critical discourse analysis (CDA) media n. a research tradition within the social sciences that seeks to blend approaches deriving from discourse analysis with insights from critical social theory. The early work in this tradition grew out of linguistics and was indeed called initially ‘critical linguistics’. The relevant models of linguistics for this approach were functional rather than formal, Hallidayan rather than Chomskyan, and were particularly interested in showing how patterns of grammatical choice could embody a world view or how patterns of sentence-type or pronoun could be an instrument of control. Later work, associated with the British specialist in linguistics Norman Fairclough (1941-), places more emphasis on the analysis of connected discourse and seeks to integrate this with a social theory that takes a critical stance towards contemporary social change. This has led to broad accounts discursive change understood in terms of tendencies such as the democratization, marketization and the conversationalization of discourse. More recently CDA has itself taken on a new guise as the Discourse Historical Approach whose analyses are often committed to combating racism and sexism. mmo
