Wodak, Ruth (2024) Critical Discourse Analysis/Studies. In: The Routledge Companion to English Studies, Second Edition :. Routledge, London, pp. 31-44. ISBN 9781032117300
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Since the late 1980s, critical discourse analysis (CDA) or – as currently preferred – critical discourse studies (CDS) (e.g., Wodak and Meyer 2015a) has become a well- established field in the social sciences. CDS can be defined as a problem- orientated interdisciplinary research programme, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical models, research methods, and agendas. What unites all approaches is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, and political- economic, social, or cultural change in society. The manifold roots of CDS lie in rhetoric, text linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, sociopsychology, cognitive science, literary studies and stylistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as in applied linguistics and pragmatics. CDS investigates not a linguistic unit per se but rather social phenomena which are necessarily complex and thus require a multi/ inter/ transdisciplinary and multimethodological approach. The objects under investigation do not have to be related to negative or exceptionally “serious” social or political experiences or events; this is a frequent misunderstanding of the aims and goals of CDS and of the term “critical”, which, of course, does not mean “negative” as in common- sense usage (see Chilton et al. 2010). Any social phenomenon lends itself to critical investigation, to be challenged and not taken for granted.