CRITICAL DICOURSE ANALYSIS by Fairclough

How to understand the social world and how it changes? Through the undestanding of social practices,
social identities and social relations. What social practices? Discursive practices. What are discursive
practices? The processes of text production and consumption.

The aim of critical discourse analysis is to shed light on the linguistic discursive dimension of social and
cultural phenomena and processes of change in late modernity.

What is discourse?

Discourse is constituted by other social practices and constitutes the social world. That means that
discourse as a social practice shapes, reshapes and reflects social structures.

Language as discourse is a form of action (a way to change the world) and a form of action, which is
socially and historically situated and in a dialectical relationship with other aspects of society.

Language use should be empirically analyzed within its social context. In other words, the textual
analysis.

Discourse functions ideologically. What are the ideological effects? The creation and reproduction of
unequal power relation among social groups.

The concept of critical. Aims to revel the role of discursive practice in the maintenance of the social
world, including those social relations that involve unequal relations of power.

Taking the side of oppressed groups, CDA is politically committed to social change.

F A I R C L O U G H ’ S C R I T I C A L D I S C O U R S E A N A LY S I S

Discourse is an important form of social practice which both reproduces and changes knowledge,
identities and social relations including power relations, and at the same time is also shaped by other
social practices and structures.

social structure as social relations both in society as a whole and in specific institutions, and as consisting
of both discursive and non-discursive elements (Fairclough 1992b: 64)

discursive practice not only reproduces an already existing discursive structure but also challenges the
structure by using words to denote what may lie outside the structure.

he diverges in a significant way from poststructuralist discourse theory in concentrating on building a

theoretical model and methodological tools for empirical research in everyday social interaction.

Macrosociogical tradition: social practices are shaped by social structures and power relations and that
people are often not aware of these processes.

Discourse contribuites to the formation of:

Social identities (identity), social relations (relational function) and systems of knowledge and meanings
(ideational function).
In any analysis two thing are critical:

 Communicative event. An instance of language use such as a newspaper article, a film, a video,
an interview or a political speech.
 The order of discourse. The configuration of all the discourse types that are used within a social
institution or a social field. Discourse types consist of discourses and genres

Every instance of language use is a communicative event consisting of three dimensions:

• it is a text (speech, writing, visual image or a combination of these);

• it is a discursive practice which involves the production and consumption of texts; and

• it is a social practice.

Step in the investigation

1. the analysis of the communicative event in relation to the order of discourse.

Every communicative event functions as a form of social practice in reproducing or challenging the order
of discourse.

The discursive is one kind of mechanism working in combination with other mechanisms – e.g.
economical, physical, biological and psychological – to constitute a social practice.

The discourse order is a system, but not a system in a structuralist sense. That is, communicative events
not only reproduce orders of discourse, but can also change them through creative language use.

You either reproduce a system or challenge it.

The order of discourse is the sum of all the genres and discourses which are in use within a specific
social domain. The order or discourse both delimits and change the communication. Language users can
change the order of discourse by using discourses and genres in new ways or by importing discourses
and genres from other orders of discourse.

Fairclough views in terms of the ‘marketisation of discourse’ – a societal development in late modernity,
whereby market discourses colonize the discursive practices of public institutions (Fairclough 1992b,
1993, 1998).

Interdiscursivity

Discursive reproduction and change can thus be investigated through an analysis of the relations
between different discourses within an order of discourse and between different orders of discourse
(Fairclough 1995b: 56)

Interdiscursivity occurs when different discourses and genres are articulated together in a
communicative event. Through new articulations of discourses, the boundaries change, both within the
order of discourse and between different orders of discourse.
Hegemony is not only dominance but also a process of negotiation out of which emerges a consensus
concerning meaning.

According to Fairclough, the concept of hegemony gives us the means by which to analyse how
discursive practice is part of a larger social practice involving power relations: discursive practice can be
seen as an aspect of a hegemonic struggle that contributes to the reproduction and transformation of
the order of discourse of which it is part (and consequently of the existing power relations). Discursive
change takes place when discursive elements are articulated in new ways.