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 Chapter 20
CRITICAL DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS1
Ruth Wodak

Introduction
Since the late 1980s, critical discourse analysis (CDA) has become a well-established
field in the social sciences. CDA can be defined as a problem-orientated interdisciplinary
research programme, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical
models, research methods, and agendas. What unites all approaches is a shared interest
in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, and political-economic, social, or cultural
change in society. The manifold roots of CDA lie in rhetoric, text linguistics, anthropol-
ogy, philosophy, sociopsychology, cognitive science, literary studies, and sociolinguistics,
as well as in applied linguistics and pragmatics.
CDA studies not a linguistic unit per se but rather social phenomena which are
necessarily complex and thus require a multi/inter/transdisciplinary and multimethod-
ological approach. The objects under investigation do not have to be related to negative
or exceptionally “serious” social or political experiences or events; this is a frequent
misunderstanding of the aims and goals of CDA and of the term “critical”, which, of
course, does not mean “negative” as in common-sense usage (see Chilton et al. 2010).
Any social phenomenon lends itself to critical investigation, to be challenged and not
taken for granted.
It is also salient to emphasize that the notions of “text” and “discourse” are used in
many different ways in the social sciences. Almost no paper or article is to be found which
does not revisit these notions, quoting Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Chantal
Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Niklas Luhmann, or many others. Thus, “discourse” means
anything from a historical monument, a lieu de mémoire, a policy, a political strategy,
narratives in a restricted or broad sense of the term, text, talk, a speech, or topic-related
conversations to language per se. We find notions such as racist discourse, gendered dis-
course, discourses on un/employment, media discourse, populist discourse, discourses
of the past, and many more – thus stretching the meaning of “discourse” from a genre to
a register or style, from a building to a political programme. This causes and must cause
 Communicative repertoire

confusion – which leads to much criticism and more misunderstandings (Blommaert

2005, Reisigl 2007, Wodak 2008, Wodak 2009a, Wodak 2009b, Wodak 2011a, Wodak
2011b). This is why one needs to focus on specific meanings when reading particular
contributions drawing on a specific approach to CDA.
The following definition works, I believe, for all CDA approaches. All approaches
are problem-orientated, and thus necessarily interdisciplinary and eclectic. CDA is
characterized by the common interest in demystifying ideologies and power through the
systematic and retroductable2 investigation of semiotic data (written, spoken, or visual).
CDA researchers also attempt to make their own positions and interests explicit while
retaining their respective scientific methodologies and while remaining self-reflective of
their own research process.
CDA “officially” started with the launch of van Dijk’s journal Discourse and Society
(1990) as well as with the publication of several books, which coincidentally or because
of a Zeitgeist appeared simultaneously and were led by rather similar research agendas.3
Since then many new journals have been launched and nowadays CDA is an established
paradigm in linguistics; currently, we encounter – apart from Discourse and Society –
Critical Discourse Studies, The Journal of Language and Politics, Discourse and Communication,
and Visual Semiotics, among many other journals; we also find several e-journals which
publish critical research, such as CADAAD (Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across
Disciplines; see http://www.cadaad.org/). Book series exist (such as Discourse Approaches
to Politics, Culture and Society), regular CDA meetings and conferences take place, and
handbooks are under way.
In this chapter, I first focus on the salient notions of power, ideology, and critique,
which are constitutive concepts in all CDA approaches (see “Key issues” below). Then I
briefly discuss the various theoretical and methodological approaches which have devel-
oped since the late 1980s (see “Current contributions” below; see also Chapter 21).4

Key issues

The notion of discourse

CDA sees discourse – language use in speech and writing – as a form of “social prac-
tice”. Describing discourse as social practice implies a dialectical relationship between
a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s), and social structure(s)
which frame it: the discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is,
discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned; it constitutes situations,
objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and
groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce
the social status quo and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. As discourse
is so socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power. Discursive practices
may have major ideological effects; that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal
power relations between, for instance, social classes, women and men, and ethnic/cul-
tural majorities and minorities through the ways in which they represent things and
position people (Fairclough and Wodak 1997).

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Within this broad understanding, the term “discourse” is used – as mentioned above –
very differently by different researchers and also in different academic cultures (Wodak
2011b). In the German and central European context, a distinction is made between
“text” and “discourse”, relating to the tradition in text linguistics as well as to rhetoric (for
a summary, see Wodak and Koller 2008; see also Chapter 22). In the English-speaking
world, “discourse” is frequently used for both written and oral texts (see Gee 2004,
Schiffrin 1994). Other researchers distinguish between different levels of abstractness:
Lemke (1995) defines “text” as the concrete realization of abstract forms of knowledge
(“discourse”), thus adhering to a more Foucauldian approach (Jäger and Maier 2009).
Furthermore, the discourse historical approach (DHA), which I have elaborated over the
past 20 years, views “discourse” as structured forms of knowledge about social practices,
which may be aligned to differing ideological positions, whereas “text” refers to concrete
oral utterances or written documents (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, Reisigl and Wodak
2009).

Critique
In the west, and in various European languages, the term “critical” (or its translation
equivalents) has a rather complex history; it is clear, however, that proponents of CDA
use discourse analysis to challenge what they regard as undesirable social and political
practices (for an extensive discussion, see Chilton et al. 2010). The term “critical” is
associated with currents of thought whose roots are in the eighteenth-century European
Enlightenment and go back to ancient Greek philosophy. Etymologically, “to criticize”
[57] derives from the Greek word κρίτίκόϛ, meaning “to decide” or “make distinctions”,
which may itself derive from a basic meaning “to separate, to divide”. In the European
philosophical tradition of the eighteenth century, “critique” implies not accepting argu-
ments or states of affairs as given and static but analysing them while using rigorous
rational procedures. Unlike the Chinese tradition, for example, criticism in this sense is
assumed to be value free. More specifically, to be critical in the French Enlightenment
usually meant rejecting metaphysics and denouncing religion, although not necessarily
political abuse.
Later philosophers radically extended the notion of Kritik. Marx applied it to political
economy. The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, influenced by Marx, includes ratio-
nal analysis of cultural forms of various kinds in its definition of the concept. Another
philosophical development is critical realism; the British version (e.g. Bhaskar 1986) is
relevant to the sociopolitical domain (for an extensive discussion of the developments
in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Chilton et al. 2010; see also
Chapter 4).5
CDA encompasses varied understandings of the terms “critical”, “criticism”, and “cri-
tique”. First, critical analysis of discourse can attempt to “make the implicit explicit”.
More specifically, it means making explicit the implicit relationship between discourse,
power, and ideology, challenging surface meanings, and not taking anything for granted.
Moreover, critical discourse analysts do not stop after having deconstructed textual

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meanings: the practical application of research results is also aimed at. Kress’s comment
on the goals of CDA may serve as a summary of this meaning of “being critical”:

Critical studies of language, Critical Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse

Analysis (CDA) have from the beginning had a political project: broadly speaking
that of altering inequitable distributions of economic, cultural and political goods
in contemporary societies. The intention has been to bring a system of excessive
inequalities of power into crisis by uncovering its workings and its effects through
the analysis of potent cultural objects – texts – and thereby to help in achieving a
more equitable social order.
(Kress 1996: 15)

Second, “being critical” in CDA includes being self-reflective and self-critical. In this
sense, CDA does not only mean to criticize others. It also means to criticize the “criti-
cal” itself, a point that is in line with Habermas, and was made in 1989 (Wodak 1989)
and again 10 years later (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 9). Third, critical analysis
itself is a practice that may contribute to social change. Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 32–4)
distinguish between “text-immanent critique”, “sociodiagnostic critique”, and “prospec-
tive (retrospective) critique”. Whereas text-immanent critique is inherently orientated
towards retroductable, careful text analysis, sociodiagnostic critique is based on inte-
grating the sociopolitical and structural context into the analysis and interpretation of
textual meanings. At this level, the aim is to reveal multiple interests and contradictions
in the text producers, on the basis of the evidence of the text and its contexts. Prospective
critique builds on these two levels in order to identify areas of social concern that can be
addressed by direct social engagement in relation to practitioners and wider audiences
(Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 34).
The fact that the research system itself and thus CDA are also dependent on social
structures, and that criticism can by no means draw on an outside position but is itself
well integrated within social fields has also been strongly emphasized by Pierre Bourdieu
(Bourdieu 1984, Bourdieu 1991). Researchers, scientists, and philosophers are not out-
side the societal hierarchy of power and status but subject to this structure. They have
frequently occupied and still occupy rather superior positions in society (Wodak and
Meyer 2009a: 4–6). In any case, CDA researchers have to be aware that their own work is
driven by social, economic, and political motives like any other academic work and that
they are not in any superior position. Naming oneself “critical” only implies explicit ethi-
cal standards: an intention to make their position, research interests, and values explicit
and their criteria as transparent as possible, without feeling the need to apologize for the
critical stance of their work (van Leeuwen 2006: 293).

Ideology and power

Political scientists name four central characteristics of ideology (Wodak and Meyer
2009a: 8):

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1 Ideology is more important than cognitions.

2 It is capable of guiding individuals’ evaluations.
3 It provides guidance through action.
4 It must be logically coherent.

CDA is primarily interested in the latent type of everyday beliefs, frequently appearing
disguised as conceptual metaphors and analogies (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff and
Johnson 1999). Dominant ideologies seem “neutral”, with assumptions that stay largely
unchallenged. When people in a society think alike about certain matters, or even forget
that there are alternatives to the status quo, one arrives at the Gramscian concept of
hegemony (Gramsci 1978).
It is also important to integrate the concept of language ideologies in this context,
as elaborated in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (Blommaert 1999, Gal
1998, Gal 2005, Mar-Molinero and Stevenson 2006, Silverstein 1998, Silverstein 2010).
Although, at a more general level, language ideologies can be viewed as “cultural ideas,
presumptions and presuppositions with which different social groups name, frame and
evaluate linguistic practices” (Gal 2006: 13), they must also be viewed as being (re-)con-
structed and negotiated in debates “in which language is central as a topic, a motif,
a target, and in which language ideologies are being articulated, formed, amended,
enforced” (Blommaert 1999: 1). Such language ideology debates are taking place across
different strands of public and semi-public spheres (e.g. Blackledge 2005, Blackledge and
Creese 2010, Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2011, Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2011).
Power is the third concept which is central for CDA: CDA researchers are interested in
the way discourse (re)produces social domination, that is, power abuse of one group over
others, and how dominated groups may discursively resist such abuse. This raises the
question of how CDA researchers define power and what moral standards allow them to
differentiate between power use and abuse – a question which has so far had to remain
unanswered (Billig 2008).
Much CDA research is concerned with differentiating the modes of exercising power
in discourse and over discourse in the field of politics (Holzscheiter 2005). Holzscheiter
(ibid.: 69) defines power in discourse as actors’ struggles over different interpretations of
meaning. This struggle for “semiotic hegemony” relates to the selection of “specific lin-
guistic codes, rules for interaction, rules for access to the meaning-making forum, rules
for decision-making, turn-taking, opening of sessions, making contributions and inter-
ventions.” (ibid.: 69). Power over discourse is defined as the general “access to the stage” in
macro and micro contexts (ibid.: 57), that is processes of inclusion and exclusion (Wodak
2007, Wodak 2009a, Wodak 2009b). Finally, power of discourse relates to “the influence
of historically grown macro-structures of meaning, of the conventions of the language
game in which actors find themselves” (Holzscheiter 2005: 61).6 The individual influence
of actors might contribute to changing these macro-structures.
Michel Foucault focuses on “technologies of power”: discipline is a complex bundle of
power technologies developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Foucault
recommends an analysis of power with a rather functionalist strategy. In Surveiller et Punir
(Foucault 1975), Foucault raises questions concerning the social functions and effects of

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different technologies of surveillance and punishment: how do things work at the level
of ongoing subjugation, at the level of those continuous processes which subject our
bodies, govern our gestures, and dictate our behaviours? In texts, discursive differences
are negotiated; they are governed by differences in power that are in part encoded in,
and determined by, discourse and by genre. Therefore, texts are often sites of struggle in
that they show traces of differing discourses and ideologies contending for dominance.

Current contributions
In the following, I present some important research agendas in CDA.7 Although the
field comprises a vast amount of research and also many methodological and theoretical
challenges, I have decided to restrict myself to six major areas (and related challenges) (for
an extensive discussion, see Wodak and Meyer 2009a: 11–14):

1 Analysing, understanding, and explaining the impact of the knowledge-based

economy (KBE) on various domains of our societies; and, related to this, the recon-
textualization of KBE into other parts of the world and other societies (“transition”).
2 Integrating approaches from cognitive sciences into CDA; this requires complex,
epistemological considerations and the development of new tools. Moreover, we
question in which ways such approaches could be dependent on western cultural
contexts.
3 Analysing, understanding, and explaining new phenomena in our political systems
which are a result of the impact of (new) media and of new transnational, global, and
local developments and related institutions.
4 Analysing, understanding, and explaining the impact of new media and new
genres, which entails developing new multimodal theoretical and methodological
approaches.
5 Analysing, understanding, and explaining the relationship between complex histori-
cal processes, hegemonic narratives, and CDA approaches. Identity politics on all
levels always entails the integration of past experiences, present events, and future
visions in many domains of our lives. The concepts of intertextuality and recontex-
tualization are inherently tied to interdisciplinary discourse historical approaches.
6 Avoiding “cherry picking” (choosing the examples which best fit the assumptions)
by integrating quantitative and qualitative methods and by providing retroductable,
self-reflective presentations of past or current research processes.

The knowledge-based economy and its impact on discourse

Jessop and colleagues (2008) explored the many aspects and dimensions of the impact
of KBE on higher education from sociological, educational, and CDA perspectives. KBE
has penetrated most domains of our western societies and is also colonizing other parts
of the world. Indeed, globalization and competitiveness rhetoric (Muntigl et al. 2000) seem
to be ubiquitous, and the quantification and economization of knowledge serves to rank
social institutions and individuals. Through detailed case studies, the recontextualization

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of more global policy strategies can be illustrated on the micro level. This, of course,
requires interdisciplinary research as well as new theories on transition and social change
(see Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2009a).
The dialectical relational approach (DRA) of Norman Fairclough focuses upon social
conflict in the Marxian tradition and tries to detect its linguistic manifestations in dis-
courses, in particular elements of dominance, difference, and resistance. According to
DRA, every social practice has a semiotic element. Productive activity, the means of
production, social relations, social identities, cultural values, consciousness, and semiosis
are dialectically related elements of social practice (Fairclough 1992, Fairclough 2000).
Fairclough understands CDA as the analysis of the dialectical relationships between
semiosis (including language) and other elements of social practices. These semiotic
aspects of social practice are responsible for the constitution of genres and styles. The
semiotic aspect of social order is called the order of discourse. His approach to CDA
oscillates between a focus on structure and a focus on action. Both strategies ought to be
problem based: CDA, by all means, should pursue emancipatory objectives, and should
be focused upon the problems (or “social wrongs”) confronting what can be referred to as
the “losers” within particular forms of social life. DRA draws upon systemic functional
linguistics (Halliday 1985), which analyses language as shaped (even in its grammar) by
the social functions it has come to serve.
Phil Graham elaborates the problems of new capitalism while integrating a strong
historical perspective (Graham 2002). The historical investigation of hortatory genres,
for example, compares the emergence of, and struggles between, the Church, “divine
right” royalties, and secular forces over legitimate uses of the sermon form in western
Europe between the tenth and fourteenth centuries with contemporary struggles over
genres that are used to motivate people on a mass scale. The main focus of Graham’s
research is to explore and explain the relationships between new communication tech-
nologies and genres, institutions, and social change at a macro level. The perspective is
primarily historical, political-economic, relational, and dynamic. Genres are produced,
textured, and transformed within institutional contexts over long periods of time. In
turn, institutions invest years – in some cases, millennia – in developing, maintaining,
and adapting generic forms to changing social conditions in order to maintain or to gain
power. Graham believes that, at certain times in history, certain genres become very
effective for motivating or manipulating large sections of society.

Discourse and cognition

The seminal book by Teun van Dijk and Walter Kintsch Strategies of Discourse Comprehension
(van Dijk and Kintsch 1983) triggered research in discourse and cognition from interdisci-
plinary and critical perspectives. In this book, the relevance of discourse to the study of
language processing is well argued and exemplified. Their cognitive model of discourse
comprehension in individuals gradually developed into cognitive models for explain-
ing the construction of meaning at a societal level. Currently, interest in cognition has
grown, and many scholars are attempting a combination of new cognitive theories (on
conceptual metaphors, for example) with CDA (Charteris-Black 2006, Musolff 2004).

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Moreover, van Dijk has recently paid special attention to the discursive reproduc-
tion of racism in Spain and Latin America (van Dijk 2005). The study by Richardson
(2004) on the (Mis)representation of Islam and subsequent research on the representation
of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in the British press have elaborated research on
racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia in intricate ways, by combining quantitative and
qualitative methods, and by focusing on argumentation as well (see Baker et al. 2008,
Delanty et al. 2011, Richardson and Wodak 2009a, Richardson and Wodak 2009b).
Furthermore, van Dijk argues that, although (critical and other) discourse studies
have paid extensive attention in the last few decades to the structures of text and talk,
they have only paid lip service to the necessity of developing the relations between text
and context (but see Panagl and Wodak 2004). He maintains that no such direct influ-
ence exists, because social structures and discourse structures cannot be related directly,
and need the mediation of an interface. He shows that this interface must be cognitive,
in the sense that it is not objective social situations, but the subjective definitions and
perceptions of the relevant properties of communicative situations, that influence text
and talk. These definitions are then made explicit in terms of mental models (see van Dijk
2008a, van Dijk 2008b, van Dijk 2009). In sum, van Dijk emphasizes that language use
and discourse always presuppose intervening mental models, goals, and general social
representations (knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, norms, and values) of the language
users.

Multimodality
The social semiotic theory put forward by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) provides a useful
framework for considering the communicative potential of visual devices in the media.
Social semiotics highlights the multisemiotic and potentially ideological character of
most texts in contemporary society, and explores ways of analysing the intersection of
language, images, design, colour, spatial arrangement, and so forth. Van Leeuwen (van
Leeuwen 2005, van Leeuwen 2010) also focuses on the semiotics of handwriting and
typography, the question of colour, and the constraints imposed by certain software,
PowerPoint templates, and so on. He also claims that the role and status of semiotic
practices in society are currently undergoing change as a result of the fact that it is
increasingly global corporations and semiotic technologies, rather than national institu-
tions, which regulate semiotic production and consumption (van Leeuwen 2009; see also
Chapter 30).
In connection to multimodality and recent developments of CDA, van Leeuwen
(2006: 292) rightly argues that:

[c]ritical discourse analysis has also moved beyond language, taking on board that
discourses are often multimodally realized, not only through text and talk, but also
through other modes of communication such as images . . . Overall, then, critical
discourse analysis has moved towards more explicit dialogue between social theory
and practice, richer contextualization, greater interdisciplinarity and greater atten-
tion to the multimodality of discourse.

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Discourse and politics

The study of political discourse after the Second World War was triggered in part by
the investigation of national socialist language (Klemperer 1975/1947); it was essential
to understand and explain the roles and importance of language and communication in
totalitarian regimes and their propaganda (for a summary, see Wodak 2009a).
The systematic, ethnographic, and discourse analytical study of political institu-
tions and of everyday life and decision making in organizations has recently become a
major focus of CDA. Krzyżanowski and Oberhuber (2007) have analysed the European
Convention in many details. The focus on discursive dimensions of transnational political
organizations also led to the elaboration of discursively constructed visions/conceptions
of social and political order in Europe/the EU (see also Krzyzanowski 2010). Wodak
(2011a) focuses on the everyday lives of Members of the European Parliament and other
politicians because the frequently observed depoliticization of voters seems linked to the
so-called “democracy deficit” and the huge dissatisfaction about the strong ritualization
of politics and the tiny snapshots provided by media which condense complex political
processes into iconic images; thus, I claim that very little differentiated knowledge about
“doing politics on the backstage” is indeed accessible to laypeople. Such studies allow
insight into “politics as a profession” and into the complexity of political decision making
on the backstage of politics.
Much CDA research in this domain also centres on right-wing populist rhetoric,
as this rhetoric is becoming influential in many European countries (see the label
“Haiderization”;8 Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2009a, Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2009b,
Wodak and Richardson 2013, Wodak forthcoming, Wodak and Pelinka 2002). This
research was triggered by the rising dominance and hegemony of right-wing populism
and its apt use of indirect strategies to address multiple audiences (calculated ambivalence)
(Engel and Wodak 2009). This kind of research integrates new methodologies for CDA:
the use of ethnography, focus groups, and narrative interviews combined with more
traditional data sets such as newspapers and political speeches.
Research in this area necessarily considers a historical dimension: the study for which
the DHA was developed attempted to trace in detail the constitution of an anti-Semitic
stereotyped image, or Feindbild, as it emerged in public discourse in the 1986 Austrian
presidential campaign of Kurt Waldheim (Gruber 1991, Mitten 1992, Wodak et al.
1990). In order to be able to study the discourse about the “Waldheim affair”, context
was unravelled into various dimensions; this study led to the elaboration of the four-
level-model of context (Wodak 2001). The DHA has been further elaborated in a number
of more recent studies: in studies on the discourse about nation and national identity
in Austria and Hungary (Kovàcs and Wodak 2003, Wodak et al. 2009) and in the
European Union (Muntigl et al. 2000, Wodak and van Dijk 2000). The 2009 study was
concerned with the analysis of the relationships between the discursive construction
of national sameness and the discursive construction of difference leading to political
and social exclusion of specific out-groups. The findings suggest that discourses about
nations and national identities rely on at least four types of discursive macro-strategies:

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constructive strategies (aiming at the construction of national identities), preservative or

justificatory strategies (aiming at the conservation and reproduction of national identi-
ties or narratives of identity), transformative strategies (aiming at the change of national
identities), and destructive strategies (aiming at the dismantling of national identities). The
DHA also applies concepts from argumentation theory (notably the pragma dialectics
of the Amsterdam school: Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, Van Eemeren 2010)
in its analysis.
Furthermore, current research focuses on commemorative events which manifest hege-
monic ways of dealing with traumatic pasts in various societies.9 In most of these studies,
media, school books, speeches at national days, and the like are analysed to illustrate
the myths which are constructed to provide new, “sanitized” narratives which cover up
ruptures, war crimes, and conflicts which have occurred in the past. For example, Heer
et al. (2008) describe in detail the scandals which occurred when the two exhibitions
on war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War were opened to
Austrian and German viewers, in 1995 and 2001. A carefully constructed and protected
Austrian and German postwar myth was challenged and destroyed by these exhibitions:
the myth that the Wehrmacht soldiers had been innocent, whereas the SS and other units
had been the perpetrators.

Future directions
The goal of this chapter is to provide a – necessarily incomplete – summary of CDA
approaches. One of CDA’s salient characteristics is its diversity. Nevertheless, a few gen-
eralizable tendencies and patterns can be detected:

• CDA works eclectically in many aspects.

• Interdisciplinarity is necessary to grasp complex social phenomena.
• There is no accepted canon of data collection, but many CDA approaches work with
existing data, that is texts not specifically produced for the respective research
projects.
• Operationalization and analysis are problem orientated and imply linguistic expertise.

In the tradition of critical theory, CDA investigates the discursive aspects of societal
disparities and inequalities. CDA frequently detects the linguistic means used by the
privileged to stabilize or even to intensify inequities in society. CDA research entails
systematic analysis, self-reflection at every point of one’s research, and distance from the
data which are being investigated. Description and interpretation should be kept apart,
thus enabling transparency and retroduction.2 Of course, not all of these recommendations
are consistently followed, and they cannot always be implemented in detail because of
time pressures and similar structural constraints; therefore, some critics will continue
to state that CDA is torn between social research and political argumentation. Such
criticism obviously keeps a field alive because it encourages new questions and related
responses, and thus innovation.

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Notes
1 This chapter draws on the following work: Wodak and Meyer (2009a), Chilton et al. (2010), and
Wodak (2008). For more details about, and the comparison of, CDA approaches, I refer readers to
the following work: Wodak and Meyer (2009a), Wodak and Meyer (2009b), Wodak (2011a), Wodak
(2011b), and Fairclough et al. (2011).
2 “Retroductable”, a translation of the German term nachvollziehbar, means that in the humanities and
social sciences (and in qualitative research in general) we cannot test hypotheses or prove them as in
the quantitative paradigm. In contrast, though, qualitative analyses must be transparent, selections
and interpretations justified, and value positions made explicit. In this way, the procedures and mean-
ings of qualitative analyses remain intersubjective and can, of course, also be challenged.
3 See Language and Power by Fairclough (1989), Language, Power and Ideology by Wodak (1989), and
Prejudice in Discourse by van Dijk (1985).
4 See Wodak and Meyer 2001, Wodak and Meyer 2009a, Wodak and Meyer 2009b, Titscher et al. 2000,
Reisigl and Wodak 2001, Reisigl and Wodak 2009, Fairclough and Wodak 1997, Weiss and Wodak
2003a [2007a], Weiss and Wodak 2003b [2007b], Anthonissen 2001.
5 The meanings of the word “critical” in English also include non-technical meanings, such as “censori-
ous” and in some contexts “denunciatory”. However, the predominant sense in English and European
languages is cognitive. That is, to engage in “critique” is to engage in a rational conceptual activity.
It is useful to distinguish this sense from everyday uses of the verb “criticize”, which denotes an
interactive social activity that somehow incorporates a normative ethical or quasi-ethical standpoint.
The verb “criticize” in this sense is a speech act verb (Chilton et al. 2010).
6 Here, Holzscheiter refers to the concept of “language game” as introduced by the philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein in his seminal book Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations)
(Wittgenstein 1967). Language games define rule-governed, context-dependent units of social and
communicative behaviour into which we are all socialized in our respective cultures. This concept
captures verbal and non-verbal meaning-making, and thus all forms of semiosis.
7 Unfortunately, it is necessary to neglect much research here which could certainly be also categorized
as critical, such as feminist CDA (Lazar 2007 [2005]).
8 This is a new term coined after the late well-known Austrian politician Dr Jörg Haider of the radical
right-wing political Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), who died in a car crash. His kind of populist
rhetoric has been labelled Haiderization as many other right-wing populist politicians are using simi-
lar strategies across Europe.
9 See Anthonissen and Blommaert 2006, Blommaert 2005, Ensink and Sauer 2003, Heer and col-
leagues 2008, Martin and Wodak 2003, Reisigl 2007, Verdoolaege 2008.

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Further reading
van Dijk, T.A. (2008) Discourse and Context: A Socio-cognitive Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
This book presents the most elaborate discussion on the many dimensions of context as well as on the
manifold approaches to studying context – an issue which is salient for anybody investigating language
in use.
Krzyżanowski, M. and Wodak, R. (2011) “Political Strategies and Language Policies: The European Union
Lisbon Strategy and Its Implications for the EU’s Language and Multilingualism Policy,” Language Policy
10: 115–36.
This is a useful paper about the implications of multilingualism, language teaching, and the new policies
of competitiveness of the European Union, from a critical discourse analytical perspective. It is useful for
anybody investigating issues of language learning and teaching in multilingual environments.

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Renkema, J. (ed.) (2009) Discourse, of Course, Amsterdam: Benjamins.

This book contains brief overviews of the important subfield of discourse studies, with practical exam-
ples and solutions to questions. Thus, it is an excellent companion for students struggling with discourse
studies.
Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. and Liebhart, K. (2009) The Discursive Construction of National Identity,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
This book is a pioneering study into the research and analysis of many genres which serve to construct or
challenge discourses on national/transnational/regional or local identities. The case study which relates
to central European language identities can, of course, be replicated in other contexts.
Wodak, R. (2011) The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
This book presents an overview of the important field of language and politics as well as an in-depth
case study of European institutions, from a critical discourse studies perspective. Thus, the analysis of
speeches and other frontstage genres can be contrasted with the ethnography of backstage interactions.

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