Common Features of Critical Discourse Analysis

CDA is ‘critical’ in nature as it does not merely analyze and interpret a text or discourse
descriptively; rather it looks at it with a critical prism or lens in describing and explaining it.
Therefore, it is practiced with critical reading which is different from other forms of readings as
Fairclough and Wodak (1997) argue that CDA requires critical reading where Fairclough’s (1992)
‘Critical Language Awareness’ (CLA) helps make a reader/researcher critical in his/her approach
of discourse production and consumption. This very critical awareness of the ways in which
research interacts with practice, or is geared towards it or integrated with it, constitutes another
important element of researchers’ reflexivity (Wodak, 2008: 198) which is the researcher’s
recursive and critical check and balance of his/her research processes and procedures.

CDA is not a unitary approach of theories and methods. It is diverse and varied
theoretically and methodologically. Even within various CDA strands, each approach is more or
less distinctive from the other in one way or the other. Van Dijk (1993) expresses the diversity of
CDA thus:

There are many ways to do ‘critical’ discourse analysis. Paradigms, philosophies,

theories and methods may differ in these many approaches, and these may
sometimes also be related to ‘national’ differences, e.g. between ‘French’,
‘German’, ‘British’, or ‘American’ directions of research (van Dijk, 1993: 279).

CDA is inherently eclectic in the sense that it requires to explore and select the relevant
analytical categories, depending upon several factors such as the nature of social problem(s) and
social groups under investigation, research questions, theoretical backgrounds, the affordances of
the communicative medium, genre specific features of the data, socio-political features of the
context and logistic allowances of the research (KhosraviNik, 2010: 55-56).

CDA is problem or issue-based and it uncovers the socio-political and cultural problems.
It is normative and more or less politically-positioned as critical discourse analysts tend to be
politically active by addressing the socio-political issues, by favoring the oppressed and unvoiced
marginal and powerless individuals or groups as well as by attempting to find solutions and
suggestions for the investigated problems or issues. This sociopolitical stance of the analysts
should also make them “social and political scientists, as well as social critics and activists” who,
“unlike politicians and activists … go beyond the immediate, serious or pressing issues of the day”
(van Dijk, 1993: 253). Weiss and Wodak (2003: 12) argue that “gender issues, issues of racism,
media discourses, political discourses, organizational discourses or dimensions of identity research
have become very prominent” in the study under CDA.

History

The history of CDA can be classically traced back to Greek ‘rhetoric’ on the one hand and
disciplinarily with ‘Critical Linguistics’ developed in the 1970s at the University of East Anglia
(Fowler et al. 1979; Hodge and Kress 1993) on the other, but more specifically it emerged as a
research method with the publication of Fairclough’s (1989) work which is considered as a
landmark or masterpiece in CDA. Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 6) argue that “CDA belongs
to a tradition of language critique which can be traced back to classical antiquity and which is
present in many modern academic disciplines.” In van Dijk’s (2001: 352) opinion, ‘some of the
tenets of CDA can already be found in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School before the second
world war,’ but ‘its current focus on language and discourse was initiated with the “critical
linguistics” that emerged (mostly in the UK and Australia) at the end of the 1970s (Fowler et al.
1979; see also Mey 1985).’ On the other hand, CDA’s counterparts in “critical” developments,
according to him, can be found in sociolinguistics, psychology, and the social sciences of the early
1970s.

Its history is so rich that several other CDA variants (e.g. van Dijk’s sociocognitive
approach, Wodak’s discourse-historical approach and Fairclough’s socio-relational approach) are
successfully being practiced in various fields such as linguistics, anthropology, sociology, media,
politics, journalism, etc. In van Dijk’s (1993: 251) view, the historical backgrounds and
developments of critical perspectives in the study of language, discourse and communication,
depending on the discipline, orientation, school or paradigm involved, are traced back to Aristotle,
to the philosophers of the Enlightenment, to Marx, and more recently to the members of the
Frankfurt School (Adorno, Benjamin and others, especially Habermas) and its direct or indirect
heirs in and after the 1960s whereas another line of influence and development with more or less
(neo-)marxist tendency is going back to Gramsci and his followers in France and the UK, including
most remarkably Stuart Hall and the other members of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies. Similarly, first in France, then in the UK and the USA, the influence of the work of
Althusser (1971), Foucault (e.g. 1980) and Pecheux (1982) among others can be traced.

The Dialectical-relational Approach to CDA: Norman Fairclough’s CDA

Detail of this framework (10 questions) is as under, and the following questions/tools
can be consistently asked of a text under study by the analyst at this stage of description.
Lexicalisation: this tool is related to the choice of lexemes and the way
various lexemes are manipulated by the speaker/writer for multiple
functions and ends.
2. Patterns of transitivity: the tool focuses on the identification and analysis
of various forms of verbs and their ideological use for plural functions
and purposes.
3. Activization and passivization: the choice of the speaker or writer‘s
active or passive form is questioned by the analyst for exploring the
speaker or writer‘s intension and motif.
4. The use of nominalization: the analyst identifies and questions the choice
of the speaker or writer‘s nominalisations. The analysis of various
nominalizations used contributes to meeting the intended or unintended
goals.
5. Choices of mode: Various modes of sentence are identified and labeled
while applying this tool/question.
6. Choices of modality or polarity: What forms of modality have been used
in the text by the writer are labeled, and then critically analysed in the
last stage of explanation.
7. The information focus: this tool is applied for identifying and analyzing
various textual techniques and strategies used to foreground or
background a piece of information.
8. The use of cohesive devices: the analyst identifies and labels different
cohesive devices used in the text for producing cohesion and coherence.
9. Interactional conventions: the analyst looks for interactional conventions
and explores the equal or unequal engagement of the participants in a
conversation or dialogue.
10. Thematic structure of the text: each discourse carries and conveys a
certain theme, and the entire structure of a discourse with its integral
elements contributes to the formation of overall theme of the discourse.
Therefore, the structure of discourse under study is thematically studied.
Interpretation: This stage belongs to the explanation of the participants’ processes of text
production and interpretation (or broadly speaking, of discourse production and interpretation).
Fairclough (1989) uses the term ‘interpretation’ for the name of a stage in his
framework/procedure, and for the text interpretation by discourse participants/analyst. The
relationship between discourse and social structures or society is not direct, but an indirect and
mediated one. ‘Members’ resources’ (MR), which he also calls ‘interpretative procedures,’ and
which are often called as background knowledge,play a mediatory role in connecting discourse
(or discursive structures) and society (or social structures). In Fairclough’s (1989: 141) words,
‘from the point of view of the interpreter of a text, formal features of the text are ‘cues’ which
activate elements of interpreters’ MR, and that interpretations are generated through the
dialectical interplay of cues and MR.Similarly, discourse-producer and discourse-interpreter
highly rely on their MR in discourse production and interpretation respectively, and particular
element/aspect of their MR is manipulatively activated in producing or interpreting the
particular part/domain of a text or context (which are parts of discourse) by them. The
participants of discourse production and interpretation may differ in terms of their MRs, in
terms of the degree/range of their MRs, and they may use these differently. Moreover, they
may draw upon different interpretative procedures at the four levels of text interpretation
wherein they may ascribe different values to particular textual features. Similarly, they may
arrive at different interpretations of the context (situational or intertextual).Fairclough (1989)
has emphasized on, and explained thoroughly the elements of the participants’ MR as
interpretative procedures in elaborating how discourse is interpreted by the participants or
analysts. Therefore, discourse interpretation processes (processes of text and context
interpretation), as a part of the interpretation stage of CDA procedure, are explained in detail
as it is the second main part of CDA to be applied on the novels under study.
The diagram consists of two parts/sections: the upper part/section deals with the levels of
context interpretation, and the lower part/section belongs to the levels of text interpretation.
On the left-hand side of the diagram, elements of the interpretative procedures (MR), such as
social orders; interactional history; phonology, grammar, vocabulary; semantics, pragmatics;
cohesion, pragmatics; and schemata, are given. On the right-hand side of the diagram, domains
of interpretation, such as situational context, intertextual context, surface of utterance, meaning
of utterance, local coherence, text structure and point, are given. In the central column of the
diagram, boxes, which are called the range of ‘Resources’ drawn upon for each of the domains
of interpretation, are given, and which are connected to arrows indicating the ‘contents’ of
each box as a combination of a variety of ‘inputs’ being fed into these boxes. These boxes are
vertically linked with other boxes through double-headed arrows which indicate that ‘each
domain of interpretation draws upon interpretations in the other domains as part of its
‘resources’’ (1989: 145). Similarly, these boxes have been horizontally linked with the
domains of interpretation through double-headed arrows which means that ‘at a given point in
the interpretation of a text, previous interpretations constitute one part of the ‘resources’ for
interpretation,’ and this also ‘applies for each of the domains of interpretation’ (1989: 145).
According to Fairclough (1989), a participant/analyst must possess particular element/aspect
of interpretative procedures (MR) to be activated for interpreting the particular domain of
interpretation at the level of text or context interpretation. For instance, for interpreting how
words have been meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences at the level of text
interpretation, a participant/analyst needs to possess and dwell upon the knowledge of
phonology, vocabulary and grammar as an element of his/herinterpretative procedures (MR),
or his/her knowledge of the language, to interpret the domain of surface utterance. Similarly,
the participant/analyst needs to rely on semantics (semantic aspects) and pragmatics (pragmatic
conventions), as an element of his/her interpretative procedures (MR), in order to arrive at the
interpretation of utterance meaning. To interpret the domain of local coherence at the textual
level, both cohesion and pragmatics as an element of interpretative procedures (MR) can be
dwelt upon. In the absence of formal cohesive cues/features, coherence relations can be
inferred through particular aspects of pragmatics. However, a distinction between ‘local
coherence’ and ‘global coherence’ is vitally significant at this point. Local coherence refers to
the meaning connections/harmony between utterances within a particular part of the text,
whereas global coherence means meaning harmony within the parts of the whole structure of
a text. Global coherence, however, deals with the whole text structure which is the part of the
last level of text interpretation. Therefore, it is necessary for the participant/analyst to dwell
upon ‘schemata’ (mental representation of the typification/typology of the predictable
elements/parts of an activity or a text, e.g. greeting, beginning of the topic, variation in change
of topic, end of conversation and farewell as predictable elements/parts of a telephonic
conversation) to arrive at interpreting the ‘text structure’ and the ‘point.’ Fairclough (1989:
158) defines a schema as ‘a representation of a particular type of activity … in terms of
predictable elements in a predictable sequence,’ or ‘a mental representation of the ‘larger-scale
textual structures’.’

Besides these four levels of text interpretation, two levels of context (situational and intertextual)

interpretation are given in the upper part/section of the diagram. Text interpretation without

context interpretation is meaningfully and purposefully incomplete because text and context (be it

situational or intertextual/historical context) are the integral parts of discourse, and Fairclough

(1989: 144) also assumes that ‘interpretation is interpretation of context as well as text.’The

interpretation of situational context is arrived at by the participants partly on the account/basis of

external cues – such as features of the immediate concrete (physical) situation, what has previously

been uttered/said, or properties (identities and relationships) of the participants – but also partly

on the account/basis of the social orders (both societal and institutional social orders as an element

of their interpretative procedures (MR)) which interpret these cues, and which permit them to link

the analyzable actual situation with other particular situation types. Social order is the mental

representation of the classification of the whole society in terms of the institutions, and of the

institutions in terms of the situation types. In other words, it is a kind of typology of the social

situation types. Nevertheless, situation type and discourse type are interdependent and interrelated
because a participant, having observed a particular situation, can decide which activity or discourse

type can be relied on. This interdependent relationship is because of the fact that order of discourse

is one dimension of social order (societal or institutional). As the other diagram indicates, in the

first stage the societal social order determines the institutional setting (‘a societal social order

divides total social space into so many institutional spaces, and any actual situation must first be

placed institutionally in terms of this division’), and in the second stage the institutional social

order determines the situational setting (‘Each institutional social order divides institutional space

into so many situation types, and each actual situation is typified in terms of (or at least in relation

to) a category from this typology’) which in turn determines the situation type (1989: 150). Here,

four questions relating to the prime dimensions of a particular situation can be asked: a) what’s

going on (type of activity, topic and purpose)?; b) who’s involved?; c) in what relations?; and d)

what’s the role of language in what’s going on? These four questions, as the other diagram shows,

are horizontally linked to the corresponding four dimensions of a discourse type. In other words,

first question determines the contents of the activity/discourse. Second question determines

subjects (the subject positions which are multi-dimensional, and which may be specified on the

basis of the activity type (discourse), social (or institutional) identities and situation (different

situations may have different speaking and listening subject positions)). Third and fourth questions

determine relations (in what social or power relations, etc. the subject positions are involved in)

and connections (connections between text and situational context, and connections between parts

of a text) respectively. Texts are always dialogic in particular and interdiscursive/intertextual in

general. Therefore, a series of other discourses and other texts can be relied upon in arriving at the

interpretation of the interdiscursive and intertextual contexts respectively. It is pertinent here to

link presuppositions with the intertextual context as presuppositions are not the features of text,
but can be cued in text by a considerable range of textual features (e.g. the definite article, wh-

questions, that-clauses after certain verbs and adjectives (e.g. realize, regret, point out, angry,

aware, etc.)) which refer to intertext or intertextual context. Moreover, the use of presuppositions

may be sincere or manipulative, but it may function ideologically in the service of power. Another

thing to discuss here is speech acts, as a central aspect of pragmatics.

A speech act is the participant’s intentional or contextual meaning of an utterance, or what the
producer wants to do or is doing by virtue of a fragment of a text as a speech act, e.g. is he/she
giving an order, making a statement, asking a question, making a promise, warning,
threatening, etc. The expression of speech acts can be relatively direct (e.g. a direct command
in ‘shut the door!’) or indirect (e.g. indirect command in ‘did you shut the door?’). Speech acts
may be used ideologically in instances of asymmetrical relations of power.

The processes of discourse production are parallel to those of discourse interpretation. The
only difference is that the interpretative procedures used for text interpretation, discussed
above, are drawn upon for producing, rather than interpreting, structures of utterances,
meanings of utterances, locally coherent groups of utterances and globally coherent texts.

Explanation: This stage is associated with the dialectic of social structures (here relations of
power and dominance) and social practices (including discourse as a social practice), but this
dialectical relationship, as mentioned earlier, is mediated by the participants’ or the analyst’s
MR. It is the reproduction of MR which connects the stage of interpretation with that of
explanation as in the former case, aspects of MR as interpretative procedures are reproduced
when they are drawn upon in producing and interpreting texts (discourses), while in the latter
case, the social constitution and change of MR, including their reproduction in discourse
practice, are involved.

MR are both cognitive and social in the sense that MR are cognitively involved and reproduced
in the processes of discourse production and interpretation in the stage of interpretation, and
that the social constitution and change of MR (including their reproduction in discourse) are
involved in dialectically connecting social practices (discourses) with the social structures
(relations of power and dominance) at the situational, institutional and societal levels of social
organization in the stage of explanation respectively. According to Fairclough (1989: 163), the
main objective of this stage is ‘to portray [and see] a discourse as part of a social process [of
social struggle], as a social practice [of social struggle], showing how it is determined by social
structures, and what reproductive effects discourses can cumulatively have on those structures,
sustaining them or changing them.’ He also argues that ‘explanation is a matter of seeing a
discourse as part of processes of social struggle, within a matrix of relations of power’ (1989:
163). There are social determinations (at the structural level) and social effects of discourse (as
a social practice). These social determinants and effects of discourse as well as the dialectical
and somewhat interdependent relationships between them, which are mediated by MR, are the
concern of this stage to be explored and critically examined at the situational, institutional and
societal levels of social organization. Moreover, this stage has two dimensions: it is explored
whether the emphasis is upon process or structure – upon processes of social struggle or upon
relations of power, i.e. upon the social determinants or social effects of discourse. Social
structures (i.e. social determinants) determine (with varying degrees) and shape discourses
which (as social effects), then, affect, shape, sustain, or possibly transform and change these
structures, but these dialectical relationships are not straightforward and direct. Social
structures shape MR, which in turn shape discourses. Similarly, discourses shape, sustain or
change MR, which in turn shape, sustain and change or transform social structures.
Explanation is that stage wherein the analyst explores and critically analyzes the role and
position of a particular discourse in power relations and social struggles, and whether the
discourse contributes to, sustains or transforms power relations and social struggles.
Explanation stage deals with the explication of the relations of power and dominance, and the
ideologies which are built into the common-sense assumptions of MR, and which make an
ordinary discourse (such as family discourse) a site of social struggle. A discourse can be
viewed as an effect of power relations and as a contribution to social struggle.

Fairclough (1989) summarizes this stage by arguing emphatically that the analyst can ask the
following three questions of a particular discourse under study:
 1. Social determinants: what power relations [social structures] at situational,
institutional and societal levels help shape this discourse?
2. Ideologies: what elements of MR which are drawn upon have an ideological
character?
3. Effects: how is this discourse positioned in relation to struggles at the situational,
institutional and societal levels? Are these struggles overt or covert? Is the
discourse normative with respect to MR or creative? Does it contribute to sustaining
existing power relations, or transforming them? (1989: 166).

At the situational level, a certain discourse is viewed and evaluated in a particular and actual
situation where it occurs. Moreover, the producers (or interpreters) are in normative relation to
their MR in unproblematic (or familiar) situations, whereas they are in creative relation to their
MR in problematic (or unfamiliar) situations. They can easily handle the unproblematic
situation through their MR as they are familiar with the norms of the discourse type and the
type of situation, while they draw upon their MR, which creatively work with other resources,
to cope with the problematic situation. At the institutional and societal levels of discourse
analysis, the social aspects of discourse, involving sociological/social analysis, are explored
and critically examined. In other words, social determinants and effects of discourse are seen
and evaluated at these levels. Fairclough (1989) suggests that there are different ways of
viewing the same discourse depending upon the emphasis given to it as situational, institutional
or societal practice. Not necessarily different features of a discourse are focused upon at these
different levels; rather the same features of a discourse are looked at from different perspectives
at these levels of social organization. Fairclough (1989: 166) argues that explanation stage
‘involves a specific perspective on MR: they are seen specifically as ideologies. That is, the
assumptions about culture, social relationships, and social identities which are incorporated in
MR, are seen as determined by particular power relations in the society or institution, and in
terms of their contribution to struggles to sustain or change these power relations – they are
seen ideologically.