5.1 Introduction
“CDS has come a long way, theoretically as well as analytically, since its beginnings” ( Krzyżanowski & Forchtner, 2016b: 254). CDA/CDS has not only increased attention given to pressing social issues, but it has moved scholars from seeing language as abstract to seeing it as a way to represent speakers/writers’ “beliefs, positions, and ideas” (Mogashoa, 2014:105). It has focused on the way in which language and power are connected, and the way that discourse not only represents the world but constitutes it, and more recently, the way that other modes of communication (e.g., image, sound, color, etc.) have contributed to this. It has given us a scholarly lens with which to see the world, and for those that seek to resist oppressive forces in the world, it can give them hope. However, while it offers substantial potential applications in a wide range of contexts , it has received its share of criticism. According to Haig (2004: 5), “although there have been, and continue to be, a great number of critics of CDA (so much so that the activity threatens to develop into a whole new academic cottage industry of its own) essentially they are all concerned with asking, from their several perspectives, the same fundamental question: Does CDA produce valid knowledge?”.
Before entering into our discussion of the different critiques, we would like to note several things. First, for much of this volume (except in direct quotations of other scholars), we have used ‘CDA/CDS’ to show that they aren’t separate from each other and also to underscore how the field/research program is evolving. However, in Chap. 2, and to a certain extent, in three we very often use ‘CDA’ alone, since in the time period under discussion, only ‘CDA’ was used and ‘CDS’ didn’t exit or wasn’t used (or much more rarely). Hence, in much of this chapter, where most of the critique came about when the term ‘CDS’ had not yet been used, readers will note the frequent use of ‘CDA’ alone, except near the end of the chapter where we discuss the creation of CDS in light of the critique we explore here, or in places where the authors we cite use CDS or both CDA and CDS. In addition, we want to emphasize that some of the critiques of CDA are also valid for CDS, while others were ‘answered’ by the creation of CDS.
A second issue is that we decided to center the book more on the historical development of CDA, its various approaches and multidisciplinary connections—and less on critiques. Given that, this chapter provides more of a synthesis of the common critiques, rather than a detailed account of every single issue by every scholar who has critiqued it, especially when very similar critiques are made by the same or other scholars. In this way, we focus on what CDA was, is, and will be (hopefully) in the future. We would also like to point out that the fact that CDA has received so much critique shows that the field has really elicited much attention, which means that people are reading CDA work, and it has earned a distinct place among other fields. Furthermore, most (but not all) of the criticisms were made with the aim of making CDA work better, not tearing it apart. In fact, many of the critiques were put forth by CDA scholars themselves as part of reflexive practice, and as such (as we point out later), many CDA scholars have responded to the critiques with changes or additions to the field which have resulted in improvements.
We also need to remind the reader that, as discussed in Sect. 3.2 and as shown in Chap. 4, CDA is made up of several different approaches. This means that any criticism of CDA meant to address the whole program is usually only valid for part of it, since (see Wodak & Meyer, 2001, 2009, 2016 ) it is not monolithic, and many of the approaches are so different from each other that they are not all subject to the same criticism: not all have the same underlying theories, analytical questions, methods, goals, etc. For example, some critics of CDA who lean toward quantitative research (and in some cases doubt the benefits of qualitative research) consider knowledge to be valid only when there are tests that show its validity. This then raises the constant question of whether CDA is knowledge or just opinion, given that CDA scholars are straightforward about declaring their own bias (and many, even in the sciences, have said that the ‘lack of bias’ in science is an illusion). But this is not the opinion of everyone, and so all of this should be kept in mind as readers advance through the chapter.
While we cannot cover the extensive critique in its entirety, the overall aim of this chapter is not to take sides in the debates about the field, but to describe some of its most important multi-layered facets and show briefly how scholars in the field have attempted to remedy these problems and continually improve CDA research as a whole—although, at times, we make it known which critiques we take seriously. We do this by beginning with a brief discussion of a well-known debate (via articles in Language and Literature 1995/1996) between Henry G. Widdowson and Norman Fairclough, which marks the start of a long series of critiques aimed at CDA, followed by a later response by Wodak (2006). We then discuss various other critiques in detail, including what it means to be ‘critical’; methodological and theoretical shortcomings; the need for, as well as the role of, context ; the relationship with readers of texts; and the need to attend to other fields and modalities. We also discuss critiques dealing with the need to pay more attention to how political ideologies are infused into culture more widely and the necessity of amplifying the theoretical foundations of CDA that look closely at the spread of neoliberal ideologies and the changing discursive dynamics in an increasingly mediatized world. In addition to addressing some responses to each critique immediately after it is discussed, we conclude the chapter by describing in some detail various changes of focus in, and extension of, the field such as positive discourse analysis, generative critique, more attention to culture and the need for CDA to turn inward (become self-critical and self-reflexive) including reflection on researcher ideologies and the way that CDA scholars are continually (and currently) re-defining the field .
5.2 Widdowson vs. Fairclough
In 1995, the same yea r when Fairclough’s 1995 book Critical Discourse Analysis (see Sect. 3.5.5) was published, and when CDA came to be more widely known, Henry Widdowson published a substantial “critical review” of CDA in Language and Literature (Widdowson, 1995). Soon after, Fairclough (whose work was largely targeted in Widdowson’s article), was invited to react by writing a response (1996). Because this was one of the earliest evaluations of CDA by a well-known scholar, and also because there was a response from a leader in CDA this critique (and the reply) became well known and cited by CDA scholars, including in Special Issues of Discourse & Society (1997, 2008) which were dedicated to responding to it. In addition, the debate was reprinted in the 4th volume of Toolan’s (2002) series on CDA. Widdowson’s (2004) book Text , Context , Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis , gave some of the same critiques. And Wodak (2006) published a later response in Language in Society. As a result of all this attention and the importance given to it, we decided to provide a brief outline of the critique and response from Fairclough, as well as the later response by Wodak1
Among some of the principal concerns that Widdowson has had with CDA is the way that ‘discourse’ is (not) defined and how it seems to be something everyone is talking about, but yet no one really knows what it is. As such, it is “in vogue and vague” (Widdowson, 1995: 158). He also argues that a text should be identified by its social intent, not by its linguistic size, and that identifying something as a text is not the same as interpreting what it means, which is why ‘discourse’ is different from ‘text ’2. Furthermore, for him, “what a writer means by a text is not the same as what it means to a reader” (p. 164). Additionally, Widdowson takes aim at CDA scholars’ “commitment to reveal the impositions of power and ideological influence” because he argues that analysts should not assume that “ideology is already fixed in the language” (pp. 167–168) nor should they narrow down their interpretations to one possibility. Furthermore, he says that what is actually revealed through the analysis is not the ideological influence of the text producer but the discourse perspective of the analyst.
Fairclough’s response addresses Widdowson’s argument about the failure of CDA to distinguish between ‘text’ and ‘discourse’, saying that Widdowson misrepresents CDA by claiming there is usually only one interpretation of texts offered and there are rarely suggestions of alternative interpretations. To refute this point, he quotes from his own work (1992), which reiterates that texts are open to multiple interpretations and that “diversity of interpretation of texts is a central assumption in the theoretical framework ” of CDA (1996: 50). Fairclough goes on to discuss Widdowson’s claim that CDA’s ideological commitment is where its ‘prejudice ’ comes from, and evidence of how it favors particular ideologies. He argues that CDA scholars “see things wrong with their societies” and “are committed to making changes through forms of intervention involving language”, but it is not a political party and “the particular nature of political commitments and strategies of intervention vary widely” (1996: 52). He then accuses Widdowson of offering a “classical liberal distinction between ideology and science (or theory): on the one hand, ideology , commitment, prejudice and partiality (CDA); on the other hand, science and impartiality (e.g., Widdowson)” (p. 52). According to Fairclough, we all write from within our own discursive practices and commitments and interests, except that CDA is “better placed to recognize its own partiality” (p. 53), and he goes on to point out ideological assumptions in Widdowson’s own theoretical framework that color the way he views CDA.
In response to Widdowson’s critique of discourse being “in vogue and vague” (1995: 158), Fairclough points out that the concept of discourse is “variously understood, and widely contested” and so trying to define it simply and finitely is “a hopeless and fruitless task” (1996: 54, which is exactly why we don’t attempt to do it in this book). Overall Fairclough says Widdowson’s critique of CDA constitutes a misleading picture of current CDA work which is different from CritLing in that it emphasizes how discursive practices are “heterogeneous in forms and meanings” and can be analyzed as “facets of wider processes of social and cultural change” (Fairclough, 1996: 55).
As mentioned above, there is more discussion of the Widdowson vs. Fairclough debate in two Special Issues of Discourse & Society in 1997 and 2008, which also bring up other critiques—we will address those in the next sections. However, we feel it is important to say here that Wodak’s (2006) response to Widdowson’s appraisal of CDA is part of a review of Widdowson (2004) and three other books on DA . She notes that “criticism of CDA seems to be at the top of Widdowson’s agenda and has been for years” (Wodak, 2006: 606). She then responds to each of his principle concerns, for example, his claim about their lack of attention to methodology , by pointing to a number of more recent books and articles that attend to this and by making note that he neglected to read entire studies that give special attention to methodology before critiquing them. Another example: she addresses his claim that CDA analysts are not neutral but that they should be by aligning with Fairclough’s response on this point, that is, essentially, ‘no one is!’. Nonetheless, despite the rejection of many of Widdowson’s points, Wodak still agrees with some of his assessment of problems with CDA and makes a point of emphasizing that these kinds of controversies make research in this field “interesting and worthwhile” (2006: 609) and can lead to important changes.
We now turn to a discussion of specific elements that have been at the center of debate about what is wrong with CDA from the point of view of other scholars.
5.3 The ‘Critical’ Aspect
With regard to the ‘critical’ aspect of CDA, Billig (2002) draws particular attention to its role in self-understanding and ‘marketing’ of CDA. He posits that approaches like CDA are “critical of the present social order” and “position themselves as being critical of other academic approaches that are not primarily addressed to the critique of existing patterns of dominance and inequality” (Billig, 2002: 38). He then argues that critical approaches need to be self-reflexive and this includes an examination of the marketization of CDA and the way in which it is a “brand” itself, and how its scholarly works are products. In addition, Billig says that CDA scholars need to examine academia, the exercise of power through grading, and the way that certain scholars and theories are promoted over others. Furthermore, scholars need to consider the potential risk of the loss of intellectual creativity due to the field becoming more established (Billig, 2002: 43–44) as well as, according to (Breeze, 2011: 493), the “possibility for it to be taken for granted, simply accepted as a valid way of thinking and researching, alongside the other paradigms that have attained intellectual respectability” (see Sect. 5.10 for Wodak’s and others’ response to this). In addition, as part of the question of what ‘critical’ means, Chilton has questioned “whether CDA has had genuine social effects” ( Chilton, 2005: 21) and Bartlett echoes this, asking if it has ever really offered genuine emancipatory alternatives (2012)—and indeed van Dijk has claimed that CDA/CDS has often resulted in a “blame game” rather than contributing to any real solutions or resistance (2009: 4).
One of the results of some of this type of criticism has been to make CDA scholars more reflexive. In fact, Wodak and others have shown their appreciation for critiques of CDA and its benefits to the field in various statements they have made regarding the need for reflexivity (see Sect. 5.10 for examples). In Chap. 7 we explore questions such as those posed by Chilton and Bartlett by looking outside of academia to see how CDA/CDS scholars have addressed the issue of, e.g., ‘social effects’, both in their scholarship and, even more, in the ways they have connected their scholarship to handling (or trying to handle) real world situations. Often, this has not occurred in academic work per se, but in other genres such as films, novels, song-writing, social media/blogs, being board members of anti-racist associations, and so forth. This is because CDA/CDS scholars, like others in any field , often have to work within the constraints of academia and many of the results of their research do not ever reach the general public. However, there are many who are taking their work outside the academic realm, and there appears to be an increasing trend (which seems to have taken priority since populist governments started winning elections in Europe, Brexit passed in the UK and Donald Trump was elected President in the US), in which scholars and professional organizations associated with CDA/CDS are highlighting even more how it can be used as a resource for social change. We—along with those who have generously contributed their thoughts to this volume—will describe how this is being accomplished in Chap. 7.
5.4 Methodological and Theoretical Shortcomings
The next critique we will address is related to methodology and, in particular, methodological shortcomings, since there are many who feel that CDA’s analytical models are too vague. According to Schegloff (1997), CDA does not provide an analysis of texts that is sufficiently detailed or systematic, which results in researchers imposing their own assumptions on the reader. Similarly, Widdowson (1998: 136) contends that CDA scholars draw selectively and unsystematically on different methodologies in analyzing the data and also accuses (2004) them of blurring important distinctions between concepts, disciplines, and methodologies. As mentioned earlier, he notes that many concepts and analytical models are ‘vague’ and blames CDA for condoning ‘biased’ interpretations of discourse under the guise of critical analysis. Breeze (2011: 520) adds that analysts have sometimes “move[d] too quickly from the language data to the stage of interpretation and explanation of those data in terms of some type of social theory”. Additionally, she said that care needs to be taken in how data is obtained and subsequently interpreted in order to apply the same standards of rigor when handling language data as in many other areas of linguistics.
Breeze proposes corpus linguistics (CorpLing) as one way to have a more representative overview across a larger sample of languages (2011: 503, 520) and to avoid “‘cherry-picking’ or selecting isolated instances of discourse that confirm the existing ideological biases of the researcher” (Bartlett, 2012: 4). She contends that although CDS draws on a wide range of theories about language and society, these theories are not always clearly defined, and there is a “tendency to draw on an eclectic mix of concepts from different intellectual traditions, not all of which are compatible” (2011: 520). Along these same lines, Widdowson (1998: 136) argues that CDA “analysis is not the systematic application of a theoretical model, but a rather less rigorous operation, in effect a kind of ad hoc bricolage which takes from theory whatever concept comes usefully to hand”.
Since the publication of Widdowson’s (and others’) critiques, corpus linguistic approaches (CorpLingA) to CDA/CDS have become more common (e.g. Baker, 2006, 2012; Mautner, 2008, 2016; see Sect. 4.8). The strength of CorpLing lies in its ability to address the critique that CDA lacks quantitative and comparative methods and their affordances. Specifically, CorpLing is a way to grapple with the problems of measuring the representativeness of the samples of language analyzed ( Machin & Mayr, 2012: 216), whether there’s enough data (and it’s not ‘cherry-picked’), the verifiability of the data, data replication, and so forth. All of this can be accomplished through the use of computer support that allows scholars to analyze large amounts of textual data and makes it relatively easy to find out, e.g., what the shared connotations are (see Sect. 4.8 for more details). However, despite the fact that CorpLing has served remarkably well in handling methodological problems, Mautner (2016: 176) still cautions that CorpLing techniques can never make up for faulty design or biased samples. In addition, it cannot solve many of the problems that quantitatively inclined researchers associate with qualitative research, e.g., lack of statistical significance, subjectivity of interpretive work, lack of generalizability, etc. To address this, scholars such as Rheindorf (2018) have recently pushed for more eclectic approaches that can handle both qualitative and quantitative aspects of research. As with other critiques of CDA, not all of these issues have been resolved (or are resolvable at all) due to the nature of the research people are doing and the inclinations of the researchers. And some of them are not unique to CDA, since the issue of qualitative vs. quantitative research (with or without something like CorpLing ) crosscuts many disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.
5.5 Context
CDA has also been criticized for not bringing ‘context’ (variously defined) seriously into CDA work—most notably by van Dijk (1999, 2008, 2009), who has argued forcefully for bringing in context and making a case that it is legitimate to examine text and context separately and explore how features of the context affect, or are affected by, the text . He has also said that individual researchers need to determine how much particular external categories are important in understanding the text and how far the analysis should go (co-text, speech event context , social and cultural context , historical context , etc.) However, he also argues vigorously that CDA researchers should not feel constrained by rigid disciplinary norms. Blommaert (2005: 34–35) has also discussed what he perceives as the failure of some in CDA to take into account the social factors behind the production of texts or the social consequences of their production (see also Bartlett, 2012: 5). Jones (2004), Jones and Collins (2006, 2010) and Collins and Jones (2006) also find fault with context in CDA (among other issues). They argue that CDA has not done a good job of showing how the linguistic phenomena they analyze are related to or contribute to or result from the social history they are part of, and thus it is not clear exactly how CDA is used to “find the communicational means, occasions and practices which will contribute to advancing a particular agenda” (Jones, 2018, personal communication). Furthermore, Collins and Jones (2006) posit that CDA does not pinpoint the contribution that communicational acts and processes make to social history nor does it pay enough attention to the real social process within which discourse exists, while Jones and Collins (2006) claim that CDA takes the play of words and word meanings within a verbal system and abstracts them from communicative practices instead of thinking critically about, or engaging intellectually with, those practices. Jones (2004: 112) takes particular issue with Fairclough’s3 approach, arguing that it has an “upside-down view of the role of discourse in relation to the social process as a whole” and that some CDA approaches would do better to engage in “careful, informed and critical examination of communicative activities”. According to Jones and Collins (2006: 43) this exposes “the workings of power based on diligent exploration and informed piecing together and analysis of the facts and circumstances” rather than the linguistic analysis that they see as divorced from social context .
Many of the above critiques were common because early work in CDA (with the exception of DHA and SCA) often concentrated on decontextualized samples of language, so that texts or parts of texts are analyzed without regard to their immediate context or to wider issues related to their production, distribution or consumption (Breeze, 2011: 514). For example, Verschueren (2001: 60–70), in a critique of Fairclough’s (pre-/proto-CDA) Language and Power (1989), notes that Fairclough does not place texts in the type of social and intertextual context within which they would usually be read. For instance, he “takes a linguistic feature such as nominalisation in news reports, and interprets it as being used to obfuscate issues of agency and avoid attribution of responsibility” (Breeze, 2011: 506), while in that case, which had been reported about in various issues of the same newspaper, it might have been quite clear to readers where the responsibility lay, and thus context has to be seen more widely. Slembrouck posits that CDA has been mostly text-based and at best speculative in claims about how actual participants are likely to interpret texts, exchanges and moves within talk (2001: 43). Some critics have also argued that CDA does not always look closely at the linguistic features of interactions, and thus there is a tendency to jump too quickly to the ‘macro’ context , making assertions as to how macro relations might be mapped onto micro interactions (Widdowson, 1998).
After a review of the critique of context in CDA, it is clear that, with the exception of DHA and SCA (see Sects. 4.4 and 4.5), early CDA work paid less attention to context , but more recent work that has employed a variety of approaches has attended much more to context and to a wider view of context (not just co-text, or situational context , but also social, cultural, political, historical, etc. context ). For example, there is scholarship (e.g., Abousnnouga & Machin, 2013; Leitch & Palmer, 2010; Musolff, 2016), which is grounded in different disciplines and approaches to CDA/CDS and addresses these concerns and pays more attention to context in their analyses. In addition, Flowerdew (2017) describes how conversation analysis and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) can aid CDA/CDS research in different ways since they work with naturally-occurring data in real life contexts or relate language form to context . One study that explicitly mentions this issue is Leitch and Palmer (2010), which examines the analysis of texts in context and how it has been applied to organizational studies; the authors argue that the problem of context has not been adequately addressed in CDA and they show how specific texts can be linked to specific contexts. They also note (paying heed to van Dijk’s concern that CDA scholars need not be constrained by rigid norms of analytic practice) that their purpose is to “strengthen the rigour of CDA in organization studies rather than to standardize it” (Leitch & Palmer, 2010: 1195).
Since its inception, DHA approaches have paid close attention to context because they include the historical circumstances related to the data being analyzed and thus are able to connect the data to specific times and events. The best example of this is Wodak’s work, which from its earliest, pre-CDA stages was concerned with how much and what types of historical information should be included in DA , ‘discourse sociolinguistics’ and CDA (especially in DHA), and Reisigl and Wodak (2001, 2009, 2016) have argued for the importance of looking at the historical context in any text analysis (see Sect. 4.5). In addition, as said in Chap. 3, Musolff’s (2016) work on political metaphor scenarios combines DHA with CorpLing (and CogLing ) showing systematically the presence of metaphor scenarios throughout history, which is then linked to current racist/antisemitic discourse with the aim of holding speakers accountable for the more covert hate speech they try to deny. Finally, studies such as Catalano and Mitchell-McCollough (2019) have examined the representation of groups in the US media over two different time periods (e.g., unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America in 2014 and then at the time of the 2016 election). They found that coverage during the two time periods revealed similar patterns of representing migrant children as dangerous water and threats, with only a small percentage of the discourse dedicated to global compassion and pleading on their behalf. But also, there were more troubling narratives related to government policies of family separation and militarization of the border in the US that surfaced in the later data due to the political context (including election politics) that had changed.
5.6 Relationship with Readers of Texts
Another major criticism of CDA has to do with the relationship with readers of the analyzed texts. In fact, much of CDA research proceeds on the basis that there is a simple, one-to-one relationship between the text and its reader, or the discourse and its recipient, and reader response or audience reception is often naively assumed to be the same as the researcher’s interpretation of the text (Breeze, 2011: 521). Widdowson (1998) has strongly advocated for the inclusion of discussion with the readers (and producers) of texts, since he sees CDA as not only relying on the analyst’s view of a text ’s possible meaning, but also not considering the role of the reader in the consumption and interpretation of the text .
In the wake of criticism against CDA for the problem of this disconnect between the researcher as against writers and readers of texts, scholars have offered ethnographic methodologies as a potential corrective (Wodak & Meyer, 2016). Blommaert (2005), for instance, finds that CDA’s linguistically oriented research practices can benefit from these and other (social science-related) methodologies. Machin and Mayr (2012: 217) also note what can be gained by adding an ethnographic dimension, citing studies such as McFarland (2006), which illustrate the dangers of analysts making claims about reactions to texts without ever talking to readers. In particular, McFarland shows how women’s reactions (shown from interviews) to Fairclough’s analysis of The Pregnancy Book “were different in significant ways to the positions attributed to them by Fairclough” (Machin & Mayr, 2012: 217). Machin and Mayr also advocate for adding an ethnographic dimension to the analysis of newspaper discourse, which can mean interviewing editors and journalists about their choices; their article (2007) and Stubbs’ (1997) are good examples of such approaches (for more details and examples of ethnographic approaches to CDA, see Sects. 4.5 and 6.5) as is Machin and Lydia Polzer’s (2015) book Visual Journalism in which they interview visual journalists about their work.
5.7 Paying Attention to Other Fields and Modalities
CDA has also been criticized for being “too linguistic or not linguistic enough” (Wodak & Meyer, 2016: 22). In the case of being too linguistic, CDA is sometimes caught between linguists and non-linguists on the one hand, and on the other hand those scholars who come from media studies or other areas that have well developed theories for handling multimodal data; many have complained that CDA relies too much on linguistic methods of analysis which are not always applicable to multimodal data when analyzing visual communication (see our discussion in Sects. 2.7 and 4.6 for more on this topic, as well as Machin, 2016). Along these lines, CDA has been criticized for putting “a very high price on linguistic-textual analysis and not paying attention to non-linguistic texts. In addition, it has been criticized for relying too much on systemic-functional linguistics” ( Blommaert, 2005: 34), while excluding other critical schools that look at language and also other approaches to linguistics that could be used in a critical analysis. Blommaert assures the reader that “linguists have no monopoly over theories of language and that means there are more candidates for critical potential … than SFL” (2005: 35). Van Dijk (2008) raises concerns that the SFL notion of context focuses too much on the lexico-grammatical level of language and is limited to the analysis of clause structure and thus is not useable for studying other discourse structures (see Sects. 3.6 and 4.4). He also argues that SFL has ignored many of the developments in DA , linguistics, and psychology of the last decade(s) and has been little influenced by the social sciences even though it is a ‘functional’ approach.
Since the time of van Dijk’s critique (2008: 827), much work has been done to use more eclectic approaches and draw on theories from other areas in the social sciences as well as expand on the “multidisciplinary” approach of CDA by accounting for what other fields have already done. However, there is still a need for CDA researchers to engage more with other fields, since it is often the case that, unfortunately, while they can tell CDA scholars much about a particular concept or issue, their approach might not integrate well with CDA aims. For example, Machin (2016) urges scholars in multimodal CDA/CDS (Sect. 4.6) to engage with the fields of visual studies and media and cultural studies that have been looking at similar concepts for decades, but then he warns them that many of these studies don’t necessarily align with a “socially driven form of analysis such as CDA” and instead, these approaches and concepts may simply “cloud and distract” (2016: 324) their perspective . In addition to addressing the need to work more across disciplines, a recent Special Issue of Discourse & Society focuses on theoretical and conceptual challenges in CDS that we will discuss in more detail shortly.
Another main disadvantage of CDA related to the above critique of being “too linguistic”, is that CDA depends on available discourse (Blommaert, 2005) , and it is not possible to analyze discourse that is absent. So, there is no means to investigate what could have been said or was said in another context that the analyst is unaware of, was not able to have access to, and/or was not interested in investigating (although there are many scholars who have tried, by looking at, e.g., different headlines used in newspapers for the ‘same event’—CritLing , see Sect. 2.4). CorpLing has come forward as an (at least partial) solution to this problem. But, many have said that, in order to fully contextualize discourse within the sociopolitical landscape, CDA analysts need to look beyond language. On the basis of the work of Stubbs (1997) , Breeze (2011: 509) contends that if researchers want to make claims about what people think on the basis of what they read or hear, they ought to obtain non-linguistic evidence about their beliefs, or examine their behavior, and that, in any case, it is unreasonable to assume a one-way influence from discourse to thought. Although Stubbs (1997) and Breeze (2011) make good arguments in this regard, they do not attempt to provide suggestions about how to remedy the problem without using language4.
[…] they stamp you and they give you a ‘landed immigrant’ status so you know, that’s a big difference between Canada and the United States. You, in—in the United States you’re a ‘legal alien’ in uh, in Canada, you’re a ‘landed immigrant.’ So, it’s a—so from that point of view you feel very welcome … into the country ( Catalano, 2016: 181).
Furthermore, in several interviews, participants used terminology they had been exposed to in media discourse (i.e., ‘illegal’) to describe themselves, even though they did not align ideologically with the use of the term , which puts migrants in a frame of criminality (Catalano, 2016: 117). The use of terms such as ‘illegal’ (i.e., ‘ilegal’ in Spanish, the language of these particular interviews) revealed that participants were well aware of the terminology used to talk about them. While both of these studies are linguistic in orientation, they do get closer to Breeze’s critique that we cannot really know the effects of discourse on readers or communities where the discourse is prevalent without using, in this case, qualitative interview techniques, or, in other cases, ethnographic ones (see Sects. 4.5 and 6.5) or other means of getting at the perspective of the people involved.
Besides Leudar et al. (2008), the field of CogLing (and eclectic approaches such as that of Catalano (2016) which combines ethnographically informed methods with CDA/CDS and CogLing ) has much to offer CDA/CDS in terms of looking at the way that thought shapes discourse and vice-versa. Hart (2015; see Sect. 4.9) examines point of view, basing his work on theoretical foundations from the field of CogLing , such as the idea that language is embodied, i.e., that language is grounded in physical experience and the fact that “the conceptual processes involved in language and discourse are not principally distinct from processes that function in other experiential realms like visual perception and spatial cognition ” (2015: 239). The upshot of the embodied nature of language is that we can infer that linguistic constructions include or invoke properties related to visuo-spatial experience, which can reveal much about thought, and hence address Stubbs and Breeze’s (1997/2011) critiques that CDA lacks non-linguistic evidence about readers’ beliefs.
5.8 Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA)
Another criticism that has received a great deal of attention has been the negative nature of CDA, or more accurately, the way in which it is deconstructive as opposed to constructive (Martin, 2004). According to Breeze, given the assumptions made in CDA about the nature of society, and the “overwhelming interest in exposing ideological manipulation that shapes and perpetuates power imbalances through discourse, it is hardly surprising that language scholars of this school find it easier to deconstruct than to construct” (2011: 516). Researchers such as Luke (2002), Martin (2004), and Bartlett (2012) have criticized CDA for focusing on deconstruction of discourse rather than contributing to bringing real solutions in order to make needed changes in the world. Martin draws particular attention to these issues, locating CDA as part of “a pathological disjunction in twentieth century social sciences and humanities research which systematically elides the study of social processes which make the world a better place in favour of critique of processes which disempower and oppress” (2004: 186) and calls for a serious attempt to re-configure CDA in a more positive sense. Breeze suggests that it is perhaps because of CDA’s self-image as a “critical” force, that the focus of this work has been deconstructive versus constructive (Breeze, 2011: 517). Breeze argues that scholarship that explores emancipatory discourses or positive changes in social language use would be better, because it would provide information about the way that positive transformations can be brought about (Breeze, 2011: 521). Hence, PDA came out of the above critique about CDA and Martin’s repeated call for a focus on texts that analysts don’t find objectionable.
This critique of negative vs. positive has been addressed by scholars such as Wodak who contend that being critical is not about being positive or negative, it is about questioning the extant social order (personal communication, March 11, 2018). However, a close reading of Martin (2004: 184) reveals that his comments about being “negative” are more centered on the need to “focus on community, taking into account how people get together and make room for themselves in the world—in ways that redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it”, and hence this critique is about doing scholarship that can make positive change and pointing out the kinds of positive changes that people are trying to make (see Chap. 7). In addition, Bartlett’s (2012) and Luke’s (2002) critiques are about how CDA can actually pose solutions and be involved in CDA rather than be more ‘positive’.
If discourse analysts are serious about wanting to use their work to enact social change, then they will have to broaden their coverage to include discourse of this kind—discourse that inspires, encourages, heartens; discourse we like, that cheers us along. We need, in other words, more positive discourse analysis alongside our critique; and this means dealing with texts we admire, alongside those we dislike and try to expose (Martin 1999 [2002]: 196–197).
Other articles (e.g. Martin, 2002) and particularly the book by Martin and Rose (2003) also provided excellent examples of the kind of work he referred to.
It wasn’t until after 2004 that Martin explicitly named the term PDA (see Bartlett, 2012) and provided three examples of what it is for him, including genre renovation, evaluative language, and narrative in the context of post-colonial relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. For the latter, he shows how the government report Bringing Them Home (that details the ‘National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families’) gives voice to Indigenous Australians through multimodal discourse which involved a combination of spoken testimony with policy documents, language, and image (Martin, 2004). In addition, Martin suggests “that communities are formed around attitudes to things”, noting that empathy is just as important as persuasion when the goal is to align readers with the authors’ point of view and “the political power of narrative closure is something positive discourse analysis cannot afford to ignore” (2004: 13, 18).
While some scholars would disagree with this differentiation and/or sub-categorization of PDA as an approach or type of CDA/CDS, we decided that it was important to include it, show how people have responded, and also let readers know that there is still controversy as to whether this constitutes its own approach—see Table in Sect. 4.2, where we show that Flowerdew and Richardson (2018) believe that PDA is its own approach, but many others do not, and we discuss why we decided not to include PDA in Chap. 4, but in this chapter instead.
Since 2004, other articles have appeared that have explicitly named PDA as their approach (e.g. Macgilchrist, 2007; Rogers & Mosley-Wetzel, 2013). These studies are rooted in the conviction that deconstruction of social problems is very different from positive reconstruction and betterment of society, especially because this positive approach is “fuelled by the potential for analysis to have an effect—however small—on the social world” (Macgilchrist, 2007: 74). PDA has thus billed itself as an alternative to traditional CDA critique of discourse that addresses the need for “a complementary focus on community, taking into account how people get together and make room for themselves in the world—in ways that redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it” (Martin, 2004: 7). In this regard, it can be seen as making visible different social actors by giving voice and thus presence to those who have been traditionally marginalized by dominant discourse practices including those in new multimodal genres.
According to Martin, PDA is (re)constructive, and without it “our understanding of how change happens, for the better, across a range of sites [is crippled…] And this hampers design, and perhaps even discourages it since analysts would rather tell us how struggle was undone than how freedoms were won” (2004: 7–8). By examining texts from the perspective that moves beyond critique towards positive social changes, analysts envision and design an emancipatory alternative. Therefore, it focuses on discourse that does good rather than the opposite (Macgilchrist, 2007) and seeks to show how freedoms were won, takes a stand and positively values some aspect of social change, which may involve “looking at discourses we don’t typically associate with CDA, and in addition considering whether new kinds of analysis are required by consideration of these sites” (Martin, 2004: 8). This ‘yin and yang approach’ in which deconstructive and constructive activity is required seeks to understand, expose, and resist social inequality by looking at both its positive and negative aspects (Bartlett, 2012: 7).
Macgilchrist (2007) provides an excellent example of how this is done by examining strategies for bringing forward marginal discourses into the mainstream news media. Her paper discusses current research (e.g., Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Lakoff, 2002, 2004; Bamberg & Andrews, 2004) on counter-discourse and takes a case study approach to illustrating five strategies used in those few texts which contest the mainstream discourse, providing evidence of how PDA can be useful in the investigation of media discourse. In the realm of teacher education, Rogers and Mosley-Wetzel (2013) put forth an informative multimodal analysis of agency and leadership in a workshop about culturally relevant teaching and argue that PDA is not really a new approach, but instead, a shift in focus (which could be taken as evidence of the way in which CDA, as well as DA and DS , has been extended and expanded and how the term CDS could be used to indicate this, see Sect. 4.1). They demonstrate how the teacher participant in their article accepts and extends invitations for agency, uses problems to enhance learning, as well as narratives and counter-narratives, and creates multiple storylines for herself and others. Finally, they call for more research of this type that considers agency across contexts.
Despite its initial popularity, its emergence across disciplines and its attempts to address critiques aimed at CDA, PDA itself has been subject to a fair amount of criticism, some of which is similar to what has been said of CDA since there are many things in common between them. Scholars such as Bartlett (2012) warn us that there is a danger in only focusing on and celebrating the positive without “due consideration of the social factors that created the conditions of possibility for such texts at the local level and how structural features within the wider sociopolitical context might make it possible for such positive change to take hold and spread” (2012: 7). In addition, Bartlett asserts that PDA often lacks a detailed analysis of context that accounts for how hegemonic discourses continue to circulate, including whose interests they serve and how they fail to acknowledge the tensions which exist and how emergent reconfigurations of power relations at the local level can exploit these tensions to “reorient existing structural conditions of domination within the wider society” (2012: 8). This then results in the failure of PDA to consider how the sociocultural background of both producers and receivers affects the meaning of texts. As a result of this critique, there has been a call for the voices of the ‘oppressed’ to be heard rather than solely the analyst’s and for a comparison of the findings of the analyst with what the members of the target community think and say (a point made above, see Rogers, 2011; Wodak & Savski, 2018) and addressed by Leudar et al. (2008) and Catalano (2016) as well as others.
5.9 The Move (from PDA) to Generative Critique
(1) orient analysis more immediately to generative, ambivalent, reparative critical practices; (2) free analysis from the foundationalism arguably associated with critical theory’s justification for taking a particular moral or political stance, thus enabling analysts to simply (although it is no simple matter) state the coordinates of their standpoints; and (3) move CDA on from post-positivist debates about objectivity and bias, in order to embrace surprise, irony and transgressive validities.
Macgilchrist (2016: 264) believes that postfoundational thought (which questions the solidity and pervasiveness of foundations such as truth, universality, essence, etc.) is the answer, because postfoundational approaches aim to question what is considered to be true, and in the context of research, this means thinking about the partial truths we are constructing in our research questions, aims, and topics of research. She also acknowledges that social exclusion and discrimination continue to be pervasive and CDA scholars must always attend to how dominant discourse is being challenged. However, she believes the field of CDA is changing because the world is changing, and as a result, new demands are being made on DS , critical or not. Since more people are “simultaneously accessing multiple, contradictory news stories”, knowledge claims are made more visible because it is easier to see how they are constructed (2016: 273). Hence, she says, the role of the CDA analyst now is to examine conflict and dissonance, not just the acceptance of already established dominant ways of thinking. This means deconstructing the way in which lies are constructed as “alternative facts” (Bradner, 2017), and how reality is bent and spun (e.g., by politicians such as Donald Trump) in ways which favor political agendas and manipulate the public via a variety of media venues including social media. Through examining social change that is happening, as well as breakdowns and disruptions, we can also critique power imbalances by sharing these “hope-giving, on-the-ground practices” which are “oriented to equality and heterogeneous well-being” (Haraway, 1997: 95, as cited in Macgilchrist, 2016: 273).
Macgilchrist (2016) gives two examples of what this type of CDA scholarship might look like. The first one (Macgilchrist, 2015; Macgilchrist & Van Praet, 2013) examines different accounts of social movements and radical democracy in history textbooks in the US and looks at how the worker and soldier council movements of 1918–1919 have, since the 1960s, been associated with violence and anti-democratic thinking through their contact with the Soviet Union. However, the authors found that alternative interpretations of these councils in terms of a socialist democracy were not included, and in fact, little teaching of social movement history exists in mainstream history curricula (Macgilchrist, 2015; Macgilchrist & Van Praet, 2013). By examining heated discussions of the textbook with the publishers after which the resulting text reframed the movement as more “moderate and thoughtful” (Macgilchrist & Van Praet, 2013: 641), the authors were able to link the text and talk to “broader contemporary shifts towards more diverse understandings of democracy” in which social movements can be studied as “participatory, social and conflictual” (Macgilchrist, 2016: 272).
A second example Macgilchrist (2016) gives is Gibson-Graham’s (2006) work that critiques capitalist dominance and its perceived homogeneity, the aim of which is to “help create the discursive conditions under which socialist or other non-capitalist construction becomes a ‘realistic’ present activity rather than a ludicrous or utopian future goal” (Gibson-Graham, 1996: 263f). However, in order to do this, we must first “smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces”. In his analyses, Gibson-Graham makes visible “the diversity, change and disunity which breaks up today’s apparently unified capitalist economy” (Macgilchrist, 2016: 272), ultimately questioning the inescapability of capitalism today, and taking a first step toward imagining a different way (Gibson-Graham, 2014). In reframing the way we think about “economy”, Gibson-Graham looks to those who are already reshaping new economic languages that are oriented to the concerns of community economies. For Macgilchrist, generative critique such as those outlined above, which are oriented to well-being, should be the new frontier for CDA and thus, work that “addresses unequal power relations through (fine-grained) analysis of hope-giving, reparative discourse” is a new direction that brings real promise for the future (Macgilchrist, 2016: 262).
5.10 Attention to Culture in the Construction of Discourse
CDA research has been accused by Shi-xu of being (too) Euro-centric and paying (too) little attention to “the possibilities of the existence of other cultural concepts, theory and approaches, and of their own cultural limitations and bias” (2012: 485). In addition, he argues that it is often taken for granted in CDA research that “human discourses have (more or less) the same (categories of) structure and process and operate more or less equally across cultures” and “culturally divergent forms of discursive practice and local practical needs for discourse research are usually ignored” (2012: 485). Chilton (2005, 2016) states that CDA now has to work in a global environment; and opening up to other societies is unavoidable because it has been adopted in many regions and nations and under many different types of political and social regimes. Thus, he says, questions such as “Is CDA a western import? Is critique based on relative or absolute values? On what values is critique based?” must be asked. In addition, CDA has lacked a way of dealing with the encounter between culture and discourse in general and the triangle discourse/culture /critical analysis in particular (Gavriely-Nuri, 2012: 78). These questions are echoed in Kecskes (2014), who looks at a new trend (emerging from this critique) that includes theoretical research on culture as a key player in the construction of discourse, which has begun to grow in the last few years.
While we will discuss the cultural approach to CDA/CDS, (which strengthens the connection of culture to discourse) in more detail in Sect. 6.6, it is worth noting here that this approach grew out of the above critique, and that, starting in 2010, Gavriely-Nuri has been a leader in its development.
5.11 Researcher Reflexivity
Another area of critique of CDA is that CDA scholars need to be more self-critical and self-reflexive, including the way they reflect on their own ideologies. This means that analysts must be sure that their “own use of language is not marked, even corrupted, by those ideological factors that they seek to identify in the language of others” (Billig, 2008a: 783). Thus, in Billig’s view, CDA researchers should be particularly concerned with examining their own use of language (which Billig himself does) and analyze their own writings for the same linguistic forms they criticize others of using, such as nominalizations and passivizations (2008a: 784). He suggests that in the aim of being reflexive, CDA researchers “need to use simpler, less technical prose that clearly ascribes actions to human agents” (Billig, 2008a: 783). In particular, Billig criticizes Fairclough in a series of articles that became part of a Special Issue in Discourse & Society (2008a, 2008b) on CDA and nominalization. In the articles, Billig claims that, in his explanation of nominalizations, Fairclough avoids using phrases that draw attention to the activities that language users must accomplish when they nominalize and as a result, he is vague about how this transformation takes place. In his responses to Billig’s critique, Fairclough (2008a, 2008b) points out that he appreciates the opportunity for debate in the field and is “grateful to him for making me think more about what I am doing” (2008a: 811). He agrees with Billig’s notion that CDA scholars should be more careful about their own writing and should “make the question of how we write more of an issue than we have done” (p. 812). However, he stresses that scholars write for different audiences and that this means that when writing for people in the field , the technical jargon cannot be taken out. He also dismisses the idea of trying to write for a general readership.
Despite rebuffing many of Billig’s critiques (2008a, 2008b), Fairclough (even just by the fact that he was willing to debate this through several back and forth articles in this Special Issue) was able to listen to critique and dialog about it as part of the whole process of CDA developing and growing as a field . This is noteworthy because another critique of CDA has been that there is a lack of internal dialog which has tended to “consolidate CDA from the outside, as an intellectual paradigm with its own hierarchy and systems of control, but also detracts from the seriousness of its intellectual enterprise” (Breeze, 2011: 519). However, Wodak and Meyer, encourage more critique that allows for “fruitful and necessary debates for CDA” (2009: 32) and looks for changes in its aims and goals, essentially keeping the field alive “because it necessarily triggers more self-reflection and encourages new responses and innovative ideas” (Wodak & Meyer, 2016: 22). Lin’s (2014: 228) review of CDA in applied linguistics calls on scholars in this field to attempt more “up-front critical reflexive studies and action on its own status as an academic discipline”. And the recent Special Issue of Discourse & Society (2016), which we discuss below, also continues to keep the field alive with new frameworks and shifts in focus.
5.12 Redefining CDA/CDS
As we have demonstrated in this chapter, response to multilayered critique has redefined CDA and propelled scholars in the field to propose new frameworks and shifts in analytic focus. In this section, we continue to describe changes in CDA as a result of critique, occasionally returning to the critique itself in order to remind reviewers of the origin of such shifts and changes. As mentioned in Sect. 4.1, the journal Critical Discourse Studies was created in 2004 to provide a forum for new work that deals with much of the critique mentioned here. In addition, for some scholars this post-critique work can be recognized by the creation of the new label CDS. We will now focus on current critique and responses to it that can be seen in Special Issues of the Journal of Language and Politics and Discourse & Society in 2016. This more recent dialogue results from societal changes that have forced the field to reflect once again on the purpose and direction of CDA/CDS. According to Machin and van Leeuwen (2016b: 243), “The power of governments is increasingly shared between the government and the media, and increasingly shifting from government to private capital, with complex relations of mutual dependence and complex tensions between these three”. Hence, public communication increasingly addresses the public as consumers, rather than as citizens. This “marketization of discourse” (Fairclough, 1993; Mautner, 2010; see also Sects. 3.5.4 and 3.9.4) is characterized by aesthetically pleasing designs, a conversational style and increased use of multimodal resources which are facilitated by “technologies for everyday communication that are made available worldwide by global IT corporations” (Machin & van Leeuwen, 2016b: 244). Thus, “the power of the global economy and the neoliberal principles that underpin it has been on the rise” (Sewell, 2005) and understanding this shift is paramount for CDA/CDS scholars. Machin and van Leeuwen thus point to the need to “pay increasing attention to the way that political ideologies are infused into culture more widely” (2016b: 243; see also Sect. 3.9.4).
In the Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Politics dedicated to multimodality (2016a), Machin and van Leeuwen (2016b) tackle in their introduction the connection between multimodality, politics and ideology (see also Sects. 3.9.2 and 4.6) through including topics such as computer software, reality TV. shows, and apps and games targeted at young children, as well as the use of strategic diagrams, the design of office furniture, the promotion of health care services and also new kinds of corporate images which claim to promote gender diversity. In laying out the critique that more attention needs to be paid to the way that political ideologies are infused into culture other than, or in addition to, written discourse, Machin and van Leeuwen provide a sequential model for analysts to follow (which we discussed in more detail in Sect. 4.6) which first identifies the signifier and visible/audible evidence which the text or object of analysis provides, then focuses on the meaning and finally, attends to its wider significance. In doing this, analysts can and should show not only what is communicated but what is not, revealing gains and losses ( Kress, 2005) and the extent of recontextualization (van Leeuwen, 2008; Machin, 2013) that gives rise to the new forms of political discourse mentioned here. Machin and van Leeuwen conclude that CDA/CDS scholars who engage in MCDA should identify which resources are harnessed for which ideological purposes and how they are used to recontextualize social practices in the service of neoliberal ideology , such as the way Roderick (2016) showed how office furniture design does not facilitate individual work or long-term projects (Machin & van Leeuwen, 2016b: 255). It is worth mentioning that this recent shift, while different in important ways from before, because of its focus on multimodality, still aligns with Fairclough’s (2015) call to fight back against neoliberal forces (see Sects. 3.5.4 and 4.3).
In a similar article in the Special Issue of Discourse & Society dedicated to ‘Theoretical and Conceptual Challenges in Critical Discourse Studies ’ (edited by Krzyżanowski & Forchtner, 2016a), Machin (2016) repeats these same arguments that critical multimodal research (and MCDA) needs to show how different semiotic resources are used to serve the interests of particular institutions and ideologies, but also points out that in the burgeoning field of multimodal studies, not all types of multimodal work fit neatly within the aims of CDA/CDS. In particular, he posits that CDA/CDS scholars should continue to focus on multimodality but remember to take care to “show how discourses seek to control and shape social practices in the interests of dominant ideology ” (Machin, 2016: 331). That is, instead of just describing what the different modes do and how they interact, scholars should analyze more what the interactions of multiple means of communication do. In addition, he addresses the continuing critique, mentioned above, that CDA does not pay attention to nor connect with what other fields are doing and argues for more engagement with wider scholarly work (2016: 332; see Chap. 6 on the inter/multidisciplinary connections of CDA/CDS).
immanent critique can provide theoretically informed research questions for discourse analysis, such as questions regarding the existence of (silent) suffering, the process of the social production of that suffering and the structural obstacles to ending such suffering (Herzog, 2016a: 289).
Fairclough (2015: 12) gives a clear explanation of normative critique, saying that, as opposed to transcendental critique, it “does not go outside the social reality it is critiquing to find a measure or standard against which reality can be evaluated and criticized (e.g. to religion or philosophy)”. Instead, it “identifies internal contradictions within that social reality, including those between what is supposed or said to happen and what actually does happen” (2015: 12). Fairclough argues that CDA is unique because unlike other forms of critical analysis, it proceeds from normative critique of discourse to “explanatory” critique, which “provides the crucial link between normative critique of discourse and action to change existing reality” (2015: 19). He then argues that this type of DA can result in social change.
Forchtner and Schneickert (2016) add to new theoretical applications of CDA/CDS by proposing a merger of Bourdieu, Habermas and DHA in one framework , which would bring together “the idea of providing detailed linguistic analysis of, possibly, diachronic developments (DHA) through a series of sociological concepts (Bourdieu) on the basis of an imminent idea of transcendence” (2016: 304). They first introduce Bourdieu’s framework into DHA, then discuss links and alleged contradictions between Habermas and Bourdieu and finally, they indicate how collective learning processes might be integrated into field theory. A final article in the Special Issue dealing with CDS theory is by Krzyżanowski (2016) and argues that an in-depth rethinking of the ways in which CDS approaches recontextualisation is needed. This responds to the fact that “contemporary public discourse increasingly revolves around debating and redefining various social and political and indeed abstract concepts, often in lieu of re/presenting the actual society or its members” and that this type of discourse supports “the spread and solidification of neoliberal tendencies in contemporary societies” (2016: 309, 318). One example he gives of this change is the case of contemporary discourses on immigration which feature concepts such as ‘integration’ and use it as “a catch-all excuse for the fierce criticism of social groups—in this case migrants—who can thereby be very easily targeted by politicians and journalists and stigmatised as those who allegedly ‘do not follow integration’, do not ‘want to integrate’ and hence should not belong (Krzyżanowski, 2010; Bennett, 2015)” (Krzyżanowski, 2016: 310). Krzyżanowski argues that CDA/CDS needs a set of new conceptual and analytical tools that can help it deal with such problems and proposes that its theoretical (as well as related analytical) tools should be combined with Begriffsgeschichte (‘conceptual history’), which is concept-oriented and based on the idea that the central object of historical inquiry should not be events, but “social and political concepts which come to define societies and various facets of social order” (2016: 312). He then suggests that CDA/CDS could be enhanced not only by combining Begriffsgeschichte and critical-analytical views but also by re-thinking how we approach recontextualization (2016: 318). In this way, the combination of the two can lead to more in-depth examination of how recontextualisation and transformation of meanings operate in discourses to define and regulate the contemporary public realm. A clear example (2016) of how to do this is by examining discourse related to multilingualism which frames its benefits in terms of economic gain.
Having discussed the major critiques of CDA and responses by scholars to them, we want the reader to keep in mind that, as is the case throughout this book, we have established a cut-off date of Feb. 2018 for discussion of new work. We note that, as this book goes to press, new trends and responses to critique continue to emerge, and so it is inevitable that we have missed some very recent ones in this chapter that readers know about.
We now turn to the way in which CDA/CDS is currently engaging with other disciplines.