What is Critical Discourse Analysis? | Everything You Need to Know About CDA by Fairclough, Van Dijk

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀? | 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗖𝗗𝗔 𝗯𝘆 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵, 𝗩𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗷𝗸

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social-power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced, legitimated, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take an explicit position and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately challenge social inequality. This is also why CDA may be characterized as a social movement of politically committed discourse analysts.

The main difference that I can point to is that CDA deals with more issues, such as intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and socio-historical context of formation and interpretations of texts/discourses, while DA, in general, does not go into such aspects of a given text/discourse.

It focuses primarily on social problems and political issues rather than the mere study of discourse structures outside their social and political contexts. This critical analysis of social problems is usually multidisciplinary rather than merely describe discourse structures; it tries to explain them in terms of properties of social interaction and especially social structure. More specifically, CDA focuses on the ways discourse structures enact, confirm, legitimate, reproduce, or challenge relations of power abuse (dominance) in society.

Powerful institutions and individuals use language as both a means to construct their power and to maintain it. This supports Fairclough’s (1989) view that power is not only built and sustained via coercive means (by force), but also via indirect ways (the use of language). Besides institutional power, or the power exercised by entities that are overtly recognized for holding a position of authority (the police, for example), there also exist other types of power relations: between family members, between educated and uneducated people, and so forth. Individuals and groups in this category of power relations use language as their main tool for maintaining status and power.

For instance, an uneducated person who is exposed daily to a media content that uses language to promote patriarchal principles is likely to be influenced by such ideas and might consequently put those principles into practice within his or her own marital life. The media in this case serves certain ideological purposes that might pertain to a dominant community (Mayr 2).

Fairclough (1989), Fowler (1985) and Kramarae, Schultz and O’Barr (1984) all agree that language is “a social practice,” and that power is constructed and developed via social interactions marked by hierarchy and asymmetry.


The macro/public discourse refers to the language used by powerful public institutions through the mass media. The power exercised via this public use of language usually stems from to governments and political parties. Those powerful institutions use language or “public discourse” (Dijk 84) to construct and promote their dominance, by producing knowledge about society and advertising a given social practice (Mayr 3).

The micro/private discourse refer to the language used by individual to exercise power, dominance and ideology building.

By influencing communication, linguistic ideology becomes a powerful tool for spreading views and ideas based on a certain ideological framework. ... Ideology is viewed in close liaison with language and linguistic manifestations and these relations are manifested in the form of mutual influence.
Mera jism meri Marzi, Apna khana khud garam kro, lo beth gye theek say.
Women should go out, earn and live their life according to their rules.
In an interview with British Vogue, Malala Yousafzai said, 'If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can’t it just be a partnership?’


Critical discourse analysis look at language in such a deep manner, that it studies how it is used to exercise power, to dominate, to legitimate something illegal/egal, to form ideologies and to devise the societal norms and hierarchy. It also studies how language is used as a power tool in politics, mass media and as public discourse to exercise power, moreover it also studies how an individual use language to form ideologies or exercise power and dominance.

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