Intan Nur Charina (146332049)

Dian Natalia S (146332009)

CDA van Dijk's Discourse and Knowledge
1. What kinds of structure to be studied in CDA?
The kinds of structure to be studied in CDA involve:
Discourse structure, such as macro structure, which cannot be directly
observed in the text, general topics, general/ global meanings explained in
psychological terms. the discourse structure is analyzed at any level;
semantics, syntactic, pragmatic, argumentative, narrative and all dimensions of

discourse (to describe texts and talks)

Mental/Cognitive structure is the interface between discourse and society and
relevant to produce and comprehend the discourse. (discourse and society can
only be related through the mind of participants/ language users, since there is

no direct relation between social structure and how people speak).

Social structure
CDA studies the relation between discourse and social structure, such as
domination, power abuse, inequality, organizations, groups, and so on.

2. What is the context according to Van Dijk?

Please explain! Supply with an example!
In sociolinguistics, language use varies with social parameters like ethnicity, age,
social class, known as context. The contexts defined above are believed to influence
the production of language use. However, Van Dijk believes that context is not out
there; instead it lies within human mental cognition. This is because there is no direct
relation between social structure and language use. It is not the objective social
structures that have influence on language use. What has an influence on language is
the subjective definition of the social structure. Thus, context is defined as the
subjective definition of the participants of the social situation/ communicative
situation. Context is the subjective mental model of the communicative situation
(what is considered relevant for people). Context is not the objective social situation
of communicative.
For example:
Objectively speaking, John is English, a father, a son, a husband, and a lecturer. In the
classroom in which he teaches, he speaks as a lecturer (within the context there is only
a fragment of social situations). He is aware that what is relevant in the

communicative situation is his role as a lecturer, which demands that he give lecture
on the subject that he teaches. He uses the language the he does based on his own
definition of the social communicative situations.
Another example of context as the subjective mental model of communicative
situation is that everybody comprehends a discourse/ talk in slightly different way,
because everyone has different knowledge, aims, and personal history. That is why
people in the same social situation all talk in a different way.
A clearer example can be illustrated in the example of students in the classroom.
Suppose that the students are at the same age, and they all come from the same
neighborhood, also that the school is a single sex school, the students produce
different language use when asked to talk about the same topic. That is because they
all have different subjective mental model of communicative situation.
Therefore speech, discourse and language use varies as a function of contextsubjective mental model of communicative situation.
3. What does Van Dijk mean by episodic memory?
As mentioned previously, according to Van Dijk context deals with human mental
cognition (how they define the social situation, how they comprehend discourse).
Context is inside the human mind, since the language use depends on how the
participants of the communication define the social situation in their mind. The mental
cognition is part of long-term memory. This is a specific section of the long-term
memory called episodic memory. Episodic memory is where people store their
personal experiences (also called autobiographical memory). There is where people
have the mental model of all the experiences of the everyday life (with emotion,
opinion, etc).
4. What is knowledge? Where does it come from? What are its criteria?
Traditionally (based on the classical definition), knowledge is defined as justified
true beliefs. Knowledge is like beliefs; what you think about something, the
representation of what is out there. However, the beliefs which can be classified into
knowledge are ones which are true. Thus, knowledge must be justified by evidence
from observation, experience, discourse, or inference to show that it is true.
However, the definition is problematic, because it is not flexible, e.g. what was
considered as knowledge (that the earth was flat) is now not knowledge, but a false
assumption.
Therefore, Van Dijk proposes a more relative and contextual conception of
knowledge. He believes that knowledge is contextual and relative. It is relative

depending on the situation where you speak. Knowledge and truth is relative to the
communicative situation (contextual). It is relative to a culture, society, history, etc.
Knowledge is beliefs justified by the knowledge criteria of an epistemic community.
These epistemic communities may have different kinds of epistemic criteria, e.g.
in scientific contexts, the criteria are different from the criteria of everyday situations.
Thus, it is relative to the epistemic criteria of an epistemic community.
Knowledge is obtained in three ways:
First, by experience, by the use of our senses (seeing, touching, hearing, etc), e.g.
children can know that wood is hard or water is liquid because they touch it.
Therefore, they do not have to be told about that, because they know it from their own
experience.
Second, knowledge is obtained through discourse, e.g. most of what we know about
the world comes from discourse (text and talk: communication).
The third one is the inferences based on the everyday experiences and discourse.
Accordingly, the criteria of knowledge can be summarized into three keywords,
perception/experience, discourse and thought/reasoning.