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Critical Discourse Studies

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Analysing Political Discourse: Toward a

cognitive approach
a b b
Christopher Hart , Betsy Rymes , Mariana Souto-Manning , Cati
b c
Brown & Allan Luke
a
University of East Anglia, UK
b
Georgetown University, USA
c
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Published online: 30 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Christopher Hart, Betsy Rymes, Mariana Souto-Manning, Cati Brown & Allan Luke
(2005) Analysing Political Discourse: Toward a cognitive approach, Critical Discourse Studies, 2:2,
189-201, DOI: 10.1080/17405900500283706

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 Debate

ANALYSING POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Toward a cognitive approach

The critical study of political discourse has up until very recently rested solely within
the domain of the social sciences. Working within a linguistics framework, critical
discourse analysis (CDA), in particular the work of Fairclough (1989, 1995a, 1995b,
1
2001; Fairclough & Wodak 1997), has been heavily influenced by Foucault. The
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linguistic theory that CDA and critical linguistics especially (which CDA subsumes)
has traditionally drawn upon is Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, which is
largely concerned with the function of language in the social structure (Fowler,
2
1991 ; Fowler, Hodge, & Kress, 1979; Kress & Hodge, 1979).
Chilton (2005a, p. 3) states that 'CDA has tended to draw ... on social theory of
a particular type and on linguistics of a particular type.' It is my intention here to
suggest that the cognitive sciences offer ideas significant to the CD analyst and yet
which are still to be appropriated by mainstream CDA - exceptions to this with
various cognitive approaches are Chilton (1996, 2004, 2005a, 2005b), Chilton and
Lakoff (1995), Lakoff (1991, 1996, 2003), O'Halioran (2003), van Dijk (1998,
2002), and to a lesser extent Dirven (2001) and Lee (1992). With a cognitive
perspective new methodologies for the identification and analysis of linguistic
manipulation (a principle objective of CDA) can be constructed, CDA perhaps
becoming more revealing than at present and some of its existing claims better
attested. These methodologies are derived from research in two areas of cognitive
science: cognitive linguistiCS and cognitive-evolutionary psychology.
Cognitive linguistiCS itself is a framework for the analysis of language. In this
context, then, cognitive linguistics provides a new framework for the analYSis of
political language specifically. Concepts in cognitive linguistics provide a tool-kit,
as Halliday's systemic functional grammar does for critical linguistics, for the identi-
fication and analysis of linguistic and psychological strategies for manipulation in
political discourse. Furthermore, cognitive-evolutionary psychology raises hypo-
theses as to a particular kind of manipulative discourse - discourse in which infor-
mation is detailed that may activate/exploit innate cognitive programmes. Let us
now very sketchily consider the application of these methodologies to one currently
prevalent political issue, namely immigration.
Cognitive linguistics holds that there are certain image schemata which consti-
tute the foundations of human reason (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff &
Johnson, 1980, 1999). Further, these schemata are said to be embodied. One such

Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 2, No.2 October 2005, pp. 189-201

ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online ([,2005 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 001: 10.1080/17405900500283706
 190 CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES

schema is that of containment. On the embodiment of the container concept,

Johnson (1987, p. 21) states that' our encounter with containment and boundedness
is one of the most pervasive features of our bodily experience.' It is this concept on
which the political discourse surrounding immigration is constructed. 3 Our country
is conceptualised as a container, where a container consists of three salient struc-
tures: an interior and an exterior defined by a boundary - the boundary element
of a container-nation being its political borders. This schema is most obviously
activated (in English) with the spatial prepositions in and out, markers frequently
used to describe the spatial relation between trajector (TR; person) and landmark
4-
(LMj country).
In conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) properties
from the source domain, in our case the container schema, are mapped onto
the target domain. 'The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing
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one thing in terms of another' (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p. 5). In the more
recent theory of conceptual blending, which, beginning with the notion of
mental spaces (Fauconnier, 1994), offers an explanation of dynamic cognitive
phenomena such as metaphor (Fauconnier, 1997 j Fauconnier & Turner, 1996,
2002), the blended space 'inherits partial structure from the input spaces, and has
emergent structure of its own' (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113). One conse-
quence, or entailment, of the container-nation metaphor is that nations, like con-
tainers, are conceptualised as having limited space. Consider the example of
immigration discourse below, which is taken from the UK Independence Party's
official website: 5

With the fourth largest economy in world, the UK is the very attractive desti-
nation for people seeking a better life. [l] The trouble is the UK is already full up:
The average population density of England is twice that of Germany, four times
that of the France, and twelve times that of the United States. [2] We are bursting
6
at the seams. (my emphasis)
(UKIP 2005 Manifesto, 3rd freedom, paragraph 1)

Sentences [l] and [2] highlighted in the above text nicely demonstrate the container-
nation metaphor. In actual fact, the text (or rather the author of the text) is using the
metaphor to justify the party's immigration policy. In [l] the nation is being concep-
tualised as a non-specified container which is 'full up'. In [2] 'bursting at the seams'
activates a clothing frame (on frames see Fillmore, t 982), where items of clothing
are conceptualised as containers (e.g., 'I can't get into these jeans'). In this case
the delimiting boundary element of the container (the 'seams') is conceptualised
as being stretched beyond capacity. If, as the tenets of cognitive linguistics maintain,
metaphor is a cognitive reasoning process rather than simply surface-level lingUistic
flare, then metaphor in political discourse is highly significant for the CD analyst. 7
Another metaphor, for example nation as cuisine, where immigration is a vital ingre-
dient, would prompt a wholly different conceptualisation, and would have different
8
emergent structure in blending theory terms of nation and immigration.
Hopefully I have demonstrated to the reader, albeit incompletely, one way in
which cognitive linguistics can be utilised in the critical analysis of political
 DEBATE 191

discourse. I shall now tum to the second element of our cognitive approach and aim
to do the same for cognitive-evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychologists view the mind as a mass of interconnected but
distinct modular programs, each of which is 'functionally responsible for solving
a different adaptive problem' (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000, p. 91) faced by our ancestors
during the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (EEA).9 One such program is
the cheater-detection module (Cosmides & Tooby, 1989). Starting from the posit
that in social species in which cooperative or altruistic behaviour is practiced, 10 indi-
viduals must guard against the risks of exploitation, which is damaging to one's
inclusive fitness,11 it is postulated that a cheater-detection module has evolved to
detect these risks, leading to cognitive and behavioural processes to counter
them. One form of exploitation would be non-reciprocation of altruistic behaviour
- that is, exploitation by individuals who take but give nothing in return.
If information likely to activate the cheater-detection module is detailed in the
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language of political actors, which members of the electorate take to be proposition-

ally true, then such language, we might want to suggest, is manipulative. Consider an
example taken from a speech given by the Conservative party leader in Telford
during the 2005 UK election campaign:

Our asylum system is being abused - and with it Britain's generosity.

Only two out of ten people who claim asylum in Britain today are genuine
refugees. (my emphasis)
(Howard, 2005, paragraph 4-8)

The terms highlighted are all candidates for words which might activate the cheater-
detection module. Generosity and abused are terms clearly linked with altruism and
exploitation. Claims need to be verified for their authenticity or 'genuineness' and if
they prove to be 'non-genuine' they are considered exploitative. If individuals come
to believe through the processing of political discourse that they are being exploited
by immigration, then their cheater-detection module may be activated, affecting
their (political) decision-making processes and leading to anti-immigration attitudes.
I have very crudely described just one module of the mind hypothesised by
cognitive-evolutionary psychology which, if activated through discourse, is of inter-
est to CD analysts. Others might include, for example, fear systems and other
emotion programs or a kin-protection module.
With a cognitive perspective it is hoped that CDA can both progress furtner as an
academic discipline and, as an instrument with which to highlight social manipu-
lation enacted through discourse, become more emancipatory. Perhaps, though,
the most important contribution that its integration with cognitive science can
make to CDA, as well, in fact, as to our understanding of the human language
process, is an answer to the most fundamental charge facing CDA: does discourse
matter? Is CDA merely engaged in the observation of surface-level linguistic rep-
resentation or does political rhetoric have Orwellian effects? And if so, can we
give a cognitive account of how they are achieved, of the mental processes involved?
It is worth exploring, with the most recent findings on cognitive processing and cog-
nitive modelling, evidence for the link, in cognition, between discourse and concep-
tual representation, and between conceptual representation and other cognitive
 192 C R I TIC A L DIS C 0 U R S EST U DIE S

domains. Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), for example, demonstrates
that inferences prompted by discourse form part of the meaning, that is, conceptual
representation, constructed from discourse. Conceptual blending demonstrates,
because processing is carried out in the blended space, that metaphors matter.
The human capacity for stimulus-detached processing means that information
acquired through discourse and stored in memory can activate other cognitive pro-
grammes. And neurological (neuroimaging) studies present evidence that language
can activate the amygdala (Isenberg et aI., 1999), the centre for the emotions in
the brain. 12 This all given, then, certain language use (discourse) could influence con-
ceptualisation and cognition, manipulating the individual into a position of support
for a policy.
It is not yet clear whether these suggestions can be substantiated or how they
could be formulated to construct a complete and lucid cognitive model for meaning-
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ful appropriation in the critical analysis of political discourse. Here, rather than set
about making definitive claims, it has been my intention only to open and invite
dialogue and debate on the ideas presented, creating a possible avenue for future
research.

Notes

The work of social theorists who have concerned themselves with discourse has
provided one major theoretical ground for the CD analyst to tread. Among the
most influential of these scholars is, of course, the French post-structuralist
philosopher Foucault. The Marxist-influenced critical theory of the Frankfurt
School, in particular that of Adorno and Horkheimer, followed by Habermas.,
has also provided a framework for CD analysts.
2 For Halliday, the principle function of language is to represent people, objects,
events, and states of affairs in the world and to express the speaker's attitude to
these representations. He holds that 'language is as it is because of its function
in the social structure' (1973, p. 65).
3 It was also a defining underlying concept in Cold War discourse (see Chilton,
1996).
4 Using these terms in describing spatial relations scenes I am follOWing Langacker's
cognitive grammar framework (Langacker, 1987, 1991).
5 The UK Independence Party is an extremely right-wing political party whose
manifesto is largely centred around immigration policy. Though they remain a
fringe party, their hard-line policy provides interesting linguistic examples for
the CD analyst, while from a socio-political point of view, with anti-immigration
attitudes rife amongst some in the UK and with such parties participating in a
recent UK election so concentrated on the issue of immigration, their rhetoric
is an obvious focus of attention for CDA.
6 It should be noted that this text is reproduced verbatim from the source and the gram-
matical errors are not that of the present author.
7 Chilton (1996, 2005b). Chilton and Lakoff (1995). and Lakoff (1991, 1996,2003)
all apply metaphor theory in the critical analysis of political discourse but these
works are seldom acknowledged in CDA texts.
 DEBATE 193

8 It should be noted that this metaphor is also open to exploitation. For example,
immigration could be metaphorised as an erroneous or even poisonous ingredient.
9 The EEA is not a specified place or time. Rather, it is the 'statistical composite of
selection pressures that caused the genes underlying the design of an adaptation to
increase in frequency until they became species-typical or stably persistent'
(Cosmides & Tooby, 2000, p. 97).
10 'An entity is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another
such entity's welfare at the expense of its own' (Dawkins, 1989, p. 4).
11 This refers to the number of one's own genes that appear in current and subsequent
generations.
12 Emotion programmes facilitate decision-making processes (Damasio, 1994).

Christopher Hart
University of East Anglia, UK
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 DEBATE 195

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BEING 'CRITICAL' AS TAKING A

STAND: ONE OF THE CENTRAL
DILEMMAS OF CDA
How do we get beyond it?
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Allan Luke's entry in the first issue of Critical Discourse Studies (2004) focuses on a
central dilemma of critical discourse analysis (CDA) ne critical discourse studies.
How can the study of discourse - the social and interactional dimension of life -
simultaneously be a field that takes a stand? 'Taking a stand,' while a central tenet
of all critical discourse analysis overviews (e.g., Fairclough, van Oijk, Wodak,
Luke), is usually an assertion that readers must accept naIvely, taking on faith (and
with a happy sense that this language stuff can do 'good' tool) that discourse analysis
will help people. Luke calls this the 'normative social agenda' that needs to be built
in to critical discourse studies, not merely bolted on (p. 150). To realize 'what is to
be done' by critical discourse studies, Luke calls for 'reconstructive' critical
discourse studies (p. 151).
However, the epistemic contradiction remains. The acceptance of COA's social
agenda assertion must not simplify COA's paradox - that a focus on the power of
discourse to shape the individual (including our own discursive power to shape
COA's normative agenda) potentially negates the individual's reflective deliberations
and phYSical presence that inform any stand-taking (i.e., individual agency). Luke
calls for a 'reconstructivist' agenda; what is it we want to reconstruct? What does
it mean to do the right thing? We cannot simply assert that we are on the right
side. Critical discourse analysts would then be left holding the only agency available
to anyone - a sort of epistemic fascism.
Critical discourse analysis (sometimes calling itself 'structuralist constructivism'
and/or 'constructivist structuralism'; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999) wavers
between two versions of the discourse/value contradiction, the deconstructionist
and the structuralist:

(1) From deconstruction to constructivism: from this perspective, language is not

representational - or even relevantly systematic - and therefore it is potentially
supremely colonizing. Even the structural, grammatical regularities of language
are infinitely manipulated so that their ability to represent is reduced to mere
 196 C R I T leA L DIS C 0 U R S EST U DIE S

'play' or, worse, ideological head-messing-with. The 'critical' role of COA,

then, is to uncover this ideological component - so that people will not be
taken in by it. The constructivist - building his or her own resistant analysis -
rises from the deconstructed ashes.
(2) At the other end, there is extreme structuralism. From this perspective,
systems-political, institutional, grammatical-shape our concerns without us
knowing it or being able to do anything about it. We are socialized into the nor-
mative ways in which linguistic structure is used to reproduce social structure
and vice versa. The 'critical' role for the discourse analyst within this perspec-
tive is to make public the normative constructions and their reproduction -
especially with regard to the socialization of race, gender, and class - and to
urge the public to resist those normative constructions.
These positions are inherently flawed in isolation (and in combination) because in
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both, the person, including writer, addressee, and anyone else mentioned in the
text, is lost (cf., Archer, 2000). The only one left to do the interpreting is the
critical discourse analyst, who enters the scene presuming to be the only one with
an individual mind worthy to the task of critically understanding how language is
working with humanity's other concerns.

A possible idea for how to get beyond this

contradiction: Identifying individuals' moral sources

To be a field that takes a stand, critical discourse studies needs to have a theoretical
rationale for looking at moral sources - not simply assuming our own, but under-
standing them within the individuals our research affects. We need a theoretical
and a practical way of understanding how moral sources are generated and what
they do for all individuals (not just the intellectual in the field of critical discourse
studies). We must admit that a purely deconstructionist or structuralist theory (or
any combination of the two) is incompatible theoretically with the idea that we
could have a social agenda grounded on value.
The challenge, then, is to formulate a social theory leading to research and praxis
that can accommodate both the power of the discursive social field and the moral
impulse to take a stand. Some important components are as follows - and we're
hoping these initial thoughts lead to dialogue.
First, theoretically: Critical discourse studies needs to recall the central place of
the phYSical person and of material conditions (cf., Archer, 2000, 2003). Archer has
proposed that many of our concerns are generated within the social field, certainly;
but our practices within society are always mediated by our physical concerns (avoid-
ance of pain, seeking of pleasure) and our practical abilities (our skills with relation
to concrete tasks, our relationships with objects). Our struggle to negotiate these
multiple fields of concern leads to our secondary emotions - that is, to our inner
deliberations that lead to our sense of value. Understanding the person-centered
nature of these deliberations needs to become a more central concern of critical
discourse studies if the field is to reasonably understand what it means to take a stand.
 DEBATE 197

While mass media and systemic injunctions are a focus of much CDA theorizing
and research, taking up value-laden stances needs to be centered in an understanding
of the lived experience of these forms of discourse. Therefore, our theory needs to
build an understanding of the effects of mass media and expert systems through their
instantiation in the lifeworld, at the personal level. This means recognizing not only
how the system colonizes this lifeworld, but also how the lifeworld can appropriate
the system to the infinitely varied concerns of individuals (Chouliaraki & Fairclough,
1999; Habermas, 1987).
Second, in conducting research: One means discourse analytic researchers have to
understand the relationship between the system and the lifeworld is the analysis of con-
versational narratives. Conversational narratives are a complex weave of individuals'
unique concerns and recycled institutional discourse. Through conversational narra-
tives, individuals commence questioning their realities and problem solving. 'Every
day, many problem solving narratives happen and delineate roles, relationships,
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values, and worldviews' (Ochs, Smith, & Taylor, 1996, p. 95). And, narrators poten-
tially engage in social action as a result of identifying the social construction of their
situations in the presence of institutional discourse recycled within their narratives.
Here CDA and narrative analysis can productively inform each other. Analyzing
narratives in the lifeworld - the everyday stories people tell - and deconstructing
the different discourses present in these narratives allows CDA researchers to deal
with real world issues and develop critical meta-awareness (Freire, 1970), demysti-
fying the social construction of reality, making social interaction a place for norms to
be challenged and changed, and bringing the individually situated deliberations and
the person into focus within a context of critical discourse analysis.
Third, in taking up the option for action, praxis: Beyond incorporating a focus on
narrative in our own investigative and communicative practices, our research find-
ings need to have immediate lifeworld implications. As Luke argues, we need a
reconstructivist orientation - but it needs to be built within the lifeworld of
those we are studying, based on an understanding of their unique agency, not exclu-
sively our own. This is consistent with an empowering agenda centered in theory
and research that is always tied to praxis - an engaged praxis that accounts for
the deliberative capacity of all individuals.
One way of envisioning this sort of praxis is a neo-Freirean engagement in circles
of literacy(ies) - in which individuals engage simultaneously with the word and the
world. Freire (1970) proposes the development of a critical meta-awareness,. which
allows common people to engage in social action to solve problems and address issues
they identify in their own narratives. This meta-awareness allows them to have a
relationship of appropriation (as opposed to colonization) with language (Chouliaraki
& Fairclough, 1999) and to use critical discourse analysis to identify, problematize,
take a stand, and engage in social action to change their situations while challenging
the deterministic claim that '[wJe are stuck in the vicious circles of mutually rein-
forcing cultural and economic subordination' (Fraser, 1997, p. 33). This approach
emphasizes that our research is about people, who can be encouraged to be
reading and writing -sense-making - in their own world, instead of living in the
world that someone else is making sense of on their behalf.
Back to the central dilemma: How can the study of discourse - the social and
interactional dimension of life - Simultaneously be a field that takes a stand? It
 198 CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES

cannot. The field cannot take a stand all by itself, distinct from the lifeworlds of those
it purports to help. Critical discourse studies must resist asserting an i1 priori moral
stance for humanity. Instead, we envision the role of critical discourse studies as one
of inquiry into the unique personal commitments of individuals situated within and
subject to complex social discourses. Ultimately, rather than taking a stand, critical
discourse studies informs theory and research and, ultimately, praxis, based on devel-
oping understandings of those uniquely situated commitments of individuals.

Betsy Rymes, Mariana Souto-Manning & Cati Brown

Georgetown University, USA
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References

Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem cf agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Archer, M. (2003). Structure, aaency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interrupts: Critical rifJections on the 'postsocialist' condition.
New York and London: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1970). PedagoBY cfthe oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Habermas, J. (1987). The theory cf communicative action, Vol. 2, Lifeworld and o/stem:
A critique cffunctionalist reason. London: Heinemann.
Luke, A. (2004). Notes on the future of critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse
Studies, 1,149-152. .
Ochs, E., Smith, R., & Taylor, C. (1996). Detective stories at dinnertime: Problem
solVing through co-narration. In C. Briggs (Ed.), Disorderly discourse: Narrative,
corif1ict, and inequality (pp. 95.,-113). New York: Oxford University Press.

NORMATIVITY AND THE MATERIAL

EFFECTS OF DISCOURSE

Thanks to my colleagues Rymes, Manning, and Brown (2006) for their cogent
response to my 'Notes on the future of critical discourse studies' (Luke, 2004).
Their analytic starting point is spot on. Normative position depends upon and reflects
standpoint - epistemic, historical, sociocultural, embodied, and so forth. But while
some views of discourse begin from the assumption that a focus on locality and
standpoint precludes normative position and grand narrative, others look to political
and social theory to judge where, when, and how to 'take a stand'.
 DEBATE 199

The issue of normativity is central to many of the traditions that critical

discourse studies draws upon - neo-Marxian materialism and Frankfurtian herme-
neutics, poststructuralist discoilrse theory and ethnomethodology. The latter are
methodological flights from normative philosophy and social science, in Foucault's
case from structuralism and Marxism, and in the case of ethnomethodology from
structural functionalist sociology. But the question of 'what is to be done' is at
the heart of the former. This is also my departure point.
I think we would agree that discourse constitutes all epistemological and teleo-
logical positions - and indeed, that any discourse analysis or discourse per se that
doesn't recognize the conditions of its own construction risks naive and dogmatic
claims. We find the basis for this argument in Foucault and Lyotard, but also in
Bourdieu's (1990) focus on 'objectifying the objectification', where he sets out to
disrupt the claims of a sOciological science that ignores its own generative conditions
as a social field.
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But this key poststructuralist axiom - that everything is constituted through

discourse - is only a beginning point for analysis and action. By my reading, this
is the theme that Rymes et al. (2005) refer to as 'COA's paradox': 'the power
of discourse to shape the individual. .. potentially negates the individual's reflec-
tive deliberations and physical presence that inform any stand-taking (i.e., indi-
vidual agency)' (p. 195). But I don't share their concern that the dilemma facing
critical discourse studies is the erasure of 'the individual'. At their inception,
critical models were deliberate moves away from the individualist assumptions
of work in interactional sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communications,
pragmatics, and social psychology. A great deal of work in these fields was
based on models of the 'self' that attributed the shapes and patterns of discourse
to individual choice, mediated by social role or cultural norm. These had been
drawn, variously, from structural functionalist sociology, liberal social theory,
phenomenology, and even cognitive science. So the structure/agency debate is
not news.
But my concern is with the potentially relativising and paralysing effects of the
above axiom - that because we have no normative grounds outside of discourse, we
have no recourse for action. All discourses do not have co-equal material,
bodily, social, cultural, spatial, and psychic effects. Simply, some discourses just
don't matter much. Other discourses kill people. Yet other discourses systemati-
cally silence and marginalize people. And that's why and where some of us try to
draw the line in our writings and interventions. To paraphrase Gregory Bateson
(1974), the challenge is to figure out which differences make material and lived
differences.
The question of where we take a stand is in part theoretical and in part empirical.
Theoretically, no model of discourse analysis yet has the capacity in and of itself to
respond adequately to the question of normativity. Hence my original note that
'if critical discourse studies ... wants to be a mode of political action, it is indeed
contingent on its capacity at political analysis and social theory' (Luke, 2004,
p. 150). All of the models of COA that Rymes et al. cite in their initial paragraph
make explicit reference to social and cultural theoretic models. Consequently,
I'm not sure whether or how COA can translate into what Rymes et al. (2005)
refer to as 'epistemic fascism' - strong words indeed - unless it or its variants
 200 C R IT I CAL 0 I S C 0 U R S EST U 0 I E S

refuse to lay on the table for criticism, refutation, and dismissal social theoretic or
political economic assumptions. Further, having worked with government ministries
and mass media who don't bat an eyelash when asserting normative claims that
impact on people's lives, and working alongside those experimental psychologists
whose regimes of scientific 'truths' now officially inform educational and social
policy in the US, I can't imagine a universe where 'critical discourse analysts
would then be left holding the only agency available to anyone' (p. 195), not even
for argument's sake. If anything, as implied in my original notes, critical discourse
studies has taken a position more akin to the disloyal opposition, an attempt to
destabilise or blunt un-self-reflective public and political agency.
This doesn't mean that approaches to CDA, or for that matter ethnomethodol-
ogy, systemic functional linguistics, poststructuralist genealogy, or any other model,
can't become doctrinaire and dogmatic, exclusionary and hegemonic. I wonder how
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Foucault reacted as his own skepticism was translated into a rigid and proper 'regime
of truth' in journals and books. If this is Rymes et al. 's principal concern, it is timely
and apt. Indeed, my original notes were, in part, a questioning of the orthodoxies of
deconstruction and critique.
Beginning from an historical materialist perspective, the question of where to
make a stand depends upon an empirical analysis of the material effects of discourse-
that is, on how particular discourses can be systematically linked to the unequal or
destructive distribution of all kinds of capital and power, to the deprivation of rights,
of gainful labor, of free.dom of thought and belief, and so forth. The trick and
challenge for critical discourse studies is not to demonstrate yet again that everything
is constituted by and through discourse, but to study and document which discourses
make a difference, how, in what ways, and for whom - including attention to the
impacts on individuals' 'lifeworlds' that Rymes et al. call for. There are clear
instances where we can link particular discourses with social and material effects.
In an early study I tried to make such a connection between the Howard govern-
ment's construction of Aborigines and the perpetuation of their material position
in Australian society (Luke, 1997). We could trace other texts and discourses,
especially media, policy, legal, and legislative (e.g., Roe v. Wade), to concrete
material effects. How we judge the effects - and where we take a stand - returns
us full circle to a theoretical, epistemic standpoint and the forms of social, political,
and cultural theory noted above.
My own view is historical materialist, overtly normative, and committed to an
agenda of redistributive social and economic justice. If we begin from an explicit and
self-critical engagement with the matter of epistemological standpOint and theoreti-
cal position, it seems to me that issues of self-reflexivity aren't rocket science and
needn't be as theoretically tricky as they might appear. They're principally about
professing one's reading and writing position - out front and subject to scrutiny
of all kinds. Approaches to critical discourse analysis must begin and return to
their bases in social and cultural theory - whether this be the historical materialist
bases that I work from, feminist theory, or any other. But one can't take a stand
without them.

Allan Luke
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
 DEBATE 201

References

Bateson, G. (1974). Steps towards an ecolo8)' '!fmind. New York: Ballantine.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The IOBie '!fpractice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity.
Luke, A. (1997). The material effects of the word: Apologies, 'stolen children' and
public discourse. Discourse, 18, 343-368.
Luke, A. (2004). Notes on the future of critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse
Studies, I, 149-152.
Rymes, B., Souto-Manning, M., & Brown, C. (2005). Being 'critical' as taking a stand:
One of the central dilemmas of CDA. How do we get beyond it? Critical Discourse
Studies, 2, 195-198.
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