Critical Discourse Analysis 1

Critical Discourse Analysis

An introduction to major approaches

Moslem Ahmadvand
University of Zanjan

- Abstract -

Meaning is not a monolithic construct; it is a multidimensional and slippery concept with

amazing complexity. Understanding the silent meaning of a text, be it spoken or written is a
highly-needed skill in the modern era, for the exposure to information and media is so vast
that one can never be sure of the validity of the surrounding information. Critical Discourse
Analysis along with other related disciplines attempts to reveal hidden meanings, that is, the
ideological loads of the discourse. This paper tries to review the origins of CDA and
introduces some of the influential theoretical schools on it. Although these approaches differ
in terms of the theoretical foundations and analytic tools, they share three concepts of
critique, power, and ideology. This article emphasizes two major points. One is the dialectic
relation between society, culture, politics, and language that this complex relation requires
multidisciplinary research. The other is the fact that CDA cannot be taken as theory due to its
tendency to adopt an eclectic approach in the analysis of the data.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Linguistics, Ideology, Text, Power.

 Critical Discourse Analysis 2

1. Introduction

Effective discriminative reading is of paramount momentousness in the modern era

due to the prevalence of media and enormous exposure to information. Ironically, people and
even scholars have turned a blind eye to the intricacies and nuances of discourse production
and comprehension. This is due to the fact that language users often do not develop a full
competence in the semantic component of the language. Invariably, people are heedless to
and unenlightened about the implications of the shades of meanings whilst they are producing
discourse or are exposed to it.
The concepts of discourse, genre, and style are intimately connected with each other.
They are dealing with the macro and micro levels of sociological and linguistic studies. There
is a dialectic relationship between social actors or individuals (micro structure) and the social
practices and values (macro structure). In this background, a multiplicity of texts is in close
interaction with social parameters to bring about different ideological, identities and power
structures. In this respect, the voice given to the macro structures, i.e. government and
institutions or the micro structures i.e. individuals is immensely affected by the theorists’
ideological orientations.
Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) “is the uncovering of implicit
ideologies in texts. It unveils the underlying ideological prejudices and therefore the exercise
of power in texts” (Widdoson, 2000). This research enterprise attempts to critically analyze
the relationship between language, ideology, and society. As Teun Van Dijk (1993) puts it,
“critical discourse analysts want to understand, expose, and resist social inequality.”
The roots of CDA are in critical theory which is inextricably tied up with Frankfurt
School of Social Research. “Critical theory is defined as a research perspective, which has
basically a critical attitude towards society” (Langer, 1998, p.3). More specifically, it is used
to refer to “any theory concerned with critique of ideology and the effects of domination”
(Fairclough, 1995, p.20). In the 1970s a group of linguists and literary theorists at the
University of East Anglia developed the idea of critical linguistics. Their approach was based
on M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This branch of grammar stresses
the importance of social context (the context of culture and context of situation) in the
production and development of language. In addition, functional linguistics, unlike many
branches of linguistics, has always been concerned not only with words and sentences, but
also with longer texts and collection of texts (corpora) above the level of the sentence. The
foundations of CDA have been laid by critical linguists and theorist, and since the 1980s –
 Critical Discourse Analysis 3

thanks to the works of the British sociolinguist Norman Fairclough – has gained a lot of
attention. Fairclough (1995) defines CDA as follows:

By critical discourse analysis I mean discourse analysis which aims to

systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination
between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) 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; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships
between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony.
(pp. 132-3)

In recent years professionals from a variety of backgrounds have become interested in

discourse issues. Historians, business institutions, lawyers, politicians and medical
professionals to name but a few, have used discourse analysis to investigate social problems
relating to their work. Van Dijk (1993), who prefers the term Critical Discourse Studies
(CDS) for this reason, described it as “a new cross-discipline that comprises the analysis of
the text and talk in virtually all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.”
This paper will introduce different approaches and schools to CDA and will discuss
their similarities and differences. These approaches differ in terms of theoretical foundations
and the tools they use to analyze discourse, but the concepts of ideology, critique, and power
are present in all of them. In addition, it will accentuate the interdisciplinary nature of CDA
and showing the dialectic relationship between language, culture, society, and politics.

2. Approaches to CDA
In spite of the fact that all the approaches to CDA have the notions of ideology,
Critique, and power in common, they could be classified into three major ones with respect to
the differences in their theoretical foundations and analyzing tools.

2.1. Norman Fairclough: Discourse as Social Practice

The British sociolinguist, Norman Fairclough is one of the key figures in the realm of
CDA. In his vantage-point CDA is a method for examining social and cultural modifications
that could be employed in protesting against the power and control of an elite group on other
people. Fairclough believes that our language, which shapes our social identities and
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interactions, knowledge systems, and beliefs, is also shaped by them in turn. Like Kress and
Van Leeuwen, he bases his analyses on Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar. In
Language and Power (1989), he calls his approach Critical Language Study, and considers
the first aim of his approach as helping to correct the vast negligence in relation to the
significance of language in creating, maintaining and changing the social relations of power.
This first goal tends to be the theoretical part of Fairclough’s approach. The second one
which is helping to raise awareness to the question that how language can influence the
dominance of one group of people over the others could be considered as the practical aspect
of his approach. He believes that awareness is the first step towards emancipation. To reach
the latter goal Fairclough has put a great emphasis on raising the level of people’s
consciousness, for he assumes that in discourse, the subjects do not, strictly speaking, know
what they are doing, and they are unaware of the potential social impact of what they do or
utter.

2.1.1. Text and Discourse

Fairclough considers language as a form of social practice. This way of thinking
implies some other notions. First, language is a part of the society and not somehow external
to it. Second, language is a social process. Third, language is a socially conditioned process,
conditioned that is by other (non-linguistic) parts of society (Fairclough, 1989, 22). The
remarkable point in Fairclough’s view is that all linguistic phenomena are social, but it is not
true the other way round. For instance, when we are talking about the political words such as
democracy, imperialism, or terrorism we use linguistic elements, but this is only part of the
whole politics. Therefore the relationship between language and society does not observe a
one to one correspondence; rather, the society is the whole and language is a part of it.
The second implied notion – i.e. language is a social process – is meaningful only
when we take discourse as different from text, like Fairclough. Fairclough’s notion of text is
exactly the same as Halliday’s, and this term covers both written discourse and spoken
discourse. For him text is a product, not a process. Fairclough employs the term discourse to
refer to the complete process of social interaction. Text is merely a sector of this process,
because he considers three elements for discourse, namely text, interaction, and social
context. In addition to text itself, the process of social interaction involves the process of text
production and text interpretation. Hence, text analysis is a part of discourse analysis.
 Critical Discourse Analysis 5

Social conditions of production

Process of production

Text

Process of interpretation

Interaction

Social conditions of interpretation

Figure 1. Discourse as text, interaction and context. (Fairclough 1989, P. 25)

In comparison to the three aspects of discourse (shown in figure 1.), Fairclough (1989, pp.
26-27) identifies three dimensions for CDA:

• Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text.
• Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction by
seeing the text as the product of the process of production and as a resource in the
process of interpretation.
• Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social
context, with the social determination of the process of production and interpretation,
and their social effects.

In all these stages we are concerned with analysis, but the nature of it is different in
each stage. Analysis in the first stage limits its boundaries to labeling the formal properties if
the text and regards text as an object. In the second phase, CDA goes through the analysis of
the cognitive process of the participants and their interactions. Finally in the third stage, the
aim is to explain the relationship between social events and social structures that affect these
events and also are affected by them.

2.1.2. Ideology and Power

The roots of the first goal of Fairclough’s critical language study can be traced to his
expertise and background in sociolinguistics. Fairclough believes that in sociolinguistics – the
study of language in the social context – one can propound ideas about language and power;
 Critical Discourse Analysis 6

for instance, in the discussions of standard and non-standard dialects, there is clear-cut
evidence that the dialect of the powerful group will gain the reputation of the standard one.
By the same token, there are studies that pay attention to the ways in which power is
exercised in the people’s conversations. All of these studies are concerned with the
description of power distribution in terms of sociolinguistic conventions; however, they
cannot explain these conventions. Explaining how the relations of power are shaped and the
struggle on how power is shaped, does not fall in the realm of sociolinguistics. In his
approach, Fairclough endeavors to explain these conventions; conventions which are the
upshots of the relations of power and the struggles on them. He accentuates the
presuppositions of a common sense present in the interlocutions among people that they are
usually blind to their existence. These presuppositions are the very ideology that has a close
relationship with power; for these ideological presuppositions exist in the social conventions
and the nature of the conventions depend on the power relations that cover them.
The relationship between common sense and ideology was introduced by the Italian
Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. He refers to “‘a form of practical activity’ in which ‘a philosophy
is contained as an implicit theoretical premiss’ and ‘a conception of the world that is
implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individuals
and collective life’” (Antonio Gramsci, 1971, cited in Fairclough, 1989, p.84). This form of
practical activity is the ideology which exists in the background and is usually taken for
granted. Fairclough assumes an ideological nature for the common sense, to some extent, and
believes that this is the common sense which is ideological in order to be at the disposal of
the survival of the unequal relations of power and to be a justification for it.
Fairclough takes a rather traditional approach towards power, and does not agree with
Foucault. From Fairclough’s (1995, p.17) point of view, Foucault considers power as a
pervasive force and symmetrical relations that is dominant over the whole society and is not
in the hands of one special group or another; whereas in Fairclough’s thinking, the relations
of power are asymmetrical, unequal, and empowering that belong to a special class or group.

2.1.3. Naturalization and Neutralization in Discourse

If a type of discourse is dominant over an institution in such a way that other types of
discourse are totally oppressed or become a part of that discourse, this issue will not make the
discourse seem an autocratic one; rather it will cease to be seen as natural and legitimate.
Fairclough, like other critical discourse analysts, calls this phenomenon naturalization.
Naturalization has a relation with the ideological common sense, in the sense that by the
 Critical Discourse Analysis 7

naturalization of the discourse, its ideology will change into the ideological common sense.
In the process of naturalization and creation of the common sense, the type of discourse
appears to lose its ideological character and tends to become merely the discourse of the
institution itself instead of looking as the discourse of a special class or group within that
institution. In this way, the struggle on power seems to be neutral, and being neutral means
being out of ideology, that is to say, having no ideological load. The fact that discourse loses
its ideological load, paradoxically, will make a fundamental ideological effect: “Ideology
works through disguising its nature, pretending to be what it is not” (Fairclough, 1989, p.92).
Now, as long as linguists insist only on the formal aspects of language, they foster the
development of this ideological effect. Thus, naturalization occurs in this way and people can
hardly, if ever, understand that their routine and usual behaviors makes ideological effects on
the society.

2.2. Teun Van Dijk: A Socio-cognitive Model

Teun Van Dijk is one of the leading figures and pioneers of study and research in
domain of CDA. Most of his critical works are concerned with prejudice and racism in
discourse. In his early works, he has considered the problem that how Netherlander and
Californian Caucasians talk about ethnic minorities, and what role do these conversations
play in the reproduction of ideology. In fact, analysis of the topics that people talk about
represents the things that exist in their minds. In Van Dijk’s viewpoint, those things are
mental and personal tenets about ethnic events. He believes that the major premise in talking
about others includes positive self-representation and negative other-representation.
In doing CDA, Van Dijk offers some practical principles and guidelines and asserts
that he has no special school or approach. He does not consider CDA as a branch of discourse
analysis, like conversation analysis or psycho-discourse analysis; for this reason he suggests
researchers to look at the CDA as an interdisciplinary, and take an eclectic approach towards
it using the findings of other cultures, countries, and other humanities disciplines. On the
basis of his interdisciplinary attitude towards the field he labels his methodology as socio-
cognitive discourse analysis and states that despite his reluctance to labeling, this label shows
to what extent studying cognition is significant in CDA, communication, and interaction.
However, this does not mean that CDA should confine its limits to cognitive and social
analysis; rather, due to the real world problems, its complexities and people’s needs CDA
should have historical, cultural, socio-economical, philosophical, logical, and neurological
approaches as well.
 Critical Discourse Analysis 8

2.2.1. Discourse, Cognition, and Society

Van Dijk believes that there is not direct relationship between social structures and
discourse structures and almost always they are connected to each other through personal and
social cognition. This cognition is the lost segment of many critical linguistic studies and
critical discourse analysis; therefore he offers the triangle of society, cognition, and
discourse. Though Van Dijk puts a great emphasis on cognition, he believes that since the
nature of discourse is lingual, CDA needs merely linguistic foundations as well as cognitive
foundations.
In Van Dijk’s triangle, in a broad sense, discourse is a communicative event that
includes oral interactions, written text, body movements, pictures, and other semiotic
signifiers. Cognition here refers to personal and social cognition, beliefs, goals, values,
emotions, and other mental structures. Society includes both local micro structures and
political, social and universal macro structures which are defined in terms of groups and their
relationships such as dominance and inequality. In defining the context of discourse in this
triangle social and cognitive dimensions are deemed. In fact, context is of two types, micro
and macro. Macro context refers to historical, cultural, political, and social structure in which
a communicative event occurs, whereas micro context shows the features of the immediate
situation and interaction in which a communicative event occurs.
Van Dijk defines micro context based on the concept of cognition and considers it as
a form of a mental model of a communicative situation and calls it a context model. Context
models are mental representations that control many of the features of text production and
comprehension such as genre, choice of topic, and cohesion on one hand, and speech act,
style, and imagery on the other. These models exist in people’s long term memory; the part of
memory in which people save their knowledge and view about the events they experience. In
fact, there is no direct relationship between society and discourse and these models explain
how discourse indicates the social and personal features in itself, and how in a certain social
situation discourse could be different. In other words, devoid of these mental models, it
cannot be explained and described that how social structures affect discourse, and get
affected in turn.

2.2.2. The notion of critique

From Van Dijk’s viewpoint, in contrary to other discourse analysts, critical discourse
analysts must have a clear socio-political position; they ought to explain their viewpoints,
principles, and goals. Of course, in all the stages of shaping the theory and the analysis, their
 Critical Discourse Analysis 9

work is political and their criticisms of discourse will involve political criticism of those who
are responsible for the reproduction of ascendency and social inequalities; elite groups who
are in power; those who ordain social inequalities and injustice, continue and legitimize them.
The ultimate goal of critical discourse analysts is to help the deprived part of the society, the
issues that threaten these people’s lives, not small issues relating to discourse structures.
Critical discourse analysts’ criticisms should not be temporary or personal. In other words,
CDA goes beyond here and now, and attempts to study the roots of fundamental social
problems. CDA’s criteria, as acknowledged by Fairclough, too, is not merely observational,
descriptive or even explanatory, rather CDA’s prosperity is evaluated in terms of the
influence that it has on the macro structure of the society and the role that it plays in the line
of changing, amending, and removing social inequalities. Van Dijk believes that CDA does
not reject having a special direction, and specifies its social and political direction clearly and
articulately and is proud of having such a direction.

2.3. Ruth Wodak: Sociological and historical approach to CDA

Ruth Wodak and his colleagues at Vienna University have chosen to work within the
sociological model for their CDA studies. This model is based upon Bernstein’s tradition in
sociolinguistics and Frankfurt School, especially Jurgen Habermas. Based on this model,
Wodak has had some studies on the institutional relations and discourse barriers in
courtrooms, school, and hospitals. Recently he has started to work on sexism, anti-Semitism,
and racism. In fact, the major goal of him and his colleagues is to put research into practice.
They have offered guidelines to avoid using sexist language and some other guidelines for
appropriate patient-doctor communication. Anti-Semitism studies after the Second World
War, made Wodak and his colleagues to chose “historical approach” to CDA. The distinctive
feature of this approach is that it attempts to use all the background information in analyzing
different layers of a spoken or written text.
Wodak (2001b: PP. 69-70) has put forward some features for the historical approach
to CDA as follows:

1. This approach is interdisciplinary. Like other critical linguists, Wodak

acknowledges the intricacy of the relationship between language and society. As a
result he believes that CDA is interdisciplinary in nature.
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2. This interdisciplinary nature could be seen both in theory and practice. He

combines argumentation theory and rhetoric with Halliday’s Functional
Linguistics.
3. This approach is problem-oriented rather than emphasizing some special language
issues.
4. Methodology and theory are chosen through eclecticism.
5. In this approach the analyst is always on the move between theory and empirical
date.
6. Historical context will go under investigation and will be incorporated into the
analysis of discourse and texts.

2.3.1. Discourse and Text

Wodak believes that historical approach to discourse considers written and spoken
language as form of social behavior. Like Fairclough, Wodak acknowledges the dialectic
relationship between discourse acts and special areas of action (situations, institutional
frameworks, and social structures). In other words, discourse as a social act creates discourse
and non-discourse behaviors and in turn is created by them. Wodak distinguishes between
discourse and text. He considers discourse as a complex set of synchronic and coherent
linguistic acts that emanate in genre and text. Consequently text is seen as the production of
these linguistic acts.

3. Conclusion
One could say that in spite of the differences which exist in major approaches to CDA, all
of these approaches pursue one common goal that is representing the dialectic relationship
between language, power, ideology, and the influential role that language plays in emanation
of power and legitimizing social inequalities. For as it was shown the dominant ideology, as a
result of excessive use, will be presupposed and it becomes natural and neutral. Therefore,
critical discourse analysts are giving a serious effort to clarify and denaturalize the hidden
power relations, ideological processes that exist in linguistic text. They attempt to awaken the
unconscious of those people who contribute to the establishment and legitimization of
ideology through their ignorance.
From CDA vantage-point, language does not possess power per se. It takes its power
from the powerful people who make use of it. This is the very reason that why, in a majority
of cases, critical linguists pick the view of deprived people and set out to analyze language
 Critical Discourse Analysis 11

critically, because those who are in power are responsible of the social inequalities. Power
does not derive from language; rather language is used to fight against power.

References

Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. London: Polity Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. London: Longman.
Van Dijk, T. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 4, 249-
283.
Van Dijk, T. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. Discourse and Society, 17, 359-383.
Wodak, R. (2001a). What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts, and
its development. In Methods of CDA. (ed.) by R. Wodak and M. Meyers. London: Sage
Publication, 1-13.
Wodak, R. (2001b). The discourse of historical approach. In Methods of CDA. (ed.) by R.
Wodak and M. Meyers. London: Sage Publication, 63-94.

This is a term paper for Advanced Writing course, instructed by Dr. R. Khosravi (PhD in
English Literature) at the University of Zanjan during the academic year of 2008-2009.

Acknowledgments
A few words of acknowledgment are due here. I would like to extend my words of
appreciation to Dr. R. Khosravi of Zanjan University who read the drafts diligently time and
again and made invaluable comments.

Bio Data
Moslem Ahmadvand is Master’s student of Applied Linguistics at the University of
Zanjan, Iran. He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Semnan, Iran. His
major areas of research are minimalist syntax and optimality phonology. He has been
teaching English and Applied Linguistics for five years.

Correspondence concerning this paper may be directly submitted to the author via
e-mail at: [email protected]