Critical Discourse Analysis

Presented by: Asal Ismaeel Mehdi

Course Tutor: Prof. Dr. Ahmed Q. Abed
 What is CDA? Define CDA.

• CDA: is simply the study of discourse in its social context, it attempts to combine a social
theory of discourse with theories and methods of discourse analysis.

• That is, a social theory of discourse means that language use is a social practice that can both
reflect and constitute social meanings.
 The Beginning of CDA
• The beginning of Critical Discourse Analysis:

- In the 1970s a group of linguists in West Anglea University who developed the approach to
discourse analysis called Critical Linguistics (CL) which was further developed into Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) in 1989 and the early 1990s by the intensive productions of a number
of discourse analysts like: Van Dijk, Fairclough, Kress, and Wodak.

Critical Discourse
Critical Linguistics (CL) Developed to be
Analysis (CDA)
 The Relationship between CL & CDA
• According to KhosraviNik, CDA has benefited from CL and its techniques in analysing
discourses
• The two terms CDA and CL have been used interchangeably in many studies.
• Machin & Mayr justified that by saying that both CDA and CL draw on two principal
thinkers:

The American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf

&
The British linguist Michael Halliday
 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its two strong and weak versions, that are:
‘linguistic determinism’ and ‘linguistic relativity’ proposes that:
“language determines thinking”… and “the native language influences one’s thought and
perception”.
• It is similar to Fowler’s statement: “differences of linguistic structure cause the speakers of
different languages in some sense to “see the world” in different ways”.
• So, the need for CL and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics appeared since Halliday’s
functional model of language examines the connection between:
Linguistic Structure and Social Values.
 Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual Functions
• Halliday’s main premises are that linguistic forms are systematically affected by the social
circumstances, language communicates ideas, processes and entities by serving:
three major functions:

1. The ideational function of language serves to represent events, processes and participants.

2. The interpersonal function serves to express the speaker’s attitudes towards the events and the
participants represented.

3. The textual function of language serves to present these ideas and events in coherent texts, or in
other words, it is the process of creating a text.
• It is through the interrelation of these functions that:
ideologies, political views and relations of power are revealed in New Discourse
(ND) and drawing on Halliday’s functional model of language,

Critical Discourse Analysis studies language as:

"a form of social practice determined by social structure"
 CDA approach

Linguistically Socially
Oriented Oriented

‘Discursive’ ‘Socio-cultural’
practices practices
 Socially- Oriented
‘Discursive practices’ ‘Socio-cultural practices’

• Include action and interaction, social • refer to the wider range of socio-cultural,
relations, the material world, material political, ideological and institutional
practices… the rituals, beliefs, processes and structures in historical
attitudes, values, desires of people and contexts.
institutions.
• Also include "power and discourse,
forms of consciousness, time and
space, objects, instruments, subjects
and their social relations and activities
as well as abstract social structures,
concrete social events.
 Linguistically- Oriented
• Non-critical approaches are linguistically-oriented or simply descriptive.

• They merely describe the discursive events.

• Critical approaches: describe the discursive events and, also reflect ideologies and relations of
power through discourse.

• To Van Dijk, CDA is not a mere analysis or description of the formal features of discourse in a
language but, rather, it investigates “the role of language in social contexts and the relations of
power and hegemony in society”.

• And concepts such as ‘discourse’, ‘ideology’ and ‘power’ are of major interest to CD analysts
 Levels of CDA

1. The description level is interested in the formal properties of texts.

2. The interpretation level studies the interaction between the text and the discursive practices
through "processes of text production, distribution and consumption“.
3. The explanation level is concerned with the relation between discourse and its social context.
Ideologies and relations of power in news discourse are mainly investigated in the
interpretation stage of CDA.

• Van Dijk said that power relations and ideologies have a pervasive impact or role upon discourse
interpretation and production, for “they are embedded in the interpretative procedures – the
social orders – which underlie the highest level of interpretative decisions on which others are
dependent – ‘what situation am I in?’”.
 Principles of CDA
• CDA is "an explicitly political approach to discourse“
• CD analysts like Fairclough & Fairclough, adopt Van Dijk’s interchangeable use of CDA
with political discourse analysis.
• A CD analyst is a discourse analyst with "a clear stance, and an established worldview“

• Van Dijk contrasts CD analyst with analysts of other approaches as follows:

“Unlike other discourse analysts, critical discourse analysts (should) take an explicit
socio-political stance: they spell out their point of view, perspective, principles and aims,
both within their discipline and within society at large. Although not in each stage of
theory formation and analysis, their work is admittedly and ultimately political”.
• Machin & Mayr stated that, it is "this hierarchical power struggle and social inequality that
CD analysts set out to unmask". Such perspective is very evident in Fairclough’s definition
of CDA as follows:

…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

• So, Van Dijk and many other CD analysts believe that they should also be "social and
political scientists, as well as social critics and activists.. and CDA does not see itself as
either dispassionate or as an objective social science, but rather as engaged and
committed".
 Principles of CDA
• According to Fairclough and Wodak, the critical approach to discourse analysis has a number of
principles, described by CD analysts, as “CDA’s main theoretical assumptions in terms of power,
ideology discourse and critique”:

1. CDA addresses social problem,

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 interpretive and explanatory.
• The focus on the importance of power and power relations is a major theme in all approaches
or theories of CDA.

• This is clear, and it has been emphasized by Van Dijk who argues that CDA is concerned
with: “focusing on the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance”

• Dominance: “the exercise of social power by elites, institutions or groups”, mirrors the notion
of ‘power over discourse’

• Blommaert consolidates this concept by stating that “power, and especially institutionally
reproduced power, is central to CDA”.
 The term ‘Critical’

• The term ‘critical’ means that people’s social practices are not easily identified in discourse: The
difficulty here lies in people's “ invisibility of their ideological assumptions, and of the power
relations which underlie the practices – helps sustain these power relations”.

• The ‘critical’ element is what makes CDA different; especially in being able to unmask and
uncover inequality.

• In discussing those approaches being inadequate in social dimensions of language use,

• Van Dijk affirms that these approaches have never been critical due to the fact that they have
aimed to describe the world without thinking of changing it.
 The terms ‘Social power’, ‘Hegemony’ and ‘Dominance’

• These terms have been continuously growing. Van Dijk has justified this by saying that: these
are different to individual power , on the one hand, and being in access to resources like wealth,
status, group education and force.

• Blommaert said that Social power is not easy to identify.

• So, the role of CDA is to uncover these dominant or prejudice discourses.
 The term ‘Hegemony’

• The literature of racism and discrimination has been rich with these subtle examples.

• Hegemony: is closely associated with dominant discourse whenever a group is being dominated
by the dominating or powerful one, of course out of their free will.

• This idea has been emphasized by both CD analysts and politicians, like Chomsky who affirmed
that "one major function of dominant discourse is precisely to manufacture such consensus,
acceptance and legitimacy of dominance"
 Principles of CDA
• Another principle, CDA is always behind confirming its multifunctional nature. In the words of
Van Dijk:
“Indeed, we have already suggested that many forms of dominance appear to be ‘jointly produced’
through intricate forms of social interaction, communication and discourse. We hope that critical
discourse analysis will be able to contribute to our understanding of such intricacies.”
• What is inferred is that one of the most basic characteristics of social dominance and power
abuse is the access or control of mass media, and consequently of public discourse.
• This is inevitably related to elite groups, such as politicians, journalists and governmental
officials

• Furthermore, Chomsky and Milani & Johnson go further to confirm that the actual
manipulation of such dominance requires particular forms of access to news reports, opinion
pieces, political debates, television shows. Figuratively speaking, to use Fairclough and Wodak's
words, "there is not only power in discourse but also the important element of power over
discourse".
 Principles of CDA
• Another important guiding principle in CDA is its inherently interdisciplinary nature. Fairclough
and Wodak elaborate that CDA is by its nature interdisciplinary, combining discursive
disciplinary perspectives in its own analysis, and being used to complement more standard forms
of social and cultural analysis.
• CDA, to say it differently, tries to make use of a variety of different fields of research; although
Mekenna has mentioned that "the most obvious contributions come from social theory, political
theory and linguistic theory".
• For example, the analysis of the topic understudy must take into account not only the linguistic
properties of the discourse, but also social theory, history, ideology, religion, anthropology, etc, as
forms of socio-cultural practices.
• This has two aims:
(1) it gives a fair justification for the previous long chapter where an agenda and its components
were explained
(2)it also gives a fair justification to make reference for Fairclough’s intertextuality
• KhosraviNik mentions that CDA research is being criticized by those who find the analysis and
data interpretation inadequate.

“Analysts were accused of taking a radical approach to data. Their complete rejection of data as a
source of evidence for witnessing events and understanding them only as a source of evidence
about informants’ orientations was seen as going too far. They were also accused of not always
providing sufficiently detailed and systematic analyses of the texts that they examined”.

• Tracing recent publications of Wodak can give sufficient answers to these two questions.
1. Being critical means: to identify the hidden or buried goals behind texts; this leads her to
realize the importance of ideology representation and reproduction in discourse analysis.
2. The answer of the second accusation is found in her and other CD analysts to adopt layered
models, with particular focus on the textual analysis of the context.
 Different approaches of CDA

Dialectal- Relational Approach By: Fairclough

Discourse- Historical Approach By: Wodak

Social -Cognitive model Approach By: Van Dijk

 1. Dialectal- Relational Approach by: Fairclough
• This is the most influential approach within CDA, related to Fairclough who based his work on
two important influences:
1. ‘Foucaltian’ critical theory and its relevance to the importance of language as a form of social
action.
2. The second influence comes from Halliday’s systemic-functional model, which provides “the
toolkit for deconstructing the socially constructed (thus linguistically constructed) machinery
of power”.
• Fairclough used terms such as ‘the order of discourse’ to outline his discourse theory.
• The central notion of the ‘orders of discourse’ in Fairclough is that different discourses are
controlled or governed by different networks:
“We always experience the society and the various social institutions within which we operate as
divided up and demarcated, structured into different spheres of action, different types of situation,
each of which has its associated type of practice”
• Orders of discourse are different and independent but are related in terms of:
(1) The type of discourse and (2) The way they are structured.

• Henderson states that to Fairclough, ‘conversation’ are of various types of discourse linked to
various types of social situations, especially in the official and “off-stage” proceedings such as
bargaining between different lawyers.

• To Fairclough, power relations are of central concern, and especially when the functions of
‘orders of discourse’ are constrained by relationships of power.
• He has expanded his notion of power to not only restricted class relations and class struggles,
but also equally applied to:
"the power struggles between men and women, ethnic groups, age groups and other social groups
that are not specific to particular institutions”

 In other words, Fairclough’s approach was not as just another method of language study but as
an alternative orientation.
 Fairclough's analytical framework
1. Focus upon a specific social problem which has a semiotic aspect; go outside the text and
describe the problem and identify its semiotic aspect.
2. Identify the obstacles to it being tackled, through an analysis of:
a) The network of practices it is located within
b) The relationship of semios is to other elements within the particular practice(s) concerned
c) The discourse (the semiosis itself):
- structural analysis: the order of discourse
- interactional analysis
- interdiscursive analysis
- linguistic and semiotic analysis
3. Consider whether the social order (network of practices) in a sense ‘needs’ the problem.
4. Identify possible ways past the obstacles.
5. Reflect critically on the analysis.
 2. Discourse- Historical Approach by: Wodak

• The basic claim is that social power roles and actions can be deconstructed through linguistic
analysis.
• KhosraviNik states that the notion that language is an inherent social practice remains basic in
this approach.
• Related to the methodology, Wodak confirms that her approach is intended to work with:

1. Different approaches multi-methodically.

2. Work on the basis of a variety of empirical data.
3. Work on background information.
• To Abdul Jabbar & Kareem, this approach “gives an important place to Habermas's notion of
the public sphere”.

• To Wodak & Meyer, the model of context used in this approach invokes historical knowledge
understood in terms of four layers:

1. The linguistic co-text level

2. The intertextual and interdiscursive level
3. The extralinguistic level, and
4. The socio-political and historical level.
 Comparison
Dialectal- Relational Approach Discourse- Historical Approach
(Fairclough) (Wodak)

1. Wodak turns to the sociolinguistic

1. Fairclough brought up on the
and ethnographical traditions for
systemic-functional model of
inspiration in what she calls the
theory.
discourse-historical approach.
2. He often concentrates on rather
2. One of the key notions in her
limited amounts of research
approach is an emphasis on corpus-
material.
based research.
 3. Social -Cognitive model Approach by: Van Dijk
• Van Dijk made a framework for analyzing ND, and especially newspapers, that have turned to be
the main source of data in CDA.
• Van Dijk identifies three different perspectives; text, discourse practice and socio-cultural
practice, with particular focus on the link between socio-cultural analysis and textual analysis.

• Van Dijk differentiates himself from both Wodak and Fairclough in regarding his approach as a
social cognitive framework – where cognitive ‘schemata’ frame both discourse production and
comprehension:

“Discourse, communication and (other) forms of action and interaction are monitored by social
cognition. The same is true for our understanding of social events or of social institutions and
power relations. Hence social cognitions mediate between micro- and macro-levels of society,
between discourse and action, between the individual and the group”.
• The organization of a text, in this approach, is hierarchical, with an overriding thematic topic
(called the macro-structure) at the top. That is, "a news report has a headline, a lead and
different ‘events’ throughout the main text, and each element corresponds to the overall theme“.

• unlike Fairclough and Wodak, the model of social cognition is much powerful to unmask the
role of dominance and power in discourse because, as stated by Van Dijk:

"the social cognitions explain the production as well as the understanding and influence of
dominant text and talk"
 The Model of Social Cognition by: Van Dijk

• This model of analysis is of six steps:

1. The analysis of macro-propositions.

2. The analysis of local meanings,
3. The analysis of ‘subtle’ formal structures: here, a number of linguistic markers are analysed.
4. The analysis of global and local discourse forms or formats.
5. The analysis of specific linguistic realizations, e.g. hyperbole, litotes.
6. The analysis of context.
Thank You.