Critical Discourse Analysis: Historical Origins

The concepts of ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ have been utilized heavily in social sciences and, the definitions have been revisited in many studies (Wodak, 2001), despite an all too frequent mention, a concrete definition has been elusive. The fact that these attempts to define ‘text’ or ‘discourse’ often cite Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, or Louis Althusser makes the task more challenging. According to Wodak (2001) discourse can mean anything from “a historical monument, a lieu de mémoire, a policy, a political strategy, narratives in a restricted or broad sense of the term, text, talk, a speech, topic-related conversations, to language per se”. Van Dijk (1997a) laments that just like concepts such as language, communication, society, culture, etc., “the notion of discourse is essentially fuzzy”. While Van Dijk (2007) refers to discourse as a complex phenomenon that has been studied in virtually all disciplines of social sciences, Widdowson (1995) calls discourse as a “contentious area of enquiry”. Fairclough (1992) sates that discourse is a “difficult concept largely because there are so many conflicting and overlapping definitions formulated from various theoretical and disciplinary standpoints”. However, multiple scholars belonging to the field of critical linguistics have formulated a somewhat tangible definition of the term ‘discourse’. Foremost among these scholars are Teun A. van Dijk, Ruth Wodak and Norman Fairclough among others. At its most basic form, discourse may refer to the use of language either spoken or written, it might also refer to ideas or ideologies propagated through text, discourse can also be understood as interaction in social situations (van Dijk, 2007). In European academic tradition sometimes a distinction is recognized between ‘text’ and ‘discourse’; however, generally the term discourse may be used for both oral and written texts. Discourse may also refer to the process of inferring meanings with the help of language or other symbols in a particular situation or setting. Discourse cannot be understood without analysing its relationship with text, Chalaby (1996) clarifies this relation, “discourses are embodied and enacted in a variety of texts, although they exist beyond the individual texts that compose them. Texts can thus be considered a discursive 'unit' and a material manifestation of discourse”. It is important to note that ‘texts’ are not confined to written words but the meaning encompasses spoken words, pictures, symbols and artefacts. While many scholars do see a degree of ideational difference between text and discourse, it is also used synonymously; for instance in Wallace Chafe’s magisterial Oxford International Encyclopaedia of Linguistics, the author doesn’t differentiate between the two:

The term ‘discourse’ is used in somewhat different ways by different scholars, but underlying the differences is a common concern for language beyond the boundaries of isolated sentences. The term TEXT is used in similar ways. Both terms may refer to a unit of language larger than the sentence: one may speak of a ‘discourse’ or a ‘text (Chafe, 1992 as cited in Widdowson, 2004) (p.6)

Commenting on the relationship between discourse and text Parker (1992, as cited in Phillips and Hardy, 2002) writes that discourse can be defined “as an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception, that brings an object into being”. Traditionally, i.e. before the advent of CDA as an academic discipline, discourse was treated in linguistic terms, either as texts that were larger than a sentence or as language employed by people. Critical linguists and scholars from the emerging field of CDA modified this traditional approach, and as Blommaert (2005) explains “little by little, old and well-established concepts and viewpoints from linguistics were traded for more dynamic, flexible, and activity-centred concepts and viewpoint.” Van Dijk (1990) comments on this transition, “somewhat hesitatingly at first, linguistics and grammars dared to go beyond their self-imposed barriers of the sentence in order to discover a rich field of discourse constraints on grammatical rules.” While there is some overlap between the linguistic and social aspects of discourse, Cobley (2001) clearly delineates the difference: the linguistic approach “focuses on formal properties of stretches of language above the level of the sentence”, the social approach is concerned about ‘text’ as a material site for socially produced meanings, in short, “Discourse is social; and text need not be linguistic”.

The study of discourse has been guided by what Ives (2004) and Poynton and Lee (2000) refer to as a ‘linguistic turn’ that occurred in philosophy and social sciences in the 20th century. This turn relates to a fresh and vigorous look at the use of language in society, and it recognizes how language may not be as passive as it may seem, but it continually responds to the social contexts in which it operates. More importantly, under this ‘linguistic turn’ the ability of language to internalize and carry the ideologies that oppress the people has come under considerable scrutiny. Lemke (2005) elucidates, “language does not operate in isolation. Meanings always get made in contexts where social expectations and non-linguistic symbols play a role”. It’s these contexts and non-linguistics symbols that are the focus of discourse studies; the idea is not to focus on language in isolation but to adopt a more holistic view in order to better understand the world we live in. Phillips and Hardy (2002) explain the role of discourse in comprehending a social phenomenon or a problem by citing the example of the refugee problem. The modern world with its characteristic ethnic strife, political violence and civil wars has produced an unfortunate but a steady stream of refugees, but how does one define or understand the refugee issue from a discourse-analytic perspective? First, one needs to understand the discourses of related issues such as immigration, asylum, demographics etc., and then texts which carry the concept or debate over refugees, must be examined, these texts may include United Nations documents, news debates, editorials, cartoons etc. Finally, the social contexts such as wars, natural calamities, politics, totalitarian leaders etc. should come in focus. These relationships between texts, contexts and discourse will help us to provide a discourse-analytic interpretation of the problem. Texts, then should not be studied in isolation, as Phillips and Hardy (2002) clarify:

We cannot simply focus on an individual text, however; rather, we must refer to bodies of texts because it is the interrelations between texts, changes in texts, new textual forms, and new systems of distributing texts that constitute a discourse over time. Similarly, we must also make reference to the social context in which the texts are found and the discourses are produced. It is this connection between discourses and the social reality that they constitute that makes discourse analysis a powerful method for studying social phenomena. (p.4-5)

Blommaert (2005) explains the concept of discourse as a phenomenon by explaining the structure of advertisements in print media. An advertisement in a newspaper, for instance is composed of a variety of elements, such as written text, graphics, pictures, colours, logos etc. Here the textual and the visual cannot be separated, and these components that make an advertisement are neither arbitrary nor meaningful in itself, Blommaert clarifies- “the object we call ‘discourse’ here is the total layout of the advertisement, the total set of features -- in short, it is the advertisement, not the text or the images”.

Van Dijk (2008) credits Language and Control published in 1979 as the first book of the field Critical Discourse Studies, Language as Ideology published in the same year is also considered inspirational for the scholars in later years. Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) was born after the need for critical research to be socially relevant and be more focussed on problems rather than dwelling on purely academic and theoretical issues, as van Dijk (1986, as cited in Wodak, 2001) articulates:

Beyond description or superficial application, critical science in each domain asks further questions, such as those of responsibility, interests, and ideology.

Instead of focusing on purely academic or theoretical problems, it starts from prevailing social problems, and thereby chooses the perspective of those who suffer most, and critically analyses those in power, those who are responsible, and those who have the means and the opportunity to solve such problems. (p.2)

In books and surveys discussing the origins of CDA, a reference is made to the University of East Anglica, where in 1970s critical linguists turned to the use of language in social institutions (Blommaert, 2005; Wodak, 1995). Critical linguists took up the task of investigating the relation between language and power and more importantly language and ideology. Wodak (2001) refers to a group of scholars from the field of social-linguistics and allied fields as a ‘CDA group’, which came into being after a seminar in 1991 at Amsterdam. Wodak further refers to a ‘CDA network’ of scholars that came into existence after van Dijk launched the pivotal journal called Discourse and Society in 1990. Apart from van Dijk, Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak , other scholars that have been strongly associated with CDA are; Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

The concept of ideology as employed by various scholars from the field of CDA directly owes its origin to Louis Althusser’s theories of ideology (Althusser, 1976; Althusser, 1984). It should be noted that ideology can be termed as a protean concept i.e. “It can mean what we wish it to mean; it can be fit into many theories, many texts, many politics (Lemke, 2005). Ideology according to Althhusser does not merely resides in the realm of ideas but exists in institutions and is often manifested in the practises specific to these institutions. Althusser’s 1970 essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses assumed a cult status and his brilliant articulation of the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (church, school, unions etc.) or ISA became an ideological fount for future scholars from diverse fields including from critical linguistics. Ferretter (2006) sums up the contribution of Althusser in the contested filed of ideology:

For all of us who live in a society that is good on top, Althusser shows us how to make sense of the literature and the culture we produce and read in that society. It is only on the basis of this kind of understanding, he argues, that we can contribute to changing it (p. 2)

While listing the Ideological State Apparatuses, Althusser specifically mentions the press, radio and television as the “the communications ISA”. It is interesting to note that the concept of ideology was initially envisaged as a theory of ideas (Althusser, 1976), Karl Marx further forged this generic concept of ideology and labelled it as “system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group” (Zizek, 1994).

Ruth Wodak one of the earlier proponents of CDA established a rule for critical linguistics (the terms were often used interchangeably, though CDA is now the preferred usage), since CDA is aimed towards uncovering injustice and inequality, it should not remain descriptive and neutral. This should not be interpreted as a clarion call for being ideologically partisan; Wodak buttresses her argument by citing Adorno (1976) and the positivist dispute in the German sociology. The idea is to “find a balance between commitment and distance to the research object” (Fjørtoft, 2013). Wodak (1989) further specifies the aims of critical linguistics or CDA “to uncover and de-mystify certain social processed in this and other societies, to make mechanisms of manipulation, description, and demagogy explicit and transparent”. Thus, it CDA as a method and as a concept also traces its origin to the intense debate around critical theory espoused by a wave of philosophers and social scientists who were later termed as belonging to the Frankfurt School. Donoghue (2018) states that CDA “is rooted in critical social theory, drawing from thinkers such as Foucault, Bourdieu, Gramsci, Althusser and the Frankfurt School”. It is pertinent to note that many important contributors to the field of CDA have repeatedly asserted the importance of raising the consciousness of people that would ultimately lead to emancipation; this would be achieved by uncovering the hidden relationship between discourse and power. Paying homage to the classical tenet of critical theory, Fairclough (1989) asserts that one of the reasons behind investigating the relationship between language and power is “to help increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation”. The proponents of critical theory asserted in their writings that this approach shouldn’t vacillate from two of its important goals; human emancipation and liberation, as Bronner (2011) states that not only the “critical theory was intended as a general theory of society fuelled by the desire for liberation” but “human emancipation became the aim of this approach” . Differentiating between scientific theories and critical theories Geuss (1981) points out that “critical theories aim at emancipation and enlightenment, at making agents aware of hidden coercion, thereby freeing them from that coercion and putting them in a position to determine where their; true interests lie”. Here emancipation and enlightenment refers to a transition from a state of false consciousness brought by the ideological and material processes that misleads the members of a class to a final state: where people recognize the self-imposed coercion and break free from the shackles of false consciousness. While critical theory was born in the intellectual cradle of Marxism (hence the semantic dependence on Marxist terms such as false consciousness), the horrors of Stalinist terror, the news reports of the Soviet Gulags and the temporary relationship between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, resulted in the Frankfurt School breaking free from the “stale critique of capitalism” (Geuss, 1981). This resulted in an intense urge to look beyond economic superstructures and other Marxist fixations. CDA certainly is not the first discipline to deploy the critical approach, a host of other disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, social policy etc. have developed a critical version of their original disciplines, in fact one of the earliest uses of an academic approach labelled as critical can be traced to Emmanuel Kant who wrote The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 (Billig, 2007). According to Billig (2007), an academic approach can be termed critical if it is critical of the present social order and is “rooted in radical critique of social relations”. Explaining the rationale and logic behind the term critical in the Frankfurt School sense, Connerton (1976, as cited in Fowler, 2003) explains:

Critique’…denotes reflection on a system of constraints, which are humanly produced distorting pressures to which individuals, or a group of individuals, or the human race as a whole, succumb in their process of self-formation….

Criticism…is brought to bear on objects of experience whose ‘objectivity’ is called into question; criticism supposes that there is a degree of inbuilt deformity which masquerades as reality. It seeks to remove this distortion and thereby to make possible the liberation of what has been distorted. Hence it entails a conception of emancipation. (p. 4)

Differentiating between critical and non-critical approaches Fairclough (1992) states that “critical approaches differ from non-critical approaches in not just describing discursive practices, but also showing how discourse is shaped by relations of power and ideologies”. Fairclough (2013), further sees the ‘critique’ part of CDA as an ability to make visible the interconnectedness of things.

CDA draws much of it succour from neo-Marxism, namely that political economies produce discourses that too often carry hidden interests and ideologies. Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is directly relevant to CDA and the idea of hegemony provides a theoretical background to CDA. Antonio Gramsci at the time of his demise was not known outside the communist circles, his writings though, cast a long shadow on the works of political theorists and cultural critics. It took decades before his work attracted the attention of scholars and it was not till the 1980s that the growing interest in cultural studies and a fascination with the question of power attracted scholars from different disciplines to the copious amount of ideas and concepts that Gramsci left scattered in his Prison Notebooks (Crehan, 2002). As Buttigieg (1986) explains the legacy left by the prolific author, “the enormous body of literature that now surrounds and even threatens to obscure Gramsci's work is proof enough that his legacy has been and continues to be recognized and appreciated.” Barett (2012) further accords tribute to Gramsci:

His approach to ideology, his theory of hegemony, his account of the roles of intellectuals, his insistence on the importance of the tactics and persuasion and his detailed attention to question of culture and politics of everyday culture, have all been taken up enthusiastically by a generation sick of the moralizing rules and precepts of both the Marxists- Leninist and Labourist lefts. (p. 235)

Before Gramsci the idea of Hegemony usually referred to the predominance of one nation over others, this being the military dominance part of the concept, Hegemony was also understood in terms of cultural prestige. The social democrat intelligentsia in pre-revolution decades Russia added an economic aspect to the definition and soon came up with the concept of class Hegemony. Lenin further revolutionized the concept and defined it in more actionable and practical terms: he wanted a proletariat hegemony not only on the Czarist forces but on other class enemies as well, mainly the bourgeois. The Italian philosopher transformed the idea and “hegemony is now used to describe the intricacies of power relations in many different fields from literature, education, film and cultural studies to political science, history and international relations (Ives, 2004). More importantly, Gramsci saw hegemony as a tool to form and organize consent. The reason why Gramsci took the intellectual world of Marxism by storm is that he advanced and finely tuned both the ideas of ‘ideology’ and ‘hegemony’ as espoused by classical Marxists. He achieved this by overriding and adding to the concept of Ideological epiphenomenalism and class reductionism. Ideological epiphenomenalism in a Marxist sense refers to a direct relationship between ideological superstructure and economic superstructure. He not only rejected class reductionism but as Ives (2004) explains ,“unlike other Marxists who omitted the importance of culture and non-economic aspects of society, Gramsci provided a much broader social and cultural portrayal of modern society”. Laclau (2005) further distinguishes between Gramsci and classical Marxists, “Gramscianism represents ‘a crucial epistemological break’ within Marxism because it ‘breaks decisively with [traditional Marxism’s] essentialist social logic”. According to Gramsci’s predecessors, both the ruling class and the working class would have an ideology but “ideology was conceived to have a class nature and was considered to play no significant role in social and revolutionary dynamics” (Ramos, 1982). Gramsci accords a more formal and powerful role to ideology and according to him it is a “practise that produces subjects”, it is also a battlefield or a terrain of struggle (Woolcock, 1985).

Language has been important to social theory and philosophy since a long time, not only Gramsci but “some of the most influential social and political theorists of the twentieth century have been concerned with language: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ferdinand de Saussure, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky” (Ives, 2004). As mentioned earlier, a host of scholars took notice of Gramscian concepts, notably the idea of Hegemony became a focal point for cultural theorists. Linguistics scholars took notice too and were soon enamoured with the relationship between language and hegemony, more precisely the use of language to carry the ideas of the ruling class. Marx and Engels famously postulated that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (Marx & Engels, 1968), for critical linguists and their successors, language was not only the vessel though which such ideas are carried but language was also the tool through which consent is created. It is important to note that Gramsci not only studied linguistics during his university days but took a keen interest in the subject as well, for him power is not only exercised though language but language is also a metaphor though which power functions.

CDA, then is a dynamic and multidisciplinary approach that draws on a wide array of disciplines, as Van Noppen (2004) points out “it is a complex cluster of practices and approaches at the crossroads of several disciplines”, Fjørtoft (2013) elaborates, “it is an interdisciplinary approach or research program that draws upon a range of theoretical and methodological frameworks from the humanities and the social sciences”. It is important to note that the progenitors of CDA have stressed on the interdisciplinary nature of its research since the very beginning, similarly to look for some sort of a theoretical background which exists in other disciplines and may act as a guiding light for CDA will be fruitless, but if one attempts to define CDA in simpler terms, it can be labelled as a bridge between the social and the linguistic. “The problem is however that sociological and linguistic categories are basically not compatible” (Weiss & Wodak, 2007) and this issue of reconciling two divergent horizons has plagued the discipline of CDA since its inception, this particular issue attracts much criticism. Specifically as a tool, CDA combines textual and linguistic theories with socio-political and critical theories and unless the linguistic and sociological approaches are united, it will be difficult to understand or analyse the complex relationship between society and discourse. The bridge between the social and the linguistic has been created to address a problem that has long dogged modern social science; Weiss (1996, as cited in Weiss & Wodak, 2007) refers to this issue as a ‘wound’. This wound has been given many names; objectivism vs subjectivism, voluntarism versus determinism and so on, the central idea behind this problem is to see the actions of individuals as emanating from their own self and consciousness or to understand the actions of individuals being guided by forces beyond his or her control-some invisible determining structures that leave no room for independent and unbiased thinking. CDA arose after linguists challenged the trend in language studies that solely focussed on the structure of language and ignored the social context, here CDA benefited from Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural approach to language. Before Saussure made an enduring mark in the field of linguistics and semiotics, the language theorists of the time were primarily concerned with studying the evolution and history of word forms. The Swiss linguist radically broke away from tradition and offered an alternative way to study language: one that focusses on how language operates as a system rather than focussing on the history of language. Specific roots of CDA can be traced to socio-linguistics, text linguistics, classical rhetoric and pragmatics.

CDA is strongly tethered around the concept of power; according to CDA power is articulated and manifested in discourses resulting in domination and oppression (Rogers, 2011). Blommaert (2005) argues that one of the aims of CDA should be “an analysis of power effects, of the outcome of power, of what power does to people, groups, and societies, and of how this impact comes about”. Any mention of power and its relationship with discourse would be incomplete without discussing Michael Foucault, and it is no surprise that the influential French thinker and philosopher had a significant influence on CDA—specifically on the nature and characteristic of power that CDA often claims to investigate. One of the primary concerns of Foucault was the process of creation of knowledge and its relation with power, to explain the concepts he departed away from the structuralist approach identified by Saussure and Barthes, for him relationships of power were more important than relationships of language. For Foucault, the concept of discourse was not merely confined to language, but it was also about production of knowledge, as Hall (1997/2003) explains:

What interested him were the rules and practices that produced meaningful statements and regulated discourse in different historical periods. By 'discourse', Foucault meant 'a group of statements which provide a language for talking about- a way of representing the knowledge about- a particular topic at a particular historical moment. (p. 44)

The French thinker radically claimed in Archaeology of Knowledge that “nothing has any meaning outside of discourse” (Foucault, 1972/2002), while this position has been criticized by many scholars, it specifically refers to the idea that in order to understand a thing, or to have any knowledge of it—it must have a meaning, and it is discourses that produce meaning and knowledge. Therefore, without the help of existing discourses a thing would simply not exist. Discourse, then according to Foucault is an institutionalized way of speaking or writing about reality that defines what can be intelligibly thought and said about the world and what cannot.

Van Dijk (1993) provides a handier role for CDA, according to him CDA studies, critiques and exposes the dominance that is manifested in dominant discourses.

In conclusion, the text delves into the intricate domain of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), exploring its historical origins, definitions of key terms, and the interdisciplinary nature of this field. It emphasizes the importance of understanding discourse beyond isolated sentences, incorporating social contexts and non-linguistic symbols. CDA, rooted in the 'linguistic turn,' aims to uncover power dynamics, ideologies, and social constraints embedded in language. Influenced by thinkers like Foucault and Gramsci, CDA serves as a bridge between linguistic and sociological perspectives, addressing the complex relationship between society and discourse. Overall, the text provides a comprehensive overview of CDA's evolution and its fundamental role in analyzing and critiquing the dynamics of power and language.