A Comparative Study of Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis

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Abstract

 
Critical approaches to discourse analysis are among the general views that analyze discourse from the social and political perspectives. Based on this view, language is not a transparent mirror of the reality but it is a tool interwoven with power relations enclosing the social structure of the reality. Critical approaches to discourse analysis include two general approaches: a) Foucauldian discourse analysis, and b) critical discourse analysis.
This study attempts to present the theoretical grounds of critical approaches to discourse analysis by using descriptive and analytic methods. For this purpose, first a brief description of post-structuralism has been presented as one of most important sources of inspiring this view, and then Focauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis have been analyzed both separately and comparatively. In fact, the method of data collection is documentary.
The most general distinction between Focauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis is that in the first, the general meaning of discourse is considered, which views discourse as independent and relatively autonomic.
 

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