The antinomies of power in critical discourse analysis

This paper provides an overview of the conception of power in critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is a conception influenced by the thought of Michel Foucault and realized in CDA as the study of the discursive construction of domination. The concern for power as domination links CDA to struggles against inequality and power abuse, and to the demystification in language of mechanisms of inculcation and control. The development of critical language awareness and critical consciousness as key CDA objectives, and the deliberate incorporation of socio-theoretical insights, associates CDA with a Marxist and neo-Marxist emancipatory problematic which has had a particular appeal for critical practitioners in education, who adopt its models for the teaching of CDA courses and for the classroom analysis of texts. Recent scholarly critiques have led to questions being raised about the limitations of CDA's negative understanding of power, and theoretical reformulations by prominent CDA scholars have seen CDA engage with the relativist challenges presented by poststructuralist thinking. In education in particular, but also in the CDA mainstream, the negative conception of power seems to narrow the range of objects which are open to a critical analysis of discourse due to the implicit need to focus on texts which carry traces of positions to which CDA is opposed. The paper discusses the theoretical and methodological implications for CDA of adopting a more positive interpretation of power and presents a critique of CDA's engagement with poststructuralism. © 2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved