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CAT Anàlisi Crítica del Discurs SPA Análisis Crítico del Discurso |
origins
The term critical discourse analysis (CDA) gained prominence in the 1970s thanks to the work of UK-based critical linguists affiliated with the University of East Anglia, most notably Roger Fowler.
other terms
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical linguistics (CL) have often been used interchangeably, but the former is more established and widely used by scholars across a wide range of fields. For instance, CDA features prominently in the work of Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, and translation researchers such as Kim (2019, 2025) and Baumgarten & Schröter (2017).
abstract
At the crossroads of linguistics, literary theory and social science, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is concerned primarily with the study of ideology and power and how they manifest themselves in naturally occurring written and multimodal discourse. Unlike discourse analysis (DA), which investigates how language is used in communication, looking at issues such as coherence and turn-talking, CDA is also interested in uncovering and uprooting hidden or opaque power relations, bringing to the surface inequalities and ingrained, quasi-institutionalized bias in a reflective, almost justice-driven, manner. Critical discourse analysts give due consideration to the presence or absence of specific lexical items, the deployment of targeted images, and ideologically-loaded terms.
CDA is methodologically diverse (Baumgarten & Schröter 2017; Kim 2025) and has traditionally relied upon case studies, although more recent research, in linguistics and translation studies, has drawn on corpora (Kim 2025). In light of its emphasis on hegemony and achieving social justice, a strand of translation studies research has turned to CDA to investigate manipulation and censorship in media discourse. Increasingly, CDA has been applied to literary translation and, to a lesser extent, audiovisual translation. Paradoxically, the fact that most CDA-guided studies have been published in English might have contributed to a biased, one-sided view of the world. Polarization, climate change, immigration, social upheaval, and the rapid rise of AI have created countless opportunities for the study of new power configurations and imbalances. Future translation studies research underpinned by CDA could further investigate how disinformation campaigns targeting specific groups operate across cultures.
record
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José Gustavo Góngora Goloubintseff |
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2026 |
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Góngora Goloubintseff, José Gustavo. 2026. "Critical Discourse Analysis" @ ENTI (Encyclopedia of Translation & Interpreting). AIETI. |
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pending |
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https://www.aieti.eu/enti/critical_discourse_ENG |