The Discourse-historical Approach

by Wodak

Imran Aslam
Wania Gul
 Aims of DHA
• “The DHA attempts to integrate a large quantity of available
knowledge about the historical sources and the background
of the social and political fields in which discursive “events”
are embedded.
• Further, it analyzes the historical dimension of discursive
actions by exploring the ways in which particular genres of
discourse are subject to diachronic change.
• Lastly, and most importantly, this is not only viewed as
information. At this point we integrate social theories to be
able to explain the so-called context.” (Wodak, 2015: p.2-3)
 The Origin of DHA

• The first study for which the DHA was developed analyzed the

constitution of anti-Semitic stereotyped images as they emerged in

public discourses in the 1986 Austrian presidential campaign of

former UN General Secretary Kurt Waldheim, who for along time had

kept secret his national–socialist past (Wodak et al., 1990).

• Four salient characteristics of the DHA emerged in this research
project:

• (1) interdisciplinary

• (2) problem-oriented interests

• (3) The principle of triangulation as a fundamental and constitutive
methodological principle

• (4) Orientation toward application

• This interdisciplinary study combines linguistic analysis with historical
and sociological, theoretical and methodological approaches.
 10 Important Principles of DHA

• 1. The approach is interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinarity involves

theory, methods, methodology, research practice, and practical

application.

• 2. The approach is problem-oriented.

• 3. Various theories and methods are combined wherever integration
leads to an adequate understanding and explanation of the research
object.
• 4. The research incorporates fieldwork and ethnography (study from
“inside”) where this is required for a thorough analysis and theorizing
of the object under investigation.

• 5. The research necessarily moves recursively between theory and

empirical data.

• 6. Numerous genres and public spaces as well as intertextual and

interdiscursive relationships are studied.
• 7 . The historical context is taken into account in interpreting texts and
discourses. The historical orientation permits the reconstruction of

how recontextualization functions as an important process linking texts

and discourses intertextually and interdiscursively over time.

•8 Categories and tools are not fixed once and for all.Theymust be

elaborated for each analysis according to the specific problem under

investigation.
•9 “Grand theories” often serve as a foundation. In the specific

analyses, however, “middle-range theories” frequently supply a

better theoretical basis.

• 10 The application of results is an important target. Results

should be made available to and applied by experts and should be

communicated to the public.

• The DHA adheres to the sociophilosophical orientation of critical theory. This
is why it follows a concept of social critique that integrates three related
aspects:
• 1 . Text or discourse-immanent critique aims at discovering inconsistencies,
(self-)contradictions, paradoxes, and dilemmas in the text-internal or
discourse-internalstructures.
• 2. Sociodiagnostic critique is concerned with demystifying the—manifest
orlatent—persuasive or “manipulative” character of discursive practices. Here
we make use of our contextual knowledge; we also draw on social theories and
other theoretical models from various disciplines to interpret the discursive
events.
• 3. Future-related prospective critique seeks to contribute to the improvement
of communication (for example, by elaborating guidelines against sexist
language behavior or by reducing “language barriers” in hospitals, schools,
and so forth).
 Critique
• From the point of view of the DHA, ideology is defined as an (often)
one-sided perspective or worldview composed of related mental
representations, convictions, opinions, attitudes, and evaluations.

• Thus the DHA focuses on the ways in which linguistic and other
semiotic practices mediate and reproduce ideology in a range of
social institutions.

• One of the most important aims of the DHA is to “demystify” the

hegemony of specific discourses by deciphering the underlying
ideologies.
 Ideology

• Hence the understanding of critique implies that the DHA should

make the object under investigation and the analyst’s own position

transparent and should justify theoretically why certain

interpretations and readings of discursive events seem more valid

than others.
 Power
• Power is an asymmetric relationship among social actors who assume
different social positions or belong to different social groups.
• For the DHA, language is not powerful on its own; it is a means to gain and
maintain power through the use that powerful people make of it. “power”
is the possibility of establishing one’s own will within a social relationship
and against the will of others. Some of the ways in which power is
implemented are physical force and violence, control of people through
threats or promises (disciplining regimes), attachment to authority
(exertion of authority and submission to authority), and technical control
with the help of objects such as means of production, means of
transportation, weapons, and so on.
• Power relations are legitimized or delegitimized in discourses. Texts
are often sites of social struggle in that they manifest traces of
differing ideological fights for dominance and hegemony. Thus, in the
in-depth analysis of texts, the DHA focuses on the ways in which
linguistic forms are used in various expressions and manipulations of
power.

• Power is discursively exerted not only by grammatical forms, but also

by a person’s control of the social occasion by means of the genre of a
text, or by the regulation of access to certain public spheres.
• The DHA is problem-oriented. This implies that the study of (oral,
written, visual) language necessarily remains only a part of the
research; hence the investigation must be interdisciplinary.

• Thus, as mentioned above, the principle of triangulation is very

important; and this implies taking into account a whole range of
empirical observations, theories, and methods—as well as
background information. In consequence, the concept of context is
an inherent part of the DHA and contributes to its triangulatory
principle, which takes into account four levels:
 Discourse

• a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated

within specific fields of social action;
• socially constituted and socially constitutive;
• related to a macrotopic;
• linked to the argumentation about validity claims—for example to truth
and normative validity, which involves several social actors with
different points of view.
• Thus Wodak regards macrotopic relatedness, pluriperspectivity, and
argumentativity as constitutive elements of a discourse.
 Text

• Furthermore Wodak distinguishes between “discourse” and “text”:

Texts are parts of discourses.They make speech acts durable over time

and thus bridge two dilated speech situations: the situation of speech

production and the situation of speech reception. In other words,

texts—be they visualized (and written) or oral—objectify linguistic

actions.
 Genre

• Texts are always assigned to genres. A “genre” may be characterized

as a socially ratified way of using language in connection with
particular types of social activity. Discourse on climate change, for
example, is realized through a range of genres and texts, for example
TV debates on the politics of a particular government on climate
change, guidelines to reduce energy consumption, speeches or
lectures by experts, and so forth.
 Context
• 1. the immediate, language, or text-internal cotext
• 2. the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between
utterances, texts, genres, and discourses

• 3. the extra-linguistic social variables and institutional frames of a

specific “context of situation”

• 4. the broader sociopolitical and historical context, which discursive

practices are embedded in and related to.
• In the analysis, the DHA is oriented towardall four dimensions of
context, in a recursive manner.
• The DHA considers intertextual and interdiscursive relationships

between utterances, texts, genres, and discourses as well as

extralinguistic social or sociological variables, the history of an

organization or institution, and situational frames. While focusing on

all these levels and layers of meaning, researchers explore how

discourses, genres, and texts change in relation to sociopolitical

change.
• Intertexutality
• Recontextualization
• De-contextualization
• Three steps of analysis:
• 1. Identification of specific contents (topics/discourses)

• 2. Discursive strategies are investigated

• 3. Linguistic means as the specific, context-dependent Linguistics
Realizations are examined.
• There are several strategies that deserve special attention when
analyzing a specific discourse and related texts in relation to the
discursive construction and representation of “us” and “them.”
Heuristically, one could orient to five questions:
• 1 How are persons, objects, phenomena/events, processes, and actions
named and referred to linguistically?
• 2 What characteristics, qualities, and features are attributed to social
actors, objects, phenomena/events, and processes?
• 3 What arguments are employed in the discourse in question?
• 4 From what perspective are these nominations, attributions, and
arguments expressed?
• 5 Are the respective utterances articulated overtly? Are they intensified
or mitigated?
 Strengths of DHA

• 1. Interdisciplinary
• 2. Principle of Triangulation
• 3. The historical analysis
• 4. Practical applications
Thank You