Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis

There are quite a few methods of research which can be applied when analyzing media discourse. Each scholar chooses a method which will most accurately help him to describe or understand the phenomena he/she is interested in. We will look into more detail at one of the most popular approaches in modern discourse studies – the critical discourse analysis. This lecture is loosely based on an article by Teun van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis”, 2001.

Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality (van Dijk 2001, p.352). This approach involves a number of methods from different disciplines, such as linguistics (it looks at language), sociology (it looks at home language is used in social interaction), political science (it looks at how language is used as a tool in political influence), cultural studies (it looks at how language is used in order to convey and reinforce culturally significant information). In the centre of all these approaches stands discourse, or language used in its social context. There are a number of definitions of discourse, and everyone can use the definition they feel is most relevant to their research.

Fairclough and Wodak (1997, p. 271-80) summarize the main principles of CDA as follows:

1. CDA addresses social problems

2. Power relations are discursive

3. Discourse constitutes society and culture

4. Discourse does ideological work

5. Discourse is historical

6. The link between text and society is mediated

7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory

8. Discourse is a form of social action.

CDA is not so much a direction, school, or specialization next to the many other "approaches" in discourse studies. Rather, it aims to offer a different "mode" or "perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the whole field. We may find a more or less critical perspective in such diverse areas as pragmatics, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, rhetoric, stylistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, or media analysis, among others (van Dijk 2001, p.352). This interdisciplinary status of CDA is both an advantage, as here we can use methods from various disciplines, and a hindrance to a critical discourse analyst, as CDA does not have its unitary theoretical framework. But the typical vocabulary of many scholars in CDA will feature such notions as "power," "dominance," "hegemony," "ideology," "class," "gender," "race," "discrimination," "interests," "reproduction," "institutions," "social structure," and "social order," besides the more familiar discourse analytical notions (van Dijk 2001, p.353).

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