Project
Critical Discourse Studies

As is obvious from such concepts as ideology and knowledge, CDS deals with social problems and issues that have both a social and a cognitive dimension.

Although there are many approaches, methods, etc in CDS, I have myself focused mostly on the multidisciplinary. sociocognitive study of the reproduction of power abuse (domination) by discourse.

My studies on racism and discourse show how social aspects of racism (from social practices of discrimination to the role of groups and institutions at the macro-level) are closely related to cognitive ones (from biased mental models of ethnic events, to broadly shared ethnic prejudices as well as racist ideologies, which in turn are at the basis of discriminatory social practices, including discourse).

Discourse is at the interface of the social and the cognitive: It is itself a social practice, but at the same time it is the major way we acquire ideologies).

In the meantime, CDS has grown out to a vast movement of critical scholarship in many of the humanities and social sciences, associated with (if not including) studies on discourse and gender, and other critical approaches, with its own meetings and journals (such as Discourse & Society and Critical Discourse Studies).

CDS also has had its critics, on the one hand from more formal approaches in linguistics and conversation analysis, less interested in the study of the role of social context, and on the other hand from those who have doubts about the rigor of the methods used by CDS scholars — accused to ‘find’ in discourse what they were set out to find in the first place.

Whatever the relevance of these critiques, it is obvious that precisely because of such attempts at delegitmization — not seldom from more conservative perspectives — it is crucial that CDS is very explicit and rigorous in its theories and methods. The multidisciplinary and critical study of such complex social problems as those of racism, sexism, poverty and other forms of inequality requires the most explicit approaches.

My organizational work of promoting CDS has focused first of all on editing the journal Discourse & Society, as well as on the foundation and management of the CRITICS-L discussion list on the internet, an initiative of the international CRITICS Foundation.

Not included here are the studies cited under other projects, e.g., on racism and on ideology, but on the other hand including my studies in discourse and power. Many of these papers can be downloaded from this website (see Publications)