Abstract
Texts and Practices Revisited (2023) is just as relevant for scholars of discourse analysis now as was the first edition of the book published nearly three decades ago in 1996. The first edition of this volume was a highly significant edited collection at the time, and the first book to carry the terms ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’ (CDA). The publication brought together an array of the method’s pioneering scholars, each bringing their own distinctive approach when the field was in its infancy. The introduction to the first edition provided one of the first clear accounts of what was taking place in the emerging field of CDA. Researchers were interested in the way that language helped to shape our social and political worlds. Linguists, it was explained, had the skills and knowledge that could help non-linguists to demystify texts, and draw out the models of the world represented in them. Most importantly, CDA could be used to reveal hidden forms of discrimination in written texts. In part, CDA appeared as a reaction to a more formalistic kind of linguistic research that had focused on grammar and codes, and not on language as part of social practices. Ultimately, the aim was to engage with social issues and forms of inequality in society, and help bring about social change.
Texts and Practices Revisited (2023) updates the first edition for the contemporary socio-political world. It also shows how much CDA has developed from its original text-based nature to include multimodal data, as well as flourishing into a range of socio-political domains. But it also stresses a point made very clearly in the first edition: that we can only know how language is functioning if we fully understand the contexts in which it is used. This means that CDA must engage with broader scholarship and be highly informed about ‘relevant historical, economic and institutional circumstances’ (pp. 9–10). CDA is not about just texts, but also the social events and processes of which they are a part.
The book comprises six chapters from contributors to the initial edition, and eight new contributions from scholars who, since the first edition, have become leading scholars in the field of CDA. As with the first edition, each presents their own approach, using their own tools, but each stressing that CDA, or Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), are sociological projects and not purely linguistic.
Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 14 revisit contributions from the first edition, giving contemporary updates on insights, concerns, and approaches defining the current landscape of CDA research. Fairclough, in Chapter 3, explores the ‘technologization of discourse’, examining the role of discourse as a powerful tool for governing social relations and practices, particularly institutionalized university cultures. Chapter 5 by Van Leeuwen extends prior research on the representation of social actors, with a focus on performance as a primary factor in how individuals, especially in political contexts, are perceived. In Chapter 6, Wodak examines the notion of the ‘wall’ in political discourses, uncovering its historical and cultural connotations in fortifying borders, and its contemporary use to legitimize exclusionary policies amid the global rise of populism. In Chapter 7, Coulthard provides an analytical approach to forensic linguistics, emphasizing the linguistic challenges in documenting and presenting legal evidence. In Chapter 8, Van Dijk develops his theory about power and ideology, showing how this can be used to understand contemporary social movements. In Chapter 14, Caldas-Coulthard explores ageism from feminist linguistics, focusing on how aging is linguistically and visually represented in media reports and institutional texts.
The eight new contributions (Chapters 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15) are faithful to the sociological emphasis of the book. They are marked by the shifts in discourse analysis since the first edition, where new forms of communication and social organization have emerged. Running through these chapters is the global shift toward consumerization and marketization, where semiotic choices are made to legitimize, naturalize, and perpetuate discourses that influence societal functioning in specific ways.
Chapter 2, by Fowler and Kress, revisits critical linguistics, showing how an analysis of contemporary newspapers requires deep knowledge of wider social contexts if we are to unveil implicit social meanings expressed in discourse. In Chapter 4, Lemke examines transmedia franchises as new communication technologies. His concern is with the role they play in presenting and reinforcing social values and behaviors driven by marketing purposes. In Chapter 10, Graham points to the market logic that now runs through societies and all communication. He introduces the term ‘post-literate cultures’ to think about how discourses are used to capitalize on market segments, each carrying its own form of divisiveness and identity markers. In Chapter 11, Machin engages with the research literature that shows how sustainability is little more than an empty buzzword. He analyzes infographics used by companies and institutions to present their own vague and inconsistent sustainable strategies.
Chapters 9, 12, and 13 explore the role of affect and discourse in shaping public opinions, normalizing political polarization, and their embedding in the broader resurgence of conservatism within the global political sphere. In Chapter 9, Rojo examines the discourse of Spain’s conservative president, using freedom as a symbol to evoke anti-establishment sentiments as part of legitimizing a conservative ideology. In Chapter 12, Canale considers how news media in Uruguay report on gender and sexuality in relation to a progressive sexual education guidebook, in which news agencies use victim narratives to craft ‘newsworthy’ stories, capitalizing on negative reactions by audiences. In Chapter 13, Bora explores how political discourses from opposing political parties construct feelings of disgust in relation to gender, in order to steer public opinions against each other. Such discourses are later recontextualized and widely circulated across different media. In chapter 15, Talbot takes the novel approach of graphic storytelling to create a biography of Louise Michel (a revolutionary feminist in French history) as a way of raising awareness of historical and social justice issues.
The publication of this second edition is timely in that it serves as a reminder of the priorities of the field of CDS. It is certainly not a book that can be considered as an entry point to the broader set of approaches and concepts that it carries. And the styles of the chapters vary in regard to accessibility. But its contribution is important as it provides a set of materials by the same scholars who set the field in motion and have seen it grow and change. As such, it is a more advanced guide on why we do analysis. We must connect with specific contextual forms of inequality, with their localized specificities, showing how the skills and tools offered by linguistics and multimodality can make one, small contribution. We should certainly be cautious of aligning with more populist definitions of ‘social injustice’ that become fashionable across news and social media. As the authors in this collection observe, societies around the world face new challenges for human well-being, in part as global neoliberal ideology and free-trade permeate all things – even how academic work and scholarly identities themselves take form. This book reminds us that we need in the first place to carry out our work, looking outwards and engaging with the wider scholarship that raises these concerns.