Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) attempts to reveal the ways societal structures and processes are encoded in people's communications with one another. Understanding discourse as a socio-semiotic process (M.A.K. Halliday), exponents of CDA assume that public discourse not only reflects patterns of (assymetrical) societal organization (i.e., hierarchy, power, hegemony), but also helps construct, re-inforce and reproduce them. By raising the public awareness of the encoded ideologies (systems of values and sets of beliefs) which pervade the strategies of influence, manipulation, persuasion employed by those in power (e.g., structures of politics, popular media and consumer industry) these practices cannot only be disclosed (´demystified´), but also altered. – Milan Ferencik