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Language and Literature
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What is critical discourse analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it?1

Michael Toolan

University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. [m.toolan{at}bham.ac.uk]

Increasingly, discourse makes and sustains the worlds we live in. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is one form of a justifiably reflective and suspicious inspection of how discourses shape and frame us; and it is explicitly intent on making a difference, and not merely describing extant conditions. Why, then, has it met with some resistance from language analysts? For CDA to make more of a difference, I argue it needs to critique some of its own theoretical distinctions (e.g. between description and interpretive explanation), it needs to be more critical and more demanding of the text linguistics it uses, it must strive for greater thoroughness and strength of evidence in its argumentation while pursuing simplicity of presentation, and it must not shrink from prescribing correction or reform of particular hegemonizing discourses.

Key Words: argumentation • critical discourse analysis • prescription • reformulation

Language and Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2, 83-103 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/096394709700600201
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