Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis examines how language reproduces, sustains, and challenges social power and ideology, treating discourse as a form of social practice.

Definition

Critical discourse analysis is the study of how spoken and written language enacts, reproduces, and resists power, dominance, and ideology in their social and historical contexts.

Scope

This topic covers critical discourse analysis (CDA), an explicitly engaged approach that analyzes the role of language in social inequality, dominance, and ideology. It treats Fairclough's three-dimensional model of text, discursive practice, and social practice; van Dijk's sociocognitive account linking discourse, cognition, and society; and Wodak's discourse-historical approach. Its methods and political commitments are included.

Core questions

• How does language naturalize relations of power and inequality?
• How do texts, practices, and social structures interrelate in discourse?
• What is the place of cognition and historical context in analysis?
• Should analysis be explicitly political and emancipatory?

Key concepts

• discourse as social practice
• ideology
• power and dominance
• three-dimensional model
• discourse-historical approach

Key theories

Three-dimensional model

Fairclough analyzes any discursive event simultaneously as a text, as an instance of discursive practice (production and interpretation), and as social practice, linking linguistic features to broader power relations.

Sociocognitive and discourse-historical approaches

Van Dijk inserts social cognition between discourse and society, while Wodak's discourse-historical approach foregrounds context and historical change in analyzing ideology and prejudice.

History

CDA emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s from critical linguistics, drawing on Halliday's systemic functional grammar, the Frankfurt School, and Foucault. A 1991 Amsterdam symposium brought together Fairclough, van Dijk, Wodak, and others, and the journal Discourse & Society became a hub. The approach diversified into the dialectical-relational, sociocognitive, and discourse-historical schools, becoming a major framework across the social sciences.

Debates

Critique and objectivity

Critics charge that CDA's overt political stance and selective sampling risk confirming analysts' prior conclusions; defenders argue that all analysis is positioned and that CDA makes its commitments explicit.

Key figures

• Norman Fairclough
• Teun A. van Dijk
• Ruth Wodak

Seminal works

• fairclough1992
• vandijk1993

Frequently asked questions

What makes discourse analysis 'critical'?

The critical label signals an explicit concern with power, ideology, and social injustice. Rather than describing language neutrally, CDA aims to reveal how discourse helps produce and sustain unequal social relations.