CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) aims at making transparent the connections between
discourse practices, social practices and social structures, sometimes opaque to the
layperson. Halliday’s view of language as a “social act” is central to many of CDA
practitioners (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 1993, Fowler et.al.1979;
Fowler, 1991; Hodge & Kress, 1979). Another central assumption of CDA and SFL
(Systematic Functional Linguistics) is that speakers make choices regarding vocabulary
and grammar which are consciously or unconsciously “principled and systematic”
(Fowler et.al.1979, p.188). Such choices are ideologically based and therefore,
language is a social act, ideologically driven.
Over the years, CDA (Fairclough, 1993; Van Dijk, 1998a) developed and broadened,
recent work has raised two concerns: the role of audiences and their interpretation of
discourse and the call for broadening the scope of analysis beyond the textual,
extending it to the intertextual analysis.
According to Van Dijk (1998a) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has become the
general label for a special approach to the study of text and talk, emerging from critical
linguistics, critical semiotics and in general from socio-politically conscious and
oppositional way of investigating language, discourse and communication. VAN
DIJK’s analysis has two levels: microstructure: (semantic relations between
propositions, syntactic, lexical and rethorical elements providing coherence in the text
and quotations that give factuality to de news report) and macrostructure:
(thematic/topic structure of news stories ). Themes and topics are realized in headlines
and lead paragraphs, which express the most important information of the cognitive
model of journalists. According to him, the headlines “define coherence and semantic
unity of discourse...” (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 248). It is not easy to precisely delimit the
special principles, practices, aims, theories or methods of CDA. Yet, work in CDA is
usually characterized by the following criteria:
 It is problem or issue-oriented. Any theoretical and methodological approach is
appropriate as long as it is able to effectively study relevant social problems,
such as those of sexism, racism, colonialism and other forms of social
inequality.
 CDA does not characterize a school, a field or a subdiscipline of discourse
analysis, but rather an explicitly critical approach, position or stance of
studying text and talk.
 CDA work is typically inter or multidisciplinary and especially focuses on the
relations between discourse and society.
 CDA is part of a broad spectrum of critical studies in the humanities and the
social sciences, e.g., in sociology, psychology, mass communication research,
law literature and political science.
 CDA studies (may) pay attention to all levels and dimensions of discourse such
as those of grammar, style, rhetoric, schematic organization, speech acts,
pragmatic strategies, and those of interaction, among others.
 When studying the role of discourse in society, CDA especially focuses on
(group) relations of power, dominance and inequality and the ways these are
reproduced or resisted by social group members through text and talk.
  Much work in CDA deals with the discursively enacted or legitimated structures
and strategies of dominance and resistance in social relationships of class,
gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, language, religion, age, nationality
or world-region.

Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse analysis which aims to systematically

explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a)
discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures,
relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of
and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to
explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a
factor securing power and hegemony.
A) Text: involves linguistic analysis in terms of vocabulary, grammar, semantics,
sound system, and cohesion-organization above the sentence level. Linguistic
analysis is concerned with presences and absences in texts, including
“representation categories of participants, constructions of participant identity or
participant relations” (Fairclough, 1995, p.58).
B) Discourse practice: According to Fairclough (1995, p.58-59) it has two facets:
Institutional process (editorial procedures) and Discourse processes: (changes
the text experiences in production and consumption).
C) Socio-cultural practice: for Fairclough (1995b, p.62), analysis in this
dimension pertains to three aspects of the sociocultural context of
communicative events: Economic (economy of the media), Political: (power
and ideology of the media), and Cultural: (issues of values).

Discourse sociolinguistics is one direction of CDA associated with Wodak. She has
carried out research on social issues like sexism, racism and anti-Semitism. Her work
led to the development of the “Discourse Historical Method”. The focus on the
historical context of discourse in the process of explanation and interpretation is a
feature that distinguishes Wodak’s approach from other approaches in CDA, especially
from Van Dijk’s. In her approach (similar to Fairclough’s), language “manifests social
processes and interaction” and “constitutes” those processes as well (Wodak & Ludwig,
1999, p. 12). Wiewing language this way entails three things: First: Discourse “always
involves power and ideologies. No interaction exists where power relations do not
prevail and where values and norms do not have a relevant role.” (Wodak & Ludwig,
1999, p.12). Second: “Discourse is always historical: is connected … with other
communicative events which are happening at the same time or have happened before”
(p.12). The third feature is interpretation: readers and listeners, depending on their
background knowledge, information and position might interpret differently the same
communicative event (p.13). According to Wodak & Ludwig,( 1999), “the right
interpretation does not exist;.… interpretations can be more or less plausible or
adequate, but they cannot be true”.

In conclusion, Van Dijk’s and Fairclough’s approaches shed light on the influence of
media over the people’s opinions, while Wodak focuses on the expressions of sexism,
racism and anti-Semitism in people’s discourse.