Critical Discourse Analysis in Historiography

Abstract

Education researchers from around the globe have turned to critical dis- course analysis (CDA) as a way to describe, interpret, and explain important educational problems. CDA is an interdisciplinary set of the- oretical and analytic tools applied to the study of the relationships between texts (spoken, written, multimodal, and digital), discourse practices (communicative events), and social practices (society-wide processes) (Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000; Collins, 2004; Fairclough, 1993; Luke, 1995/1996). Luke (2002) defines CDA as a “a principled and transparent shunting back and forth between the microanalysis of texts using various tools of linguistic, semiotic, and literary analysis of social formations, institutions, and power relations that these texts index and construct” (p. 100). CDA focuses on how language as a cul- tural tool mediates relationships of power and privilege in social inter- actions, institutions, and bodies of knowledge.