The document provides an introduction to critical discourse analysis (CDA). It discusses key concepts such as how language shapes and reflects social practices and power relations. CDA examines how discourse reproduces and challenges ideologies through a close analysis of text and consideration of wider social contexts. The document outlines some of the main approaches and theorists in CDA and contrasts it with traditional linguistics by noting CDA's focus on language in use and its aim to understand how discourse enacts social goals.

1. Critical Discourse Analysis
An Introduction
PID/DIP – Magistrale November 2012 Francesca Helm

2. Presenting information
• The way we choose to present information
highlights different aspects
• Whose interest is being served by the
choice of words and/or information?
• Our words are never neutral!

3. Language
• Language is an irreducible part of social
life, dialectically interconnected with other
elements of social life
• Language-in-use is everywhere and
always “political”

4. • When we speak or write we always take a particular
perspective on what the “world” is like. This involves us
in taking perspetives on:
• what is “normal” and not;
• what is “acceptable” and not;
• what is “right” and not;
• what is “real” and not;
• what is the “way things are” and not;
• what is the “way things ought to be” and not;
• what is “possible” and not;
• what “people like us” or “people like them” do and don’t
do; and so on and so forth
• (Gee 1999)

5. What is CDA?
• CDA can be seen as a loosely grouped collection of work which
attempts to develop a theory of the interconnectedness of discourse,
power, ideology and social structure.
• Critical Discourse Studies (Teun A. van Dijk) is “an academic
movement of a group of socially and politically committed scholars,
or, more individually, a socially critical attitude of doing discourse
studies” http://www.discourses.org/resources/teachyourself/Unlearn%20misconceptions.html .
• Many different methods of analysis can be used in CDA, it is cross-
disciplinary
• Key theorists are Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak and Teun van
Dijk but many others, bringing together many approaches
• They share a common view of language as a means of social
construction: language both shapes and is shaped by society.

6. Main tenets of CDA
• Discourse is a form of social action or social practice
• Discourse does ideological work
• Power relations are created and maintained through
discourse
• Discourse is intertextual and historical
• Discourse must always be analysed in context
• The link between text and society is ‘mediated’ through a
range of institutional practices
• CDA is interpretive and explanatory
• CDA is a form of social action, CD analysts are socially-
committed

7. CDA and other disciplines
• CDA shares interests, and methods at times with
other disciplines such as anthropology,
sociology, ethnography, communications …
• It can involve the analysis of text and talk in
virtually all disciplines of the humanities and
social sciences
• CDA has been applied by historians, business
institutions, lawyers, politicians, medical
professionals … to investigate social problems in
their work

8. Key themes addressed in CDA
• Language and power
• The discourse of institutions and organizations
• Gender
• Discrimination and racism
• The law
• Advertising
• Politics
• Environment
• Capitalism

9. What can CDA do?
• CD analysts identify and study specific areas of
injustice, danger, suffering, prejudice, and so on,
even though the identification of such areas can
be contentious.
• It is now generally accepted that many social
problems arise from the injudicious use of
language but it is an open question how far
beneficial effects can result from intervention in
discourses alone.
• CDA can raise awareness and point people in
the direction of change

10. Linguistics vs CDA
• Linguists, in general, are concerned with the way in
which language ‘works’, and their interest is in language
for its own sake, not language in context.
• Discourse analysts are concerned with the study of
‘language in use’ which also entails the context of
meaning making and undersanding.
• Critical discourse analysts are interested in the way in
which language and discourse are used to achieve
social goals and in part this use plays in social
maintenance and change.

11. Fairclough’s 3D model of discourse

12. Text
• This dimension involves the analysis of the
language of texts and includes features such as
• Lexis (choice of words, patterns in vocabulary,
metaphor)
• Grammar (eg. Use of passive as opposed to
active, use of modal verbs, nominalization)
• Cohesion (eg. Use of conjunctions, use of
synonyms) and text structure (eg. Problem –
solution, cause – effect, turn-taking in
conversation)

13. Linguistic Theory
• Many CD Analysts base their text analyses on
Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday), a
method of analysis oriented to the social nature
of texts
– Texts simultaneously have ‘ideational’, ‘interpersonal’
and ‘textual’ functions – ie they simultaneously
represent aspects of the world (physical, social and
mental), enact social relations between participants in
social events and the attitudes, desires and values of
participants, and coherently and cohesively connect
parts of text together and connect texts with their
situational contexts.

14. Discursive practice
• This refers to the process of text
production, distribution and consumption
in society. Looking at discourse in this way
means paying attention to intertextuality,
which links a text to other texts, and to its
context and interdiscursivity, when texts
are made up of heterogeneous elements
or various discourse types, such as a mix
of formal and informal language in
newspaper articles

15. Social Practice
• This dimension deals with issues important for
social analysis – power relations and ideological
struggles that discourses (re)produce, challenge
or transform in some way
• Notion of hegemony – not simply dominating
subordinate groups but integrating them through
their consent to the moral, political and cultural
values of the dominant groups (Gramsci 1971 in
Faircough 1992)

16. An unusual community
• The Amish live in Pennsylvania, USA. They came from Switzerland
and Germany in the eighteenth century and live together on farms.
Although they live just 240 kilometres from New York City, their
lifestyle hasn't really changed in the last 250 years. They've turned
their backs on modern materialism: cars, high technology, videos,
fax machines, etc. and they have very strict rules which they all have
to follow.
• They can't use electricity, so they have to use oil lamps to light their
houses. They are allowed to use banks and go to the doctor's but
they can't have phones in their houses. They use horses for
transport because they aren't allowed to fly or drive cars or tractors.
They can play baseball and eat hot dogs but they can't have TVs,
radios, carpets, flowers, or photos in their houses. Although the
Amish don't have churches they are very religious.
• http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/4/336.full

17. Social practice
• 1 Are the Amish typical American
people? Why?
• 2 In your opinion, who wrote the text? An
Amish or a non-Amish person? Try to
justify your answer.
• 3 What do you think of the Amish after
reading the text? Would you like to be an
Amish?

18. Discourse practice
• 4 Where can you find a text like this? What
kind of readers is it addressed to? Is it written for
Amish or non-Amish people?
• 5 What is the ‘point’ of the text? What is the
author trying to tell us? What do you remember
from the Amish after reading the text?
• 6 What do you know about New York or the
USA? The Amish live near New York. Are they
really ‘an unusual community’? How does the
author of the text try to show us that they are
‘unusual’?

19. Textual practice
• 7 What linking words connect the following ideas in the text?
– Living near New York < > Lifestyle of the Amish
– Using banks and going to the doctor's < > Having phones
– Playing baseball and eating hot dogs < > Having TVs, radios, carpets …
– Having churches < > Being very religious
• 8 Are the ideas on both sides presented as paradoxical or contradictory?
• 9 Look for examples in the text containing the verb can/can't. What can the Amish
do? What can the Amish not do? Next look for examples containing the verbs have to
and allow, expressing obligation. What are the Amish obliged to do?
• 10 Fill in the ‘you’ column in the table below and say in each case if the word/phrase
in question has a positive (+) or a negative (–) meaning for you. When you have
finished, do the same to fill in the ‘Amish’ column according to what the text says.
• YouAmishChangeHigh technology, videosStrict rulesTravel by planeFlowersBeing
very religious
• 11 How often do you have the same symbol in both columns? What conclusions
can you make?
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