Aims of DHA:  The DHA attempts to integrate a outsized quantity of available knowledge about the historical sources and the background of the social and political fields in which discursive “events” are embedded.  Further, it analyzes the historical dimension of discursive actions by exploring the ways in which particular genres of discourse are subject to diachronic change.  DHA lays emphasis on the practice-related quality of the discourse, the context dependence of discourse, and the structures as well as constructive character of discourses.   DHA focuses on the systematic analysis of context and its dialectical relationships to meaning-making process.  This approach entails trans-disciplinary and multitheoretical methods with other disciplines.  Like the other critical anlysts, the proponents of DHA make practical claims of emancipation and criticize discursively constituted power abuse, injustice, and social discrimination and they make epistemic claims of reduction.  DHA sustains that language is not powerful on its own, it is a means to gain and maintain power by the powerful people make use of it. Aims of DHA  The first study for which the DHA was developed analyzed the constitutions of anti-semantic stereotyped images as they emerged in public discourses in the 1986 Austrian presidential campaign of former UN General Kurt Waldheim, who for along time had kept secrets his national-socialist past.  This type of analysis first time introduce by Wodak, who argues that discourse has different practices in society.  Wodak pays attention to the multi-model macro as well as micro phenomena to inter-textual and inter-discursive relationships as well as social, historical, and political factors relating to the verbal and non-verbal phenomena of communication. The Origin of DHA:  This approach is inter-disciplinary. He explains that interdisciplinary involves theory, methods, methodology research practice, and practical application.  This approach is problem oriented, like the any other theoretical and methodological approach, is relevant as long as it is able to successfully study relevant social problems such as sexism, racism, and other forms of inequality. .

1. Assignment No: 2
Course Instructor: Dr. Asif Javed
Submitted By: Imtiaz Ahmad
Roll No: 45
M.Phil. Linguistics (1st)
Ghazi University Dera Ghazi Khan

2. Aims of DHA:
 The DHA attempts to integrate a outsized quantity of
available knowledge about the historical sources and the
background of the social and political fields in which
discursive “events” are embedded.
 Further, it analyzes the historical dimension of discursive
actions by exploring the ways in which particular genres
of discourse are subject to diachronic change.
 DHA lays emphasis on the practice-related quality of the
discourse, the context dependence of discourse, and the
structures as well as constructive character of discourses.

3. 
 DHA focuses on the systematic analysis of context and its
dialectical relationships to meaning-making process.
 This approach entails trans-disciplinary and multi-
theoretical methods with other disciplines.
 Like the other critical anlysts, the proponents of DHA
make practical claims of emancipation and criticize
discursively constituted power abuse, injustice, and social
discrimination and they make epistemic claims of
reduction.
 DHA sustains that language is not powerful on its own, it
is a means to gain and maintain power by the powerful
people make use of it.
Aims of DHA

4. 
 The first study for which the DHA was developed
analyzed the constitutions of anti-semantic stereotyped
images as they emerged in public discourses in the 1986
Austrian presidential campaign of former UN General
Kurt Waldheim, who for along time had kept secrets his
national-socialist past.
 This type of analysis first time introduce by Wodak, who
argues that discourse has different practices in society.
 Wodak pays attention to the multi-model macro as well
as micro phenomena to inter-textual and inter-discursive
relationships as well as social, historical, and political
factors relating to the verbal and non-verbal phenomena
of communication.
The Origin of DHA:

5. 
 This approach is inter-disciplinary. He explains that inter-
disciplinary involves theory, methods, methodology research
practice, and practical application.
 This approach is problem oriented, like the any other theoretical
and methodological approach, is relevant as long as it is able to
successfully study relevant social problems such as sexism, racism,
and other forms of inequality.
 Various theories and different methods are combined to wherever
integration leads to an adequate understanding and explanation of
the research object.
 A large number of genres and public spaces as well as inter-textual
and inter-discursive relationships are studied.
 The research incorporates fieldwork and ethnography (study from
“inside”) where this is required for a thorough analysis and
theorizing of the object under investigation.
Characteristics:

6. 
 The DHA adheres to the socio-philosophical orientation of critical
theory. This is why it follows a concept of social critique that
integrates three related aspects.
i. Text or discourse-immanent critique aims at discovering
inconsistence, (self) contradiction, paradox, and dilemmas in the
text-internal or discourse internal structure.
ii. Socio-diagnostic critique is concerned with demystifying the
manifest persuasive or “manipulative” character of discursive
practices. Here we make use of our contextual knowledge; we
also draw on social theories and other theoretical models from
various disciplines to interpret the discursive events.
iii. Future related prospective critique seeks to contribute to the
improvement of communication (for example, by elaborating
guidelines against sexist language behavior or by reducing
“language barriers” in hospitals, schools, and so forth).
Three Aspects of DHA

7. 
i. The historical context is taken into account in interpreting
texts and discourses. The historical orientation permits the
reconstruction of how re-contextualization functions as an
important process linking texts and discourses inter-textually
and inter-discursively over time.
ii. Categories and tools are not fixed once and for all. They must
be elaborated for each analysis according to the specific
problem under investigation.
iii. “Grand theories” often serve as a foundation. In the specific
analyses, however, „middle-range theories” frequently supply
a better theoretical basis.
iv. The application of results is an important target. Results
should be made available to and applied by experts and
should be communicated to the public.
Principles of DHA

8. 
 Intertextuality means texts are linked to other texts, both
in the past and in present. Such connections are
established in different ways; through explicit reference to
a topic or main actor; references to the same events; by
allusions ; by the transfer of main arguments from one
text to the next, and so on.
 Interdiscursivity signifies that discourses are linked to
each other in various/different ways. If we conceive of
„discourse‟ as primarily topic-related, we will observe that
a discourse on climate change frequently refers to topics
or subtopics of other discourses, such as finances or
health.
Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity

9. 
 The term „critique‟ carries many different means; some said it is a
notion of literary criticism while other said that it is a critical stance
that should be understand as gaining distance from the data in the
social context.
 Hence the understanding of critique implies that DHA should
make the object under investigation and the analyst's own position
transparent and should justify theoretically why certain
interpretations and readings of discursive events seem more valid
than others.
 The philosophical model of deliberative democracy can serve as a
normative point of reference for this form of critique.
 If the model is systematically linked to argumentation theory, it
can serve as a valuable theoretical and methodical criterion that
allows for the possibility to assess and organize important areas of
public and political decision-making.
Critique

10. 
 From the point of the DHA, ideology is defined as (often)
one-sided perspective or worldview composed of related
mental representations, convictions, opinions, attitudes,
and evaluations.
 Ideologies serve as an important means of establishing
and maintaining unequal power relations through
discourse.
 Thus the DHA focuses on the ways in which linguistic
and other semiotics practices mediate and reproduce
ideology in range of social institutions.
 One of the most important aims of the DHA is to
“demystify” the hegemony of specific discourses by
deciphering the underlying ideologies.
Ideology

11. 
 Power is an asymmetric relationship among social actors who
assume different social positions or belong to different social
groups.
 For the DHA, language is not powerful on its own; it is a means
to gain and maintain power through the use of that powerful
people make it.
 Power is the possibility of establishing one‟s own will within a
social relationship and against the will of others.
 Some of the ways in which power is implemented are physical
force and violence, control of people through threats or
promises (disciplining regimes), attachment to authority , and
technical control with the help of objects such as means of
production, means of transportation, weapons, and so on.
Power

12. 
 Power relations are legitimated or de-legitimated in
discourses. Texts are often sites of social struggle in
that they manifest traces of differing ideological
fights for dominance and hegemony. Thus, in the in-
depth in analysis of text, the DHA focuses on the
ways in which linguistic forms are used in various
expressions and manipulations of power.
 Power is discursively exerted not only by
grammatical forms, but also by a person‟s control of
the social occasion by means of the genre of a text, or
by the regulations of access to certain public spheres.
Power

13. 
 A cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are
situated within specific fields of social actions;
 Socially constituted and socially constituted;
 Related to macro-topic;
 Linked to the argumentation about validity claims; for
example to truth and normative validity, which involves
several social actors with different points of view.
 Thus, Wodak regards macro-topic relatedness, pre-
perspective, and argumentativity as constitutive elements
of a discourse.
Discourse

14. 
 The concept of text is also evaluated in this approach of
analysis. Wodak distinguishes between „discourse‟ and
„text‟.
 Texts are the parts of discourses. They make speech acts
durable over time and thus bridge two detailed speech
situations:
 The situations of speech production and the situation of
speech reception. In other words, texts-be they visualized
(written) or oral-objectively linguistic actions.
 According to the DHA perspective texts have the hidden
and deeper meanings in any type of literature and
language.
Text

15. 
 Texts are always assigned to genres. A “genre” may
be characterized as a socially accepted way of using
language in connection with particular types of
social activity.
 Discourses on climate change is realized through a
range of genres and texts.
 For example TV debate on politics of a particular
government on climate change, guidelines to reduce
energy consumption, speeches or lectures by experts,
and so forth.
Genre

16. 
 The immediate, language, or text-internal context.
 The inter-textual and inter-discursive relationship
between utterances, texts, genres, and discourses.
 The extra linguistic social variables and institutional
frames of a specific “context of situation”.
 The broader socio-political and historical context,
which discursive practices are embedded in related
to.
 In the analysis, the DHA is oriented toward all four
dimensions of context, in a recursive manner.
Context

17. 
 There are several strategies that deserve special attention when
analyzing a specific discourse and related texts in relation to the
discursive construction and representation of “us” and “them‟.
Heuristically, one could orient to five questions:
i. What characteristics, qualities, and features are attributed to
social actors, objects, phenomena/events, and processes?
ii. How are persons, objects, actions, and events referred to
linguistically?
iii. What arguments are employed in the discourse in question?
iv. From what perspective are these nominations, attributions,
and arguments expressed?
v. Are the respective utterances articulated overtly? Are they
intensified or mitigated?
Strategies for DHA

18. 
 DHA finds a vast field of research activity also in the coming years.
New topics relating to new problems and known topics relating to
the aggravation of already require the critical attention of DHA
proponents.
 DHA will have to look at new relationships between discourse
and discrimination, and it will have to advance its theoretical and
methodological development, also with respect to the question of
what it means to analyze the historical dimension of discourses.
 Within this context, the DHA will have to pay attention to the
inter-discursive links of the discourse on climate change, just to
mention two imperative challenges.
 Discourse and discrimination and language barriers in crucial
social institutions will also remain two important objects of
research and practical critique.
Conclusion