Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse which views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination is reproduced by text and talk.

Norman Fairclough’s classic book on CDA, now in a long-awaited new edition, provides an historical overview to this important discipline and focuses on cutting-edge research in the field. The book brings together in one volume papers from a wide range of sources, many of which are difficult to access.

Bringing together papers written by Norman Fairclough over a 25 year period, Critical Discourse Analysis represents a comprehensive and important contribution to the development of this popular field.

The book is divided into seven sections covering the following themes:

• language in relation to ideology and power
• discourse in processes of social and cultural change
• dialectics of discourse, dialectical relations between discourse and other moments of social life
• methodology of critical discourse analysis research
• analysis of political discourse
• discourse in globalisation and ‘transition’
• critical language awareness in education

The new edition has been extensively revised and enlarged to include a total of twenty two papers. It will be of value to researchers in the subject and should prove essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in Linguistics and other areas of social science.