Political discourse analysis and critical discourse studies: scope, relations, commitments

Abstract

This chapter reviews the nexus of the two primary approaches to the study of language and politics, Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and Political Discourse Analysis (PDA), which use discourse analytic theories and concepts to interrogate the political nature of the social world. It argues that CDS methods provide a unique insight into the discursive means by which formal politics is practiced, as well as into how the systems of power, inequality, and domination which organize social life are discursively produced, sustained, and challenged. As shown in the chapter, the importance of a critical discourse analytic approach to examining the socio-political world is best attested by the fact that various scholars working in the social and human sciences have turned to critical discourse frameworks as a means for interrogating their objects of study, as well as the assumptions and practices of their own disciplines. These frameworks, through their attention to the micro-level linguistic features of texts, enable rigorous, text-based political discourse analysis.