer
provides the means (see again Stubbs 1994) You still need to convert the data
into evidence, of course, but at least you would have descriptive textual facts
at your disposal It is interesting to note that two of the papers in Texts and
Practices (those of Knshnamurthy and Hoey) proceed in just this way they
focus on specific lexical items, descnbe their occurrence, and then infer what
significance this might have The interpretation is thus grounded in systematic
linguistic descnption In this respect these papers are in marked contrast to
most of the other work in these books, where descnption is simply used as an
interpretative tactic
In the absence of any theory of language which might guide the process of
cntical analysis, analysts in practice simply (simply) define their own
conditions of significance as the spirit, or political commitment, takes them,
and identify ideological positions in reference to their own Thus analysis is
subordinated to interpretation This is said to be cntical reading the
interpretation of a text as a discursive practice But if you know the
provenance of a particular text (the Sun newspaper, "for example) you will
obviously, as a matter of rudimentary pragmatic fact, position yourself
accordingly and be primed to find confirmation of your own prejudice
Your analysis will be the record of whatever partial interpretation suits your
own agenda And since the analysis is itself a text, this too has an ideological
bent, and is subject to the same process of exposure by means of another text,
like this review, which will itself, no doubt, be exposed in its turn And so on
Ultimately, then, ideological significance can never be discovered, for it is
always the function of a particular ideological partiality
- But this partiality'is not, in the CDA orthodoxy, a matter of individual
disposition discourse is a set of social values which we have to subscribe to as
a condition of using language at all, so when we use language we do so as
representatives of some socially determined discourse or other Cntical
discourse analysts cannot of course claim any exemption from this general
condition they too are socially constructed to see things the way they do, and
this, on their own account, renders them incapable of conducting any
detached analysis at all All they can do is to interpret other discourses on
their own terms Thus, paradoxically, they can only pursue their programme
of ideological exposure by denying their own fundamental beliefs
For all the talk of the need to develop a new, more apt, more socially
relevant theory of language to underpin the practice of CDA, there is in truth
very little substantiation of it in these books There is the appearance of

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H G WIDDOWSON 149
theorizing, and technical terms proliferate, but it is very difficult to make
coherent sense of them, or to relate them to the analysis in any consistent
way At times, one almost gets the impression that the dealing in abstractions
is abstruse by design It is at any rate a curious irony that so much of the
argumentation here against the control of access to meaning is couched in
such inaccessible terms
In the absence of a clear conceptual scheme, most of the work that appears
in these pages seems essentially unprincipled and inconsequential And
oddly uninformed For so many of the questions that are begged in these
books about conceptual encoding, the relationship between semantic
signification and pragmatic significance, the inferring of authonal intention,
the heterogeneity of texts, and so on have been extensively discussed
elsewhere in the literature of linguistics, sociohnguistics, psychohnguistics,
discourse analysis And in literary theory CDA, as I suggested earlier, is
strongly reminiscent of literary criticism It is, one might say, a kind of
political poetics, and over and over again the same issues arise about the
textual warrant for interpretation But (apart from Fowler's apologetic aside)
the possible relevance of the literary tradition of textual study is not
mentioned in these books, let alone explored Even when literary texts are
analysed (as in Fowler 1996, for example) there is little explicit consideration
of the contribution of literary criticism the assumption seems to be that
cntical linguistics simply supersedes it, presumably because it has a better
tool-kit Elsewhere literary study is not considered at all To give one
example in 1985 there appeared an impressive book on literary theory called
Textual Power (Scholes 1985), which explores issues about textual analysis
and interpretation directly relevant to the matters discussed in Fairclough's
Language and Power, which appeared four years later But Fairclough makes
no reference to it whatever
Of course, it is unfair to expect scholars to make comprehensive reference to
every other area of intellectual enquiry which might have possible relevance to
their own, no matter how interdisciplinary they might claim to be But critical
discourse analysts, in fact, pay scant attention to any work on language other
than their own They draw their intellectual inspiration from socio-political
theory and in so doing invoke the idea of interdisciplinanty But there is very
little interdisaplinanty in respect of those areas of enquiry most immediately
relevant to the business of textual analysis, namely linguistics and literary
criticism They take their expedient pick of various descriptive devices to add to
their tool-kit, but without regard to the theory that gives them warrant The
adherents of CDA, it might be suggested, are too anxious to make a political
point, too quick to come to cntical conclusions, and too ready to see themselves
as engaging in a revolutionary kind of linguistics one whose subjectivity (to
use Kress's phrase) has 'certain onentations to "rationality"', whereby it can
set its own agenda, and define its own conditions of validity The agenda is the
exposure of prejudice and the abuse of power The conditions are commitment
to an egahtanan cause As I said at the beginning, one can accept the cause as

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150 REVIEW ARTICLE
just But the assumption seems to be that if the cause is just, this in itself
validates the means of furthering it
If this.is so, then to go on {as I have done) about the need for particular
analyses to be consistently referable to some coherent theory is beside the
point For theory is indeed (as Fowler suggests) only instrumental, a tool-kit
for expedient use, a descriptive device What counts is its face validity and so
it does not have to be coherent or cogent, so long as it carries conviction and
furthers the cause And this puts anybody who questions the validity of CDA
in an invidious position For if the means are justified by the ends, in
criticizing the linguistic analysis you can be accused not only of being beside
the point, but also, more seriously, of undermining the moral cause and siding
with the enemy
And here we come up against a general and very tricky problem about the
accountability of intellectual enquiry One can accept it as a matter -of
fundamental principle that scholarship should be turned to social account
and engage with moral issues, but the question is how far this can or should be
done without compromising the very principles of scholarship which provide
the authority for this engagement It ought surely to be possible to say that an
argument is confused, or an analysis flawed, without denying the justice of the
cause they support My view would be that if a cause is just then we should
look for ways of supporting it by coherent argument and well-founded {as
distinct from well-funded) analysis And I would indeed argue that to do
otherwise is to do a disservice to the cause For the procedures of ideological
exposure by expedient analysis which characterize the practices of CDA can, of
course, be taken up to further any cause, right wing as well as left, evil as well as
good They are the familiar tactics of polemic and propaganda, and they have a
long history in human affairs In this respect they are not revolutionary at all If
you have the conviction and commitment, you will always find your witch
And to be critical about discourse is to be aware of this, to be aware of the
essential instability of language and the necessary indeterminacy of all
meaning which must always give rise to a plurality of possible interpretations
of text And this means that to foreclose on any interpretation must be to
impose a significance which you are disposed to find And here, I think, is the
central problem with CDA, and the reason why it is so influential while being
so obviously defective It carries conviction because it espouses just causes,
and this is disarming, of course it conditions the reader into acceptance If
you can persuade people by an appeal to moral conscience, you do not need
good arguments But such persuasion deflects attention from questions of
validity It thus inhibits intellectual enquiry and ultimately undermines its
integnty in the interests of expediency The work that appears in these books
exemplifies a whole range of problems about the analysis and interpretation
of text, which it persistently fails to examine Indeed the overall impression
that is given is that there are no problems of any note In this respect what is
distinctive about Critical Discourse Analysis is that it is resolutely uncritical of
its own discursive practices

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REFERENCES
Downing, J 1990 US media discourse in South Africa The development of a situation model '
Discourse and'Society 1 /1 39-60
Fowler, R 1996 Linguistic Criticism {2nd Edition) Oxford Oxford University Press
Fowler, R , B Hodge, G Kress, and T Trew 1979 Language and Control London Rout ledge &
Kegan Paul
Giles, H and N Coup land 1991 Language Contexts and consequences Milton Keynes Open
University Press
Kress, G 1992 Against arbitrariness The social production of the sign as a foundational issue in
Critical Discourse Analysis ' Discourse and Society 4/2 169-91
Scholes, R 1985 Textual Power New Haven Yale University Press
Stubbs, M 1994 'Grammar, text, and ideology Computer-assisted methods in the linguistics of
representation Applied Linguistics 15/2 201-23
Widdowson, H G 1996 'Reply to Fairclough Discourse and interpretation Conjectures and
refutations ' Language and Literature 5/1 57-69

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