CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

It’s a tool of analytical research.

It helps to study and identify the way social power, abuse;
dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and
resisted (by text) in the social and political context.

Scholarly discourse is inherently part of and influenced by

social structure and produced in social interaction.
Scholarly practices: Theory Formation; description and
explanation are also situated in sociopolitical context.
 Aims of CDA
• It focuses on primarily social problems and political
issues rather than on current paradigms and fashion.
• Empirically adequate critical analysis of social
problems is usually multidisciplinary.
• CDA does not merely describe discourse structures it
tries to explain them in terms of properties of social
interaction and especially social structure.
• More specifically, CDA focuses on the ways discourse
structures enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce or
challenge relations of power and dominance in
society.
• Fairclough and Wodak(1997) summarize the
tenets of CDA as follows:
• CDA addresses social problems
• Power relations are discursive
• Discourse constitutes society and culture
• Discourse does ideological work
• Discourse is historical
• The link between text and society is mediated
• Discourse analysis is interpretative and
explanatory
• Discourse is a form of social action
 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
CDA will ask questions about the way specific
discourse structures are deployed in the
reproduction of social dominance( whether they
are part of conversation or news reports or
other genres and contexts)
Typical vocabulary will include notions as
‘power’, ‘dominance’, ‘hegemony’, ‘ideology’,
‘class’, ‘gender’, ‘race’, ‘discrimination’,
‘interests’, ‘reproduction’, ‘institutions’, ‘social
structures’, and ‘social order’
 1.1 MACRO VS MICRO
Language use, verbal interaction and communication
belong to Micro level of social order.
Power, dominance and inequality between social
groups belong to Macro level.
CDA has to theoretically bridge this gap.
E.g: A racist speech in parliament is discourse at
micro level of social interaction in the specific
situation of a debate, but at the same time may
enact or be constituent part of legislation or
reproduction of racism at the macro level.
CDA bridges this gap:
1.Members-groups: Language users engage in
discourse as members of social groups,
organizations, or institutions; and groups thus
may act “by” their members.

2.Actions-process: Social acts of individual

actors are therefore part of group actions and
social processes such as legislation, news-
making or the reproduction of racism.
3. Context-social structure: situations of discursive
interaction are part of social structure. A press
conference may be a typical practice of an organization;
it maybe ‘local’ but can have ‘global’ context.
4. Personal and social cognition: Language users as
social actors have both personal and social cognition:
personal memories, knowledge and opinions as well as
those shared with members of the group or culture as a
whole. Both types of cognition influence interaction and
discourse of individual members and shared social
representations govern the collective actions of a group
 1.2 POWER AS CONTROL
A central notion in CDA is power and more
specifically social power. CDA frames power in terms
of control.

Groups have (more or less) power if they are able to

(more or less) control the acts and minds of
(members of) other groups.

This presupposes a power base of privilege: access to

social resources (force, money, status, fame,
knowledge, information, culture)
There are different types of power. These are
distinguished according to various resources
employed to exercise such power:
Coercive power of the military will be based on
force.
The rich will have power because of money.
Persuasive power of parents, professors, journalists
is based on knowledge, information or authority.

Note: Power is seldom absolute. Groups may control other

groups or only in some specific situations or social domains
The power of dominant groups may be
integrated in laws, rules, norms, habits and may
take form of what Gramsci called ‘hegemony’
e.g: sexism, racism and class domination.

Note: Power is not exercised in obviously

abusive acts of dominant groups members but
may be enacted in the myriad of taken-for-
granted actions of everyday life.
Relationship between power and discourse:
Access to specific forms of discourse(politics, media,
science) are power resources.
Action is controlled by our minds: if we are able to
influence minds, we influence actions.

Ques: How do more powerful groups control public

discourse?
Ques: How does discourse control mind and action of
(less) powerful groups and what are the social
consequences of such control, such as social
inequality?
 Control of Public Discourse
Access to or control over public discourse and
communication is an important symbolic
resource. (Knowledge or information)

We have active control over everyday talk

( family, friends, colleagues).
Passive control over media usage, myth making.
We are targets of text or talk (bosses, teachers,
authorities: police, judges , bureaucrats, tax
inspectors)
Members of powerful social groups and
institutions have exclusive access to, and control
of public discourse.
Professors control scholarly discourse
Teachers control educational discourse
Journalists control media discourse
Lawyers control legal discourse
Politicians control policy and political discourse
If discourse is defined in terms of complex
communicative events, access and control may be
defined as both context and structures of text and
talk themselves.

CONTEXT: mentally represented structure, of those

properties of a social situation that are relevant for
production and comprehension of discourse.
Situation, setting (time and place), ongoing actions ,
participants, social and institutional roles; and
mental representations: goals, knowledge, opinions
attitudes and ideologies.
Controlling the structure of the text and talk
themselves: powerful groups decide on the
possible genres or speech acts.
e.g: police officers use force to get a confession;
male editors exclude women from writing
economic news.
Topics (semantic macrostructures) or topic change
also decode the control mechanism of discourse
and communication.
e.g: editors decide what news topics will be
covered; men control topics and topic change in
conversations with women
 Meaning, form, style may be controlled too
“keep your voice down”
“keep quiet”
“politically correct”
“mumble”
Dimensions of discourse may be controlled by
prescribing and proscribing (banning) specific
speech acts; by selectively distributing or
interrupting.
 MIND CONTROL Contextual

1. Recipients accept beliefs, knowledge, opinions through

discourse from what see as authoritative, trustworthy
and credible sources(scholars, experts, professionals)
2. Participants are obliged to be recipients of discourse (in
education, job situations); lessons, learning materials,
job instructions need to be attended to, interpreted
and learned as intended by institutional or
organizational authors.
3. No alternative beliefs/narrative is provided.
4. Recipients may not have the knowledge needed to
challenge the discourse or information they are
exposed to.
• Mind control is the function of Discursive
structures and strategies of text or talk itself.
Discourse structures influence mental representations, topics at
global level influence what people perceive as most important.
A newspaper headline typically topic-alzes Crime committed by
minorities/ immigrants/ coloured people. It may further translate
into debates/ legislations premised on implicit beliefs that all
minorities are criminals; all immigrants are illegal; all coloured
people are aggressive .

A typical feature of manipulation is communicate beliefs implicitly

without asserting. (less chance that they will be challenged)
 LEGAL DISCOURSE
• Legal discourse refers to the flow of communication
with unique characteristics that occurs among people
who operate the legal system
• First, it is important to note that language is both the
tool and the product of the legal system. Words are its
input and output. Certainly, physical actions may be
taken as a consequence of legal decisions
(imprisonment, foreclosure and sale of property, etc.)
but they are justified and respected because of the
language of judgments, not the physical power of
judges.
• One key feature is that the discourse of law
presents concepts and ideas such
as authority and justice as if they exist
independently of law, as real forces in the
world similar to gravity and magnetism. 
• Legal discourse describes itself as searching for, finding, and giving
effect to such forces.
• Another way of describing this activity is to say that it
involves reifying (creating objects out of) concepts. Critics label
these effects as word games played either by deluded or deceptive
lawyers and judges. Either the members of the legal system just do
not realize that they are actually creating what they claim to be
searching for, or they do know, and use legal discourse to reinforce
their own power in society. We might say that legal discourse is
therefore about imaginary objects, or more suspiciously, used to
mystify outsiders. Thus, concepts such as justice should be
considered figments of the imagination or political slogans (or
both). Perhaps legal discourse reifies justice to mask its
insubstantiality in an effort to reassure the public.* (to be read as
an aside)
 
• Another feature of legal discourse is what Peter Goodrich
calls its “unity, coherence and univocality.”
• According to orthodox legal theory, all the law (at least for
a specific territorial jurisdiction) forms a logical whole that
is internally consistent, coherent, and self-sufficient. In
other words, all the knowledge required to render justice
is contained in the law and expressed by legal discourse.
For Goodrich, this is a false claim. He argues that legal
discourse is inescapably rhetorical (intended to persuade)
—it is a discourse that attempts to convince everyone the
results of legal decisions are inevitable, and that mere
arguments can be transformed by the magical words of
the law into legal certainties.
• A third characteristic of legal discourse scholars have noted
is its “poetic” quality. Here poetic is not used in the sense
of being imaginatively appealing or playfully provocative,
but dense and self-referential, like the self-contained
world expressed by a good poem. One legal term is played
off against another in a kind of dance of meaning that is
familiar to the initiated but hard to follow by laypersons.
Thus, legal discourse is embedded in multiple contexts and
layers of significance that allows it to be read or spoken
with a variety of meanings, like multiple interpretations of
a poem. Although legal discourse is used to govern the
“real world” it actually creates its own world of meaning in
a way similar to creative writing
General characteristics of legal language to keep in mind when faced with these
types of documents:

1. Legal language is conscious of precedent; conservative; slow to change; formulaic.

• Underlying legal discourse is the idea that the law is a unified system devel­oping
organically from generation to generation.
• We believe that there is continuity in the law, that it has continued to grow and
develop in a consistent way through­out a very long tradition.
• Legal language reflects these conceptions; a keen consci­ousness of precedent
affects every choice of word, every turn of phrase in legal discourse. For this
reason, legal language tends to be quite conservative.
• It is slow to change and tends to retain phrases and formulas that have fallen into
disuse in everyday language.
• Legal language relies heavily on standard formulas of expression because the
meaning of these phrases has been sanctified through long use. Our need for legal
language to be as reliable and as consistent as possible from generation to
generation is of very high priority
2. Legal language is definite, precise and technical
"The lawmaker sends his message over wide reaches of space, and he hands it down
through indefinite stretches of time. These facts require that the lawmaker, above all
speakers, transmit his message in a form which cannot miscarry or be lost to view"
(Burke Shartel, Our Legal System and How it Works, p.288).

The message must be transmitted in language that is extraordinarily definite and

precise.
Words must be used in strict accordance with definitions understood by all
concerned. Members of the legal profession make careful distinctions be­tween words
that seem nearly interchangeable to the layman: the difference be­tween residence
and domicile, dictum and decision, privilege and right, may be of little consequence in
everyday language, but in a legal context these distinctions are critical.
Inevitably a large number of technical words must be used; popular language simply
lacks the necessary consistency and precision. "The degree of de­finiteness (needed
for legal discourse) can usually be obtained only by employing technical legal words
whose meaning has been brought out and fixed by long experience and use," Burke
Shartel explains (p.295). Technical words once we understand their meaning, are not
only precise but economical.
3. Legal language tends to spell things out with painstaking
attention to minute detail.

In everyday language, we ordinarily try to leave the

obvious unsaid; we take it for granted that people know
what we are thinking and understand what we mean. In
legal discourse, nothing can be taken for granted: every
significant detail must be stated explicitly.
We often feel that legal language is unnecessarily wordy,
even redundant, and we often feel tempted, while
translating, to try to reduce the number of words. This can
have dangerous consequences, because the apparent
redundancy usually is serving an important function.
 
• 4. Legal language is characterized in all its aspects by formality.

Formality in legal language is the expression of the formality of the

legal process itself. Berman and Greiner define formality as follows:

"If . . . a legal solution is sought to ...problems, then time must be

taken for deliberate action, for articulate definition of the issue, for
a decision which is subject to public scrutiny and which is objective
in the sense that It reflects an ex­plicitly personal judgment. These
qualities of legal activity may be summed up in the word formality;
formality in this sense inheres in all kinds of legal activity, whether
it be the making of laws (legislation), the issuing of regulations
under the law (administration), the applying of laws to disputes
(adjudications), or the making of private arrangements Intended to
be legally binding (negotiation of a contract, drawing of a will,
etc.)" (The Nature and' Function of the Law, p.26)
5. The complexity of certain legal concepts
demands a corresponding complexity in sentence
structure.

A great many qualifying phrases and dependent

clauses may be required in order to express a
concept with the necessary precision.

6. Many foreign expressions are found in the legal

language, especially Latin.