Abstract
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a contemporary approach to the study of philosophy, language and dis- courses in social institutions. Being a multidisciplinary approach and drawing from poststructuralist discourse theory, critical theory, critical linguistics, semiotics and social psychology among many approaches, it focuses on how social relations, identity, knowledge and power are constructed through written and spoken texts in social institutions like communities, schools and classrooms. This paper describes the historical contexts and theoretical precedents for sociological models for the study of language, Philosophy discourse and text in discourse communities and generally social science research and suggests the path research would follow using a discourse analysis approach. These should be useful resource with implica- tions for higher education.
Highlights
Life is in many ways a series of conversations and that talking is ‘something we tend to take for granted’
Some discourse analysts, who are in most cases linguists, analyse discourse as an end in itself, i.e. they are primarily concerned to describe the complex structures and mechanism of society situated language use
Drawing from poststructuralist and post-modern discourse theory, which examine how writing, texts and discourses are constructive phenomena, shaping the identities and practices of human subjects, Foucault and Derrida assert that language and discourse are not transparent or neutral means for describing or analysing the social and biological world
Summary
Life is in many ways a series of conversations and that talking is ‘something we tend to take for granted’. ‘critical’ is to be understood as having distance to the data, embedding the data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly, and a focus on self- reflection as scholars doing research For all those concerned with Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA), application of the results is important, be it practical seminars for teachers, doctors and civil servants or on writing expert opinions or devising school books(Wodak, 2001). The presupposition of critical discourse analysis is that institutions like schools act as gatekeepers of mastery of discursive resources: the discourses, texts, genres, lexical and grammatical structures of everyday language use We should examine the context in which the texts were found and discourses were produced
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