This document provides an overview of critical discourse analysis (CDA). It discusses key principles of CDA, including how social and political issues are constructed through language use and how power relations are negotiated in discourse. The document also outlines how CDA explores the connections between language and social context, and how it examines issues like gender, ethnicity and ideology. Several methods of CDA are introduced, such as analyzing framing techniques, multimodality, and identity construction in texts. Criticisms of CDA are noted, as well as suggestions for expanding its analytical tools and approaches.