Critical Discourse Analysis as a Methodology: A Brief Summary

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis refers to the analysis of any written, verbal or transcribed language within a specific context or genre. CDA has become a well-known interdisciplinary paradigm of analysing the connection among language, power, and ideology in social, political, and educational dimensions. CDA is useful in studying new forms of communication as it offers researchers the means of analysing the way digital discourse determines the opinion of the population, identity and social interaction. The paper was a systematic summary of the theoretical development, methodological advancement, and recent use of CDA, drawing on contemporary contributions. The overview combined studies on media discourse, educational policy, digital communication, corpus-assisted analysis, and ideological representation. The focus was on how discourse practices change in the digital era, as social media, online forums, and techno-cultural spaces have transformed the production and distribution of meaning. The paper used a systematic thematic review of major analytical models, such as socio-cognitive, socio-semiotic and corpus-assisted models, and their relevance to the discovery of hidden forms of dominance and manipulation. These results indicated that CDA is an ever-changing, evolving methodology that is expanding its scope to encompass multimodal, digital, and comprehensive analysis. The findings of the study suggested that CDA still provides a solid methodological and theoretical basis for critically examining the discursive practices and ideological formations practised today across various fields.

Keywords: CDA, Language, Power, Ideology, Media