Critical Discourse Analysis
Language Analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) examines how language reproduces, reinforces, and challenges power relations, ideology, and social inequality. It treats discourse not as a neutral medium but as a site of social struggle.
Key Figures
| Scholar | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Norman Fairclough | Three-dimensional model: text, discourse practice, social practice. Founded the Lancaster school of CDA. |
| Teun van Dijk | Sociocognitive approach: ideology operates through shared mental representations that shape discourse production and comprehension. |
| Ruth Wodak | Discourse-historical approach: analyses how discourses relate to their historical contexts, particularly in studies of racism and nationalism. |
| Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen | Multimodal CDA: extended analysis beyond language to visual design, layout, and semiotics. |
Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model
Fairclough (1992) proposed that any communicative event can be analysed at three levels:
- Text — linguistic features: vocabulary choices, grammar, cohesion, text structure. What words and structures were chosen, and what alternatives were available?
- Discourse practice — how the text was produced, distributed, and consumed. Who wrote it? For whom? Through what channels? How does it draw on other texts (Intertextuality)?
- Social practice — the broader social, institutional, and political context. What ideologies, power relations, and social structures does the discourse reproduce or challenge?
Core Assumptions
- Language is never neutral — every linguistic choice encodes a perspective
- Discourse both reflects and constitutes social reality — it does not merely describe power; it enacts it
- Ideology operates most effectively when naturalised — when particular ways of representing the world appear as "common sense"
- CDA is explicitly political — it aims to expose inequality, not merely describe language patterns
Analytical Tools
CDA draws on Functional Grammar (Halliday's SFL) and other linguistic frameworks to examine:
- Transitivity — who is represented as agent, patient, or absent? ("Police shot protesters" vs "Protesters were shot" vs "Violence erupted")
- Modality — degrees of certainty and obligation reveal authority claims ("must" vs "might")
- Nomination and categorisation — how social actors are named (refugees vs migrants vs illegal immigrants)
- Presupposition — what is taken for granted rather than stated
- Intertextuality — how texts echo, appropriate, or transform other texts
CDA and ELT
CDA is relevant to language teaching in several ways:
- Critical literacy — teaching learners to read texts critically, questioning whose interests are served
- Media literacy — analysing news, advertising, and political discourse for ideological content
- Academic reading — helping students recognise how academic texts position arguments and construct authority
- Materials evaluation — examining how textbooks represent gender, culture, race, and social class
- Genre awareness — understanding that genres carry ideological assumptions about who can say what to whom
CDA is distinct from Discourse Analysis in its explicitly critical stance — it does not merely describe textual patterns but asks why those patterns exist and whose interests they serve.