Critical Discourse Analysis in Applied Linguistics_A Methodological Review

CRITICALDISCOURSEANALYSIS215

theoreticallywhycertaininterpretationsandreadingsofdiscursiveeventsseemmorevalidthanothers.

ReconceptualizationofLanguageasSocialandDiscourseProcesses

CDAisnotinterestedininvestigatinglanguageasastaticlinguisticentitybutinstudyingsocialanddiscursiveprocessesandtheirconsequences.Itholdsthetheoreticalassumptionthatlanguageshouldnotbeseenasarei edobjectofstudy,andlanguagetreatedasaboundedentityisactuallyanideologicalandsocialconstruct,bornofactivitiesofpolitical,nationalist,orcolonialseg-regatingagendas(Pennycook,2001,2010).Theanalyticalfocusshouldthusbeonhowlanguage,ascontinuouslychangingsystemsofsemioticresources,amongothersemioticsystemsofresources(e.g.,multimodalities),arerecruitedandutilizedforconstructingracial,gender,social,sexual,andotherculturalcategoriesthatlegitimateandperpetuateinequalities(e.g.,policies,institu-tions)insociety.CDAmaintainsseveralassumptionsaboutlanguage:Itseeslanguageassocialpractice;languageanddiscourse1bothshape/constituteandareshaped/constitutedbysocialstructures(e.g.,gender,sexuality,class,ethnicidentities);andlanguageisintrinsicallyideologicalandplaysakey(albeitofteninvisible)roleinnaturalizing,normalizing,andthusmasking,producing,andreproducinginequalitiesinsociety.

TheoreticallyCDAhasdrawnonthesocialtheoriesofAlthusser(1984),Gram-sci(1975),Foucault(1980,2003),andBourdieu(1984,1988)toanalyzethework-ingofpowerthroughlanguageanddiscourse.However,CDAhasextendedthesesocialtheoriesbydevelopinganalyticaltoolsthatareinformedbytheoriesoflinguistics,systemicfunctionallinguistics,andsemiosis(i.e.,meaning-makingprocesses).AbriefoutlineoftherepresentativeapproachesdevelopedbyvanDijk,Wodak,andFaircloughrespectivelywillillustratethemultidisciplinarymethodologicalcharacteristicsofCDA.

VanDijk’sSociocognitiveTheoryofCriticalDiscourseStudies

AmongthekeyCDAresearchers,vanDijkistheonlyresearcherwhoattemptstointegratecognitivetheorieswithlinguisticandsocialtheories.Hissociocog-nitivetheoryofcriticaldiscoursestudies(CDS)proposesathree-layermodeloftheinterrelationshipsamongdiscourse,cognition,andsociety(vanDijk,2009).Putsimply,vanDijkusescognitiveschematheory(e.g.,contextmodels)asthemiddlelayertomediatebetweenstructuresoflanguageanddiscourse(e.g.,lexicalchoices,rhetoricalstrategies)atthemicrolevelandstructuresofsocietyatthemacrolevel(e.g.,gender,ethnic,sexualcategories).VanDijk,however,remindsusthatthemicro–macrodistinctionisonlyananalyticalmetaphor.CDSisatthesametimecognitive,social,andpoliticalanalysis,and“itisthispermanentbottom-upandtop-downlinkageofdiscourseandinteractionwithsocietalstructuresthatformoneofthemosttypicalcharacteristicsofCDS”(vanDijk,2009,p.83).

Bourdieu’sin uencecanbeseeninvanDijk’sanalyticfocusonhowso-cialinequalitiesandideologiesinthelargersocietyarebeingreproducedand