Compare methods

	Feminist Discourse Analysis	Critical Discourse Analysis
Field	Gender Studies	Qualitative
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2005	Late 1970s–1990s (systematised ~1979–1995)
Originator	Michelle M. Lazar	Norman Fairclough; Teun A. van Dijk; Ruth Wodak
Type	Critical feminist discourse-analytic method	Qualitative research method
Seminal source	Lazar, M. M. (2007). Feminist critical discourse analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(2), 141–164.	Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press.
Aliases	Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, FCDA, Feminist CDA	CDA, Critical Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, Dialectical-Relational Analysis
Related	4	6
Summary	Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) extends critical discourse analysis with an explicit feminist politics, examining how gender ideology and asymmetric power relations between women and men are produced, sustained, contested, and above all naturalized in texts and talk. Articulated by Michelle Lazar in her 2005 edited collection and 2007 programmatic article, it combines the close linguistic analysis of the CDA tradition with feminist theory to expose the often subtle, taken-for-granted sexism through which patriarchal arrangements come to seem ordinary and commonsensical.	Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a qualitative method that examines how language in texts and talk constructs, sustains, and challenges relations of power, ideology, and social inequality. Drawing on linguistics, social theory, and critical philosophy, CDA treats discourse not merely as communication but as social practice — a site where dominance is reproduced and where resistance can be articulated. Developed in the late twentieth century by Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, and Ruth Wodak, among others, CDA is applied to political speeches, media texts, policy documents, educational materials, and institutional interactions.