11. CRITICAL DISCOURSE
Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a branch of linguistics that seeks to understand
how and why certain texts affect readers and hearers. Through the analysis of
grammar, it aims to uncover the 'hidden ideologies' that can influence a reader
or hearer's view of the world. Analysts have looked at a wide variety of spoken
and written texts – political manifestos, advertising, rules and regulations –
in an attempt to demonstrate how text producers use language (wittingly or not)
in a way that could be ideologically significant.
CDA is not a
monolithic method or field of study but rather a loose agglomeration of approaches to the study of discourse, all of which are located broadly
within the tradition of critical social research that has its roots in the work of the
Frankfurt School (Wodak and Meyer 2001). Though having developed, at least
initially, largely independently of each other, these approaches are united by
a concern to understand how social power, its use and abuse, is related to
spoken and written language.
22. POLITICAL DISCOURSE
What exactly
is 'political discourse'? The easiest, and not altogether misguided, answer is that political discourse is identified
by its actors or authors, viz.,
politicians. Indeed, the vast bulk of studies of political discourse is about the text and talk of professional politicians or
political institutions, such as
presidenta and prime ministers and other members of government, parliament or political parties, both at the local, national
and international levels. Some of
the studies of politicians take a discourse analytical approach (Carbó 1984; Dillon et al. 1990; Harris 1991; Holly 1990; Maynard This way of defining political discourse ishardly different from the
identification of medical, legal or educational discoursewith the respective
participants in the domains of medicine, law or education.This is the
relatively easy part (if we can agree on what `politics' means).
From the
interactional point of view ofdiscourse analysis, we therefore should also
include the various recipients inpolitical communicative events, such as the
public, the people, citizens, the`masses', and other groups or categories. That
is, once we locate politics and itsdiscourses in the public sphere, many more
participants in political communicationappear on the stage.
Obviously,
the same is true for the definition of the field of media discourse,which also
needs to focus on its audiences. And also in medical, legal or
educational discourse, we not
only think of participants such as doctors, lawyers or teachers, but also of patients, defendants and students. Hence, the
delimitation of political discourse by its
principal authors' is insufficient and needs to be extended to a more complex picture of all its relevant participants,
whether or not these are actively involved in
political discourse, or merely as recipients in one-way modes of communication.
References
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