Critical discourse analysis: How can awareness of CDA influence teaching techniques?

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a creative and disciplined enterprise which is based on a speech act theory that says that language is used not only to describe things but to do things as well (Brown and Yule, 1985). It is essentially an approach to language analysis, which concerns itself with issues of language, power and ideology. CDA focuses on language as it is used by real people with real intentions, emotions, and purposes. People are members of the society and their speech is a reflection of a set of experiential, relational, and expressive values (Fairclough, 1992: 110). According to this approach, there is a correlation between linguistic production and social variables. For Fairclough, CDA is an orientation towards language, which associates linguistic text analysis with a social theory of the functioning of language in political and ideological processes. Identifying these processes helps not only to identify the internal building of discourse described by Gee (2001: 92) but also to identify the connotations it implies. In this paper, an authentic text is critically analysed following the framework proposed by Fairclough (1992:110-12). To achieve this, a precise theoretical background is found necessary to signal the importance of CDA and to highlight the criteria of Fairclough's framework. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this approach to text analysis for language teaching. Key Words: Critical Discourse Analysis, social semiotic, social power, ideational meaning, transitivity, interpersonal meaning, modality, attitudinal epithets, interdiscursivity, reiteratio