Marxism and CDA: The Role of Marxism to assist

the agenda of CDA to overcome class inequalities

due to dominant discourse
Sabbah Mubashir
Mphil Applied Linguistics
Marx says and I quote…
• “One of the most difficult tasks confronting
philosophers is to descend from the world of
thought to the actual world. Language is the
immediate actuality of thought. Just as
philosophers have given thought an independent
existence, so they were bound to make language
into an independent realm.”

Marx, German Ideology, Chapter 3 (1846)

Marx says:
• History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense
wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is man, real,
living man who does all that, who possesses and
fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart,
using man as a means to achieve its own aims;
history is nothing but the activity of man
pursuing his aims.
 Life and Works
• Karl Marx, in full Karl Heinrich Marx, (1818
-1883) was a revolutionary, sociologist, historian,
and economist.
• He is famous for his theories about capitalism
and communism and he was most zealous
intellectual advocate of these. His comprehensive
writings on the subject laid the foundation for
later political leaders, notably Lenin and Mao
Tse-tung, to impose communism on more than
twenty countries.
 Cont’d
• He published Manifest der Kommunistischen
Partei (1848), commonly known as The
Communist Manifesto, with Friedrich Engels, the
most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the
socialist movement.
• He was the author of the movement’s most
important book, Das Kapital.
• These writings and others by Marx and Engels
formed the basis of the body of thought and belief
known as Marxism.
 Marxism
•  Marxism is A body of doctrine developed
by Marx and, to a lesser extent, by Friedrich
Engels in the mid-19th century.
• It a social, political, and economic philosophy
named after Karl Marx, which examines the
effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and
economic development and argues for a worker
revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of
communism.
 Cont’d
• It originally consisted of three related
ideas:
 a philosophical anthropology,
a theory of history, and
an economic and political program.
 A Classless Society
• Inequality in wealth and power was Marx’s
fundamental concern.
• In his words, “The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles”
• Hunter-gatherers, Feudalism, Capitalism
• Substructure
• Superstructure
• Proletariat
• Bourgeoisie
Marxism and Discourse Analysis
• From its beginnings, particularly in France,
discourse analysis and theory have been heavily
influenced by Marxist analyses of the social
structure.
• In the past few decades, discourse theories and
analyses have helped shape contemporary
Marxism and provided much needed critiques of
orthodox Marxist economism and Marxism's
neglection of phenomena traditionally counted as
belonging the ‘superstructure’.
 Cont’d
• Marx and Marxism study and critique social relations of
domination and exploitation, ideology and power,
social reproduction, and transformation in the context
of capitalist modes of production.
• Discourse analysis in the broadest sense scrutinizes
semiotic material that is appropriated and processed
through practices embedded in specific contexts.
• In many ways, contemporary discourse theory and
analysis are concerned with how discursive processes
produce the material conditions of existence within
which they operate.
 Cont’d
• Marx has not only provided a critical attitude in
the field of Discourse Studies from its very
beginnings, he is furthermore still the most
important theorist of social class, power, and
their relation as a constitutive modality for social
relations. The relation between discourse and
critique is not understandable without a
reflection on the interrelationship between
discourse and power.
 CDA
• 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 according to Van Dijk
(2001).
• CDA is interpretative and explanatory.
• CDA goes beyond textual analysis. It is not only
interpretative, but also explanatory in intent.
 Cont’d
• These interpretations and explanations are
dynamic and open, and may be affected by new
readings and new contextual information.
• Discourse from the point of view of CDA, then, is
a form of social action.
• The principle aim of CDA is to uncover
opaqueness and power relationships.
• CDA is a socially committed scientific paradigm.
Power as Control

• Van Dijk (2000) defines social power in terms of control and

describes that action is controlled by mind and if we are able to
influence people’s minds (their knowledge and opinion) we can
control their actions by persuasion and manipulation.
• Those groups who control most influential discourse also have
more chances to control the minds and actions of others. The
recipients tend to accept beliefs, knowledge and opinions
through discourse from what they see as authoritative,
trustworthy and credible sources.
• The context and the structure of text serve to exercise the desired
control. Argumentation can be persuasive in controlling mind.
 Marxism and CDA
• Marxist philosophy and methodology has a far
reaching influence on CDA.
• In terms of Marxist philosophy, the Marxist view
of language as social practice and the Marxist
view of ideology provide a solid theoretical
foundation for CDA.
• In accordance with the Marxist view of language,
discourse as a form of social practice is socially
constitutive as well as socially shaped.
 Cont’d
• With respect to Marxist methodology, Marxist
critique and dialectics have nourished CDA
through the explicit emphasis on the critical
impetus and the dialectical relation between
language and society.
• The methodological objective of critique is to
reveal structures of power and unmask hidden
ideologies.
 Cont’d
• The dialectical approach enables critical
discourse analyst to envisage the dialectical
relation between discourse and other elements
of social practice and to detect the linguistic
manifestations of
inequality,
dominance and
ideological control in discourse.
 Cont’d
• Critical language analysis is central to Marx’s
method precisely because language is the only
way to grasp the diachronics of changing social
circumstances.
• Language is product, producer and reproducer
of social consciousness as a mutually
determinant substance of changing material
circumstances.
 Conclusion
• Marx was a discourse theorist because he
considered language as an element of social life.
• He put his dialectical view of discourse to work
in his economic, political and historical analyses.
• His ideas have opened up new horizons of
thought about, history, class struggle , ideology,
capitalism, globalization, dominance and power,
all of which are subject matter of CDA as well.
 Food for Thought
• What do we value and how ?
• How do we interact to do what we do?
• How media represent, broaden or endorse the
struggle and conflict between classes?
• What are our social roles and who defines them?
• What are the implications of global
organizations?
• What is national power in relation to
democracy?
Thank you