Analytical methods for CDA

When conflict unfolds in real time, language does not merely describe events; it actively participates in shaping their meaning. Headlines circulate before facts settle. Casualty figures are framed before responsibility is agreed upon. Terms such as retaliation, clash, terror, or self-defence become interpretive anchors long before public consensus emerges.

My experience in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) during my undergraduate studies provided me with an avenue of inquiry for my MSc in Social Research, allowing me to draw concrete, unique conclusions which significantly enriched my master’s dissertation.

After three years of working alongside community groups as part of the GALLANT (Glasgow As A Living Lab Accelerating Novel Transformation) project based at the University of Glasgow, our team has reached a major milestone: the end of our core data collection period across six community science projects. We have an extraordinary amount of data. What makes this dataset unique isn’t just its size or duration, but rather that the entire process was co-produced and community-gene

Screen shot of analysis of the representation of social actors from recent Language and Power Podcast episode This question—what is a social actor—is an important one that we, as people doing text and discourse analysis, should take seriously. It is a question that we should address before getting into the details and procedures on how and why we analyse the ‘representation’ of social actors in text and discourse. This is because understanding what we mean by ‘social actor’ w

Screen shot of analysis of the representation of social actors from recent Language and Power Podcast episode I’ve been analysing the representation of social actors in text and discourse for many years now. I first used Theo van Leeuwen’s system for analysing the representation of social acts for my PhD, which I completed in 2006. I found this system incredibly useful at the time and have continued to do so in many discourse analytical projects since. If anything, I find ana