Critical what?-- discovering CDA

1
Critical what?-- discovering CDA

• Alwin C. Aguirre
• alwin.aguirre_at_aut.ac.nz
• Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication
• Auckland University of Technology

2
A blog
Taking It Like a Man

• Sohail Karmani forwards the following question
  (from some person named tom nagy) to a newsgroup
  interested in Critical Discourse Analysis
• "Is discourse analysis at the primative level of
  medicine 100 years ago when it could diagnose but
  not intervene successfully? If this is so, it
  would be critical to be aware of this dismal
  state of affairs.

tom nagy
3
A blog
Karmani

• and he continues with his own point
• This is precisely the problem I have with CDA. As
  I see it, the whole thing is based on the
  self-serving assumption that society desperately
  needs a vanguard class of experts who can unravel
  the encoded messages in a given text that elude
  the dumb and stupid massesOf course the whole
  thing (like other specializations in academia) is
  a total fraud! All you need all is a modicum of
  intelligence and a bit of critical awareness and
  anyone can unravel the "deep meanings" that
  reside in texts. The bottom line (as I see it) is
  CDA is embarrassingly straightforward stuff
  dressed up in layers and layers of self-serving
  unintelligible jargon.

Critical Discourse Analysis and why I fucking
despise it Blog of Revelation
4
What is CDA?

• is discourse analysis with an attitude (van
  Dijk, 2001)

awareness of the seen and unseen connection of
structures of power to discursive or
communicative activities/events
hermeneutic-reconstructive and critical-dialectica
l theoretical foundation
5
Where did CDA come from?

• Marxism ideology, hegemony
• Foucault discourse, discursive formation, power
• Critical linguistics linguistic meaning is
  inseparable from ideology (Fowler Kress 1979)
• CDA as a label established in 1995 by
  Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis The
  critical study of language (Billig 2007)

6
What does CDA actually do?

• Pioneers
• Norman Fairclough Three dimensions of a
  communicative event
• Ruth Wodak Discourse-historical approach
• Teun van Dijk Sociocognitive approach

7
What does CDA actually do?

• Norman Fairclough
• Communicative Events and Order of Discourse
• Communicative events (the particular)
• text
• discourse practice
• sociocultural practice
• The order of discourse (the general)
• interdiscursivity

8
What does CDA actually do?

• Sample analysis

power in new media/Internet
blogging as confession
Critical Discourse Analysis and why I fucking
despise it
lexical choice
9
Why despise CDA?

• The critical dilemma in CDA
• On the human critical instinct (Chilton 2005)
• On CDA becoming itself an institution (Billig
  2007, 2008)
• An established brand critical orthodoxy
• Language of CDA practice elitist
• CDA, alone, cannot change the world.

10
Where now for CDA?

• A participatory framework?
• Focus on the other side of relations of power
  resistance
• CDA and an activist linguistics
• calling for researchers to remain connected to
  the communities in which they research, returning
  to those settings to apply the knowledge they
  have generated for the good of the community and
  to deepen the research through expansion or
  focus (OConnor 2007)

11
References

• Billig, M. (2007). Critical discourse analysis
  and the rhetoric of critique. In G. Weiss R.
  Wodak (Eds.), Critical Discourse Analysis Theory
  and Interdisciplinartiy. New York, NY Palgrave
  Macmillan.
• Billig, M. (2008a). The language of critical
  discourse analysis The case of nominalization.
  Discourse and Society, 19, 783-800. doi
  10.1177/0957926508095894
• Billig, M. (2008b). Nominalizing and
  de-nominalizing A reply. Discourse and Society,
  19, 829-841. doi 10.1177/0957926508095898
• Chilton, P. (2005). Missing links in mainstream
  CDA Modules, blends and the critical instinct.
  In R.
• Wodak P. Chilton (Eds.), A New Agenda in
  (Critical) Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam, The
  Netherlands John Benjamins Publishing Co.
• Critical Discourse Analysis and why I fucking
  despise it. (2009, March 16). Retrieved from
  http//blog-of-revelation.blogspot.com/2009/03/cri
  tical-discourse-analysis-and-why-i.html
• Fairclough, N. (1995). Media Discourse. London
  Edward Arnold.
• Foucault, M. (1972). Archaeology of Knowledge.
  London Tavistock Publications.
• Fowler, R. Kress, G. (1979). Critical
  linguistics. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress,
  T. Trew. Language and Control. London Routledge
  Kegan Paul Ltd.
• OConnor, P. (2007). Activist sociolinguistics in
  a critical discourse analyst perspective. In G.
  Weiss R. Wodak (Eds.), Critical Discourse
  Analysis Theory and Interdisciplinartiy. New
  York, NY Palgrave Macmillan.