Journal Review

Title: The Research and Application of Critical Discourse Analysis

Author: Xiaoyan Fan

Journal: Journal of Language Teaching and Research

Publication: Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 1041-1046, September 2019

Abstract          :

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) reveals the relationship between power and ideology behind language by analyzing discourse. News as an important channel for people to obtain information in their daily life, its objectivity is self-evident, but the ideology contained in it is often ignored by readers. This paper reviews the development and characteristics of critical discourse analysis, and analyzes the critical discourse from four aspects: transitivity, modality, transformation and classification, to explore the ideological and political positions behind the text.

Goals               :

This paper will analyze the characteristics of CDA, explore its problems and development trends in the future, hoping to provide some reference for scholars engaged in CDA.

Problems         :

Inequality and injustice in society, reveals the ideology and power behind language, and strives to improve it.

Theories           :

In 1979, R. Fowler first proposed CDA as a language research method in Language and Control. In 1989, the publication of language and Power ( Fairclough, 1989) and speech, Power, and ideology (Wodak,1989) marked the maturity of CDA. Up to now, CDA has gone through the development process of more than THIRTY years, from budding to growing.

CDA draws on relevant sociological theories, for example, CDA draws on Gramsci's hegemonic theory, and argues that civil society relies on hegemony, that is, to maintain the current system with the consent or acquiescence of most people. In the field of linguistics, CDA mainly draws on the theory of systemic functional linguistics, which is a multifunctional theory linking language and social context, and is very suitable for discourse analysis.

In such a wide range of research areas, CDA frequently examines topics such as gender discrimination, racial discrimination, employment, and judicial inequality, war, nuclear weapons and nuclear power, political strategies and business practices, etc. ( Blommaert,2005).

Conclusion      :

After more than 30 years of development, CDA has achieved fruitful results and contributed greatly to language research. It clearly explains the dialectical relationship between language and society and deepens people's understanding of the interactive relationship between language, power, and ideology. At the same time, CDA has been controversial because of its existing problems. In the face of questioning and criticism, linguists continue to explore new theories and methods to promote the development of critical discourse analysis in an in-depth direction.

References      :

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[13] Van Dijk,T. (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In R. Wodak & M.Meyer (Eds.). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage Publications, 629-634.

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