Critical Discourse

Analysis
Visionary Discourse Lecture 3
By Dr. Muhammad Salman
Introduction

 Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a qualitative analytical approach for

critically describing, interpreting, and explaining the ways in which discourses
construct, maintain, and legitimize social inequalities
 CDA emphasizes the role of language as a power resource
 For instance, prejudices and oppression are reproduced in daily life through
political and media discourses controlled by elite groups, and those discourses
contribute to the cultural reproduction of racism
 CDA is a useful approach for educational researchers who explore connections
between educational practices and social contexts ( relationship between
teaching, learning and curricula, students’ identities across time and context,
cultural representations in textbooks, and the influence of teachers’
ideological perspectives on their teaching practice
 Multidisciplinary:
People from different disciplines working together, each drawing on their disciplinary
knowledge.
 Interdisciplinary:
Integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of
approaches.
 Transdisciplinary:
Creating a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspective.
 Intra disciplinary:
Working within a single discipline.
 Cross disciplinary:
Viewing one discipline from the perspective of another.
Methodological Characteristics

 CDA relies on a collection of techniques for the study of language use as a

social and cultural practice
 CDA focuses on social problems and not on scholarly paradigms
 as a result, CDA can be used to understand and solve problems with any
theory or method that may be relevant
 CDA is an approach which is in a dialogical relationship with other social
theories and methods, which should engage with them in a transdisciplinary
rather than just interdisciplinary way
 CDA takes an inductive approach, but can also proceed through abductive or
transductive inference in the sense that analysis oscillates between a focus on
structure and a focus on action
 Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a body of observations
is considered to derive a general principle.
 Transductive reasoning causes people to think there are connections between
events that are not accurate based on past experience, patterns, or belief
systems.
 Abductive reasoning, or abduction, is making a probable conclusion from what
you know (limited information)
Key Principles and Concepts

 Key to CDA is the concept of power, or the chance that a person in a social
relationship can achieve his or her own will against the resistance of others
 Power is usually institutionalized and organized hierarchically; small groups of
power elites have special roles in the enactment of power
 CDA is particularly interested in linguistic manifestations of power
 Discourse can be defined as ways of constituting knowledge, together with
the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in
such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways
of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the “nature” of the body,
unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek
to govern
 Discourse consists of talk, text, and media that express ways of knowing,
experiencing, and valuing the world. Discourse can take many forms or
genres, not limited to policies, narratives, written texts such as letters or
textbooks, conversations, speeches, meetings or classroom lessons, nonverbal
communication, visual images, multimedia, and film.
Socio-Cultural Approach

 discourse is seen simultaneously as: (i) a text (spoken or written, including

visual images), (ii) a discourse practice production, consumption and
distribution of the text, and (iii) a socio cultural practice.
 Fairclough provides a three-dimensional framework for the analysis of text
and discourse: (a) the linguistic description of the formal properties of the
text; (b) the interpretation of the relationship between the discursive
processes/interaction and the text, and finally, (c) the explanation of the
relationship between discourse and social and cultural
 discursive practices may have ideological effects since they can produce and
reproduce unequal power relations between social classes, gender groups and
ethnic and cultural majorities and minorities through the ways they represent
things and position people.
 discourse are not static, but may change over time. Changing the power
relations in a social interaction determines these changes.
Socio-Cognitive Approach

 CDA needs to account for the various forms of social cognitions that are
shared by the social collectivities (groups, organizations and institutions)
 Social cognitions are "socially shared representations of societal
arrangements, groups and relations, as well as mental operations such as
interpretation, thinking and arguing, inferencing and learning“
 understanding ideological structures and social relations of power embedded
in discourse.
 It defines “social power” in terms of control (Van Dijk, 2003) and views
ideologies as "the basis of the social representations of groups“
 "groups have (more or less) power if they are able to (more or less) control
the acts and minds of (members of) other groups
 ideological discourse is generally organized by a general strategy of positive
self-presentation (boasting) and negative other-presentation (derogation)
 the study of discourse triangulates between society/culture/situation,
cognition and discourse/language
 critical analysis of texts tends to make explicit the ideological dimension of
“Us” versus “Them” and to demonstrate the discursive structures and
strategies used in exercising the dominant power.
Discourse-Historical Approach

 focuses on the interdisciplinary and eclectic nature of CDA as problems in our

society are too complex to be studied from a single point of view.
 to understand and explain the object under investigation, one needs to
integrate diverse theories and methods
 studies in CDA are multifarious, derived from quite different theoretical
backgrounds, oriented towards different data and methodologies
 all discourses are historical and can therefore only be understood with
reference to their context
 This means that discourse is connected synchronically and diachronically with
other communicative events which are happening at the same time or which
have happened before
 identity politics on all levels always entails the integration of past
experiences, present events and future visions in many domains of our lives.
 For the analysis of the interrelationship between discursive and other social
practices and structures, scholars refer to the principle of triangulation
 Triangulation refers to the use of multiple methods or data sources in
qualitative research to develop a comprehensive understanding of phenomena