Interpretive Critical Discourse Analysis

Interpretive critical discourse analysis (interpretive CDA) combines the power-and-ideology lens of critical discourse analysis with an interpretivist epistemology that foregrounds meaning-making, context, and the researcher's own positionality. It examines how language constructs social reality, legitimises or challenges power relations, and circulates ideological assumptions — while acknowledging that both the texts under study and the analyst's reading of them are socially situated and context-dependent.