Background
Critical discourse analysis emerged from 'critical linguisics' (CL) developed at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s, and the terms are now often interchangable. Sociolinguistics was paying little attention to social hierarchy and power. CDA was first developed by the Lancaster school of linguists of which Norman Fairclough was the most prominent figure. Ruth Wodak has also made a remarkable contribution to this field of study. The approach draws from several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, such as critical linguistics. Fairclough developed a three-dimensional framework for studying discourse, where the aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice. Particularly, he combines micro, meso and macro-level interpretation. At the micro-level, the analyst considers the text's syntax, metaphoric structure and certain rhetorical devices. The meso-level involved studying the text's production and consumption, focusing on how power relations are enacted. At the macro-level, the analyst is concerned with intertextual understanding, trying to understand the broad, societal currents that are affecting the text being studied.
In addition to linguistic theory, the approach draws from social theory — and contributions from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu — in order to examine ideologies and power relations involved in discourse. Language connects with the social through being the primary domain of ideology, and through being both a site of, and a stake in, struggles for power. Ideology has been called the basis of the social representations of groups, and, in psychological versions of CDA developed by Teun A. van Dijk and Ruth Wodak, there is assumed to be a sociocognitive interface between social structures and discourse structures. The historical dimension in critical discourse studies also plays an important role.
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