Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a field that studies language as a means of social construction, highlighting the relationships between discourse, power, and ideology. Key theorists include Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk, who emphasize how texts reflect and challenge social structures. Fairclough's model outlines three stages of analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation, focusing on language, context, and social effects.

1. Critical Discourse Analysis
Presented To: Prof. Furrakh
Abbas
Presented By: M.Waqas. Ali
Abdul Manan

2. Background
 Critical discourse analysis emerged from 'critical
linguistics' developed at the University of East
Anglia in the 1970s.
 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.

3. What is critical discourse analysis?
 According to van Dijk (1998a) Critical Discourse
Analysis is a field that is concerned with studying
and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal
the discursive sources of power, dominance,
inequality and bias. It examines how these
discursive sources are maintained and reproduced
within specific social, political and historical
contexts.

4. What is critical discourse analysis?
 Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse
analysis which aims to explore often opaque
relationships of causality and determination
between discursive practices, events and texts, and
wider social and cultural structures, relations and
processes; to investigate how such practices,
events and texts arise out of and are ideologically
shaped by relations of power and struggles over
power.

5. Foucauldian discourse analysis
Is based on the theories
of Michel Foucault.
Is a form of discourse
analysis, focusing on
power relationships in
society as expressed
through language and
practices.

6. Foucault suggests the following
questions for CDA of the text
 Who is doing what to whom?
 Whose interests the text is serving?
 How is the reader/listener/viewer
positioned?
 Who or what is included or excluded?
 What power relationships are in play?
 What ideology is at work?

7. 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.

8. Fairclough’s Model
Looking at language as discourse and social
practice, someone cannot analyse the text
only, not just analyse the process of
production and interpretation, but also
analyse the texts, processes, and their social
conditions. Fairclough distinguishes three
stages of Critical Discourse Analysis as
Description, Interpretation, Explanation

9. Fairclough’s Model
 Description is the stage which is concerned with
formal properties of the text.
 Interpretation is concerned with the relationship
between text and interaction ; viewing the text as
the product of a process of production, and as a
resource in the process of interpretation.
 Explanation is concerned with the relationship
between interaction and social context with social
determination of the process of production and
interpretation, and their social effects.

10. Fairclough’s 3D model of discourse

11. 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)

12. 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.

13. Social Practice
 This dimension deals with issues important for
social analysis – power relations and
ideological struggles that discourses produce,
challenge or transform in some way.

14. 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.

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

16. Discourse practice
 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?
 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?
 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’?

17. Textual practice
 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
 Are the ideas on both sides presented as paradoxical or contradictory?
 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?
 How often do you have the same symbol in both columns? What
conclusions can you make?

18. Conclusion
This brief analytical model shows that CDA
tools can be used to take an in-depth look at the
language. CDA exposes the underlying
ideologies, objectives and personal interests
described in print media and electronic media. It
demonstrates that how writers and speakers
manipulate language and use it for their own
purposes.