Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multidimensional Perspective

Defining at the simplest level, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an act of explaining and interpreting any kind of text – both written and oral – and similar discourses that carry a certain message. It is a study of the ways in which language is used in various texts and contexts. In analysing discourses, the discipline pursues to incorporate various perspectives in order to get the richest meaning of the discourses possible. Further, the CDA adopts an in-depth study of play of power and role of socio-cultural, economic and cultural contexts in which texts and discourses are created. The discursive nature of language further necessitates the CDA to interplay among various facets of understanding. Hence, the Critical Discourse Analysis is not a single theoretical framework; rather a combination of a number of multidimensional approaches, for a good CDA necessarily involves as many approaches as feasible.       

Teun A van Dijk, one of the most important theorists of the CDA, defines, "Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context" (352). This definition clearly demonstrates that a CDA practice generally involves a range of dimensions in a single text or talk for it has to scientifically study how forms of power and dominance are produced, enacted, reproduced and resisted in a society. It has to study so keeping in mind what social and political contexts are working in that operation (or in what contexts that is operated). Such a wide range of focuses cannot be dealt from a single theoretical perspective. He does, thus, write, "Since CDA is not a specific direction of research; it does not have a unitary theoretical framework" (353). Hence, multiple approaches naturally come into any CDA exercise.    

The multidimensional nature of the CDA is rooted in the historical development through which the CDA came into existence today. Historically, the root of the CDA is in critical linguistics and systematic functional linguistics (SFL) developed in various parts of the twentieth century. The critical linguistics views that there is nothing that escapes ideology. Also, "approaches situated within critical linguistics (CL) emphasise the importance of the context, the social and historical situativity of the text, and the intertextual/interdiscursive dimension" (Wodak and Busch 107). On the other hand, MAK Halliday, the foremost developer of the SFL in 1960s, argued that language is not only linguistic, but more necessarily a social act. The SFL thus "explores how language is used in social contexts to achieve particular goals" (O'Donnel 2). This approach assumes that language has particular goals and those goals are determined by social (and other) contexts. Thus, "in terms of data, it does not address how language is processed or represented within the human brain, but rather looks at the discourses we produce (whether spoken or written), and the contexts of the production of these texts" (O'Donnel 2).

The CDA does not confine within a narrow area of texts as its precedent critical linguistics did, rather it goes beyond that. Its scope is thus not text, but intertextuality and contexts. It perceives discourse as a production of power relationships existing in society; thus attempts to consider a higher level of organisation of discourse. This organisation involves production, distribution and consumption of discourses. To sufficiently address all these complex processes, a single and unilateral theoretical perspective cannot work well. A combination of all possible related perspectives, theories and approaches is sought to appropriately meet the objectives of understanding the whole organisation of discourses.

Before the rise of CDA, unilateral theoretical perspectives were used to analyse texts and discourses. They worked for those times, but they did not pay much attention to the intertextual feature of texts and discourses. Though those perspectives contributed formative experiences for rise of the CDA, they still had some shortcomings which the newly developed area of study now is attempting to compensate. One of the major lacks that the previous approaches shared is they could not establish a link between linguistic structure of a discourse and its sociological aspect. Van Dijk has also noticed the problem:

…Thus, despite a large number of empirical studies on discourse and power, the details of the multidisciplinary theory of CDA that should relate discourse and action with cognition and society are still on the agenda. Second, there is still a gap between more linguistically oriented studies of text and talk and the various approaches in the social. The first often ignore concepts and theories in sociology and political science on power abuse and inequality, whereas the second seldom engage in detailed discourse analysis. Integration of various approaches is therefore very important to arrive at a satisfactory form of multidisciplinary CDA. (363)       

Since, the CDA needs to analyse not only language as a linguistic analysis does, neither only the social contexts as a sociological analysis, but both of them and so many other factors, it essentially has to be multidimensional.

            Even if one tries to analyse only language, a single perspective cannot serve well. Language is not so simple that it can be understood easily from a point of view. Language, rather, is essentially discursive and political. It involves a complex play of power relationships. Gee writes, "…when we use language, social goods and their distribution are always at stake, language is always "political" in a deep sense" (7). Thus, while analysing language, we also need to analyse the play of power and politics it involves within. As Glee presents it, CDA practitioners' goal is "not just to describe how language works" (9). But "they also want to speak to and, perhaps, intervene in, social or political issues, problems, and controversies in the world" (Glee 9). To serve that goal, they need a combination of multidimensional approaches.      

            The discipline's multidimensional nature is apparent in discussions of pioneer critical discourse analysts. Three of the foremost pioneers of the CDA – Teun van Dijk, Ruth Wodak and Norman Fairclough – have defined the CDA differently. For van Dijk, discourse analysis can be renamed as ideology analysis and its model is socio-cognitive model. For him, the CDA essentially needs to incorporate social analysis, cognitive analysis and discourse analysis. For Wodak, the CDA also has to consider historical approaches. For Fairclough, on the other hand, discourse is a social practice and the CDA is composed of analyses of texts, discourse practices and sociocultural practices. These three approaches expose multiple aspects of the CDA in two ways. First, they have not restricted it as a single approach of discourse analysis, but included various different aspects in it. Second, the differences these three approaches have from/to each other are also evidences that the CDA cannot be a single theoretical approach.

            Discourse and language - that constitute the discourse - are both complex phenomena. Their complex nature requires their analyst to penetrate into them with instruments that are capable enough to satisfy those complexities. Thus, a single theoretical perspective never works in critical analysis of any discourse regardless of its form, purpose, message or audience. The critical discourse analysis has to incorporate a range of perspectives and approaches to interpret language and its game in any discourse. Hence, the CDA is not a single theoretical framework, but a set of many of such frameworks that are deployed together in description and critical analysis of any text or talk, discourses in overall.     

Works Cited

Gee, James Paul. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. 3^rd ed. Oxon: Routledge. 2014.

O'Donnel, Mick. "Introduction to Systematic Functional Linguistics for Discourse Analysis." Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. < http://web.uam.es/departamentos/filoyletras/
filoinglesa/Courses/LFC11/LFC-2011-Week1.pdf>

van Dijk, Teun A. "Critical Discourse Analysis." Discourse in Society. 31 Mar. 2014. <http://
www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Critical%20discourse%20analysis.pdf>

Wodak, Ruth and Brigitta Busch. "Approaches to Media Texts." The Sage Handbook of Media Studies.  Ed. John DH Downing, Denis McQuail, Philip Schlesinger, Ellen Wartella. London: Sage Publication. 2004. 105-121.