Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 12:2 (2021) ► pp.309–333

On the development of the social-linguistic nexus in discourse research

A critical review

| University of Łódź
This paper gives a critical overview of analytical approaches dominating the field of discourse studies in the last three decades, from the perspective of their philosophical and formative bases: social constructionism and linguistics. It explores different conceptions of the theoretical nexus between these two bases leading to the emergence of three distinct yet complementary strands of thought (i–iii). The paper starts with poststructuralist views of discourse salient in (i) Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory. Laclau and Mouffe’s assumption that no discourse is a closed entity but rather transformed through contact with other discourses is taken as the introductory premise to present a large family of (ii) critical discourse studies, characterized as text-analytical practices explaining how discourse partakes in the production and negotiations of ideological meanings. Finally, the paper discusses (iii) three recent discourse analytical models: Discourse Space Theory, Critical Metaphor Analysis and the Legitimization-Proximization Model. These new theories take a further step toward consolidation of the social-theoretical and linguistic bases in contemporary discourse studies. The empirical benefits of this consolidation are discussed in the last part of the paper, which includes a case study where the new models are used in the analysis of Polish anti-immigration discourse.
Keywords: discourse theory, critical discourse studies, social constructionism, social theory, linguistics-anti-immigration discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Classical approaches: Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory
  • 3.Critical discourse studies
  • 4.Recent models in (critical) discourse studies
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19056.cap
References
Althusser, Louis
1971 Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Angermuller, Johannes, Dominique Maingueneau & Ruth Wodak
(eds) 2014 The Discourse Studies Reader. Main Currents in Theory and Analysis. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul
2006 Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michał Krzyżanowski, Anthony McEnery & Ruth Wodak
2008 A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society 191: 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail
1981 The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua
1954 Indexical expressions. Mind 631: 359–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, Tom
2018 Positive discourse analysis. In John Flowerdew & John Richardson (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, 133–147. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benke, Gertraud
2000 Diskursanalyse als sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchungsmethode. SWS Rundschau 21: 140–162.Google Scholar
Benveniste, Emile
1966 Problèmes de linguistique générale 1. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan & Chris Bulcaen
2000 Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 291: 447–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1992 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Breeze, Ruth
2011 Critical Discourse Analysis and its critics. Pragmatics 211: 493–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühler, Karl
1934 Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Stuttgart: Fischer.Google Scholar
Cap, Piotr
2006 Legitimization in Political Discourse. Newcastle: CSP.Google Scholar
2013 Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017a The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017b From ‘cultural unbelonging’ to ‘terrorist risk’: communicating threat in the Polish anti-immigration discourse. Critical Discourse Studies 151: 285–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cap, Piotr & Urszula Okulska
(ed.) 2013 Analyzing Genres in Political Communication: Theory and Practice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2004 Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul
2004 Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Missing links in mainstream CDA: modules, blends and the critical instinct. In Ruth Wodak & Paul Chilton (eds) A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis, 19–51. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie & Norman Fairclough
1999 Discourse in Late Modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques
1970 Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In Richard Macksey & Eugenio Donato (eds) The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, 247–272. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
1989 Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
1992 Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
1995 Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman & Ruth Wodak
1997 Critical discourse analysis. In Teun van Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction, 258–284. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2018 Discourse analysis. In Andreas H. Jucker, Klaus P. Schneider & Wolfram Bublitz (eds) Methods in Pragmatics (Handbooks of Pragmatics, Volume 10), 401–421. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, John & John Richardson
(eds) 2018 The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1971 L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
1972 The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by Andrew M. Sheridan. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger, Gunther Kress & Tony Trew
1979 Language and Control. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger
1991 Language in the News. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Giltrow, Janet & Dieter Stein
(eds) 2009 Genres in the Internet. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goatly, Andrew
2007 Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Golato, Andrea & Peter Golato
2018 Ethnomethodology and conversation. In Andreas H. Jucker, Klaus P. Schneider & Wolfram Bublitz (eds) Methods in Pragmatics (Handbooks of Pragmatics, Volume 10), 380–399. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio
1973 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K.
1978 Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
1994 Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Hansen, Allan & Andre Sonnichsen
2014 Discourse, the political and the ontological dimension: an interview with Ernesto Laclau. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 151: 255–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2011 Moving beyond metaphor in the Cognitive Linguistic Approach to CDA: construal operations in immigration discourse. In Christopher Hart (ed.), Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, 171–192. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Event-construal in press reports of violence in political protests: a Cognitive Linguistic Approach to CDA. Journal of Language and Politics 121: 400–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher & Piotr Cap
(eds) 2014 Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hodge, Robert & Gunther Kress
1993 Language as Ideology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob & Ngai-Ling Sum
2018 Language and critique: some anticipations of critical discourse studies in Marx. Critical Discourse Studies 151: 325–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jørgensen, Marianne & Louise Phillips
2002 Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaal, Bertie
2015 How ‘real’ are time and space in politically motivated worldviews? Critical Discourse Studies 121: 330–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid & Johann Unger
2016 Critical discourse studies and social media: power, resistance and critique in changing media ecologies. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.), 205–233. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Koller, Veronika
2005 Critical discourse analysis and social cognition: evidence from business media discourse. Discourse & Society 161: 199–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika
(ed) 2017 Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, Łukasz Grabowski & Julita Woźniak
2017 Mobilizing against the Other: cyberhate, refugee crisis and proximization. In Monika Kopytowska (ed.) Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres, 30–55, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał & Bernhard Forchtner
2016 Theories and concepts in critical discourse studies: facing challenges, moving beyond foundations. Discourse & Society 271: 253–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lacan, Jacques
2007 The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Richard Grigg. London: Norton.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto
1990 New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso.Google Scholar
1993 Power and representation. In Mark Poster (ed.) Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture, 14–45. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
1996 The death and resurrection of the theory of ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies 11: 201–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto & Chantal Mouffe
1985 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Luke, Allan
2002 Beyond science and ideological critique: Developments in critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 221: 96–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macgilchrist, Felicitas
2014 Media discourse and de/coloniality. A post-foundational approach. In Christopher Hart & Piotr Cap (eds), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, 385–405. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Maingueneau, Dominique & Johannes Angermüller
2007 Discourse analysis in France: a conversation. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 81, art. 21. [URL]
Marín Arrese, Juana
2011 Effective vs. epistemic stance and subjectivity in political discourse: legitimising strategies and mystification of responsibility. In Christopher Hart (ed.) Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, 193–224. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James R.
2004 Positive discourse analysis: solidarity and change. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 491: 179–202.Google Scholar
Martin, James R. & David Rose
2003 Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
McEnery, Anthony & Paul Baker
(eds) 2015 Corpora and Discourse studies: Integrating Discourse and Corpora. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
McNair, Brian
2011 An Introduction to Political Communication (5th ed.). London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal
(ed.) 1993 The Return of the Political. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2004 Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
O’Halloran, Kieran
2010 How to use corpus linguistics in the study of media discourse. In Anne O’Keeffe & Michael McCarthy (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, 563–576. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan
2006 Metaphors, motifs, and similes across discourse types: corpus assisted discourse studies (CADS) at work. In Anatol Stefanowitsch & Stefan Gries (eds) Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy, 267–304. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Perrez, Julien & Min Reuchamps
2015 Special issue on the political impact of metaphors. Metaphor and the Social World 51: 165–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin & Ruth Wodak
2001 Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sardinha, Tony B.
2011 Metaphor and corpus linguistics. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada 111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de
1966 Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael
1997 Whorf’s children: critical comments on critical discourse analysis. In Ann Ryan & Alison Wray (eds) Evolving Models of Language, 100–116. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
2002 Two quantitative methods of studying phraseology in English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 71: 215–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 Language corpora. In Alan Davies & Catherine Elder (eds) Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 106–132. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charlotte & Anna Marchi
(eds) 2018 Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tseronis, Assimakis & Charles Forceville
(ed.) 2017 Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Unger, Johann
2016 The interdisciplinarity of critical discourse studies research. Palgrave Communications 21: 15037. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun
1999 Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis. Discourse & Society 101: 459–470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Discourse and Context: A Socio-Cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Eemeren, Frans & Rob Grootendorst
1992 Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies. A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo
2005 Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Widdowson, Henry
1998 The theory and practice of Critical Discourse Analysis. Applied Linguistics 191: 136–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2011 Critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis. In Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Ostman & Jef Verschueren (eds) Discursive Pragmatics, 50–70. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2012 Critical Discourse Analysis (41 volumes). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer
(eds) 2016 Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Yus, Francisco
2011 Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zienkowski, Jan, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren
(eds) 2011 Discursive Pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jorg
2007 Discourse metaphors: the link between figurative language and habitual analogies. Cognitive Linguistics 181: 445–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar