Critical Discourse Analysis

In: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research

Methods

By: Norman Fairclough

Edited by: Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Alan Bryman & Tim Futing
Liao
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science
Research Methods
Chapter Title: "Critical Discourse Analysis"
Pub. Date: 2011
Access Date: February 17, 2019
Publishing Company: Sage Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9780761923633
Online ISBN: 9781412950589
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412950589
Print pages: 215-216
© 2004 Sage Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research
Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version
will vary from the pagination of the print book.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) sees language as one
element of social events and social practices that is dialectically
related to other elements (including social institutions and
aspects of the material world). Its objective is to show
relationships between language and other elements of social
events and practices. It is an approach to language analysis
that originates within linguistics but is more socially oriented and
interdisciplinary than most linguistics.

Discourse here means language (as well as “body language,”

visual images, etc.) seen as a moment of the social. The
approach is “critical” in the sense that (a) it seeks to illuminate
nonobvious connections between language and other elements
of social life; (b) it focuses on how language figures in the
constitution and reproduction of social relations of power,
domination, and exploitation; and (c) it takes a specifically
language focus on social emancipation and the enhancement
of social justice. In these respects, it can be seen as a branch
of critical social science.

CDA is based on the assumption that the language elements

of social events (talk, texts) can contribute to change in other
social elements—that discourse is socially constructive. A focus
of analysis has been on the effects of discourse in constituting,
reproducing, and changing ideologies. Both are consistent with
a dialectical view of discourse as an element of the social
that is different from others while not being discrete—different
elements “internalize” each other. One aspect of recent
changes in social life is arguably that discourse has become
more salient in certain respects in relation to other elements; for
instance, the concept of a “knowledge” or “information” society
seems to imply that social (e.g., organizational) change is “led”
by discourses that may be enacted in new ways of acting,
inculcated in new identities, materialized in new plants, and so
forth. However, in contrast with a certain discourse idealism,
we should take a moderate view of social CONSTRUCTIVISM,
recognizing that social constructs acquire intransitive properties
that may make them resistant to the internalization of new
discourses.

Development of the Field

Critical perspectives on the relationship of language to other

elements of social life can be traced back to Aristotelian rhetoric
and found across a range of academic disciplines. Although
CDA is not original in addressing such issues, it has developed
for the first time a relatively systematic body of theory and
research. Its main sources include broadly “functionalist” (as
opposed to “formalist”) traditions within linguistics, including the
systemic functional linguistics theory of Michael Halliday;
theorizations of “hegemony” and “ideology” within Western
Marxism, notably by Gramsci and Althusser; the “critical theory”
of the Frankfurt School, including more recently Habermas; the
concept of “discourse” in Foucault; and the dialogical language
theory of Bakhtin, including its emphasis on “heteroglossia” and
“intertextuality” and its theorization of “genre.”

The term critical discourse analysis was first used around 1985,
but CDA can be seen as including a variety of approaches,
beginning with critical linguistics, an application of Halliday's
linguistics to analyzing texts from the perspective of ideology
and power. Some work in CDA (especially that of Teun van
Dijk) incorporates a cognitive psychology, some includes an
emphasis on historical documentation (especially the
“discourse-historical” approach of Ruth Wodak), and some
(especially Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen) has focused
on the “multimodal” character of contemporary texts, particularly
the mixture of language and visual image. CDA has
progressively become more interdisciplinary, engaging more
specifically with social theory and research, and (especially
in the case of Fairclough) it is committed to enhancing the
capacity of research on the social transformations of the
contemporary world (globalization, neoliberalism, new
capitalism) to address how language figures in processes of
social transformation.

Application

CDA has recently been drawn on in research within a

considerable variety of disciplines and areas of study in the
social sciences (e.g., geography and urban studies, health
sciences, media studies, educational research, sociology). A
major division within this extensive uptake is between studies
that incorporate detailed linguistic analysis of texts and studies
that work with a generally Foucaultian view of discourse and
draw on theoretical perspectives in CDA without such close
textual analysis. For some CDA researchers, establishing the
value of close textual analysis in social research is a central
concern. At the same time, there is a concern to contribute
a language focus to social and political debates in the public
sphere (Fairclough, 2000).
Example

A theme that has attracted considerable international attention

and now has its own virtual research network is Language
in New Capitalism (www.cddc.vt.edu/host/lnc/), which explores
how language figures in the current restructuring and “global”
rescaling of capitalism. An example of what CDA can contribute
to social research on these transformations is analysis of
narratives of global economic change (Fairclough, 2000). Such
narratives are pervasive in economic, political, and other types
of texts. Economic change is recurrently represented within
them as a process that does not involve human agents—so, for
instance, new markets “open up” rather than people opening
them up, and technologies “migrate” from place to place rather
than being transported by companies—which is universal in
time and place (it happens in a universal present and
everywhere equally). Such representations of economic change
are widely worked together with policy injunctions—what “is”
unarguably and inevitably the case dictates what we “must”
do in policy terms. Analysis of these narratives can put some
flesh on the rather skeletal argument advocated by Bourdieu
that neoliberal discourse is a powerful part of the armory for
bringing into existence a “globalization” (and transformation of
capitalism) that is misleadingly represented as already fully
achieved.

Norman Fairclough

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412950589.n191
10.4135/9781412950589.n191

References

Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N.(1999). Discourse in late

modernity.Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

Fairclough, N.(2000). New labour, new language?London:

Routledge Kegan Paul.

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R.(1997). Critical discourse analysis.

In Edited by: T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social
interaction.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M.(2001). Methods in critical discourse

analysis.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.