Teun Adrianus van Dijk is a Dutch scholar born in 1943 who has contributed significantly to the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis. He founded six international journals focused on these topics. Van Dijk developed a model of context, social cognition, and memory to understand how discourse is influenced by and influences its various contexts through social cognition and memory. He has focused on how racism can be reproduced through the discourse of politicians, journalists, and scholars.