Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA), a methodology of social research, examines the reproduction of power inequities through texts, including oral, written, visual, and/or multimodal texts. CDA is used in educational research to investigate the way that both linguistic and discourse practices contribute to the structuring of hierarchical social relations in educational institutions, along with the repercussions of these practices on material conditions in the social context. By analyzing the perspectives and ideologies that are naturalized and perpetuated through texts, as well as those that are excluded and silenced, CDA promotes an awareness of how language functions to produce and/or reproduce inequality. Ideally, CDA can be used as a semiotic resource, a resource for making meaning, by individuals and groups with less power in order to expose ...