What is The Discourse Academy?

The ambition is to build a resource for developing, discussing, teaching, and learning methods of critical discourse analysis.

Why should there be a need for such a forum?

After all, there are many good textbooks on methods of analysis in CDA, chapters in books which describe the basics of CDA, lots of research articles which describe the methods used in carrying out the analysis they report.

But, as we know, language, discourse, and text are inexhaustible to analysis - there's always more that could be analysed and said. Analysis of discourse and text almost always throws up ambiguities, uncommon or novel usages, instances which are not quite covered by existing descriptions of analytical method.

There's a need to illustrate new developments in analytical method with examples - and as readers, we sometimes get distracted by the details of the example case and lose track of the methodological point being made...

So even good textbooks on analytical methods can't give a complete account of an analytical method. Research articles don't usually have the space to discuss any analytical developments that might have been made in the course of an analytical project.

So...the Discourse Academy is to fill this gap: a space for developing, discussing, teaching, and learning methods of critical discourse analysis.

It's also for discussing the little techniques and procedures that sit on the edge of methodology - the details that are usually overlooked 🙂