Critical analysis on advertising discourses

Abstract

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) appeared in the early 1990s and has become increasingly popular as an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing various types of discourse. The roots of CDA lie in classical Rhetoric, Textlinguistics and Sociolinguistics, as well as in Applied Linguistics and Pragmatics (Wodak, 2002, p.7-8). It sees discourse as language use in speech and writing and as a social practice. Its feature of being social practice means discursive cases have a dialectical interaction with social situations, institutions, and structures that surround them. They constantly influence and shape each other. CDA focuses on the relationship between language and power and is primarily concerned with investigating the explicit and implicit structural relations of domination, discrimination, power, and control as manifested in language. As transferred from Wodak (2001, p. 2), for Habermas, “Language is also a medium of domination and social force. It serves to legitimize relations of organized power. In so far as the legitimations of power relations, . . . are not articulated, . . . language is also ideological.” Ideologies are the fundamental frameworks for organizing the social cognitions that members of social groups, organizations, or institutions share. CDA seeks to demystify discourses by deciphering ideologies (Dijk, 1995, p. 18; Wodak, 2002, p.10). This paper aims to explore the relationship between discourse and social cognition, to analyze critically the language of advertisement, and to clarify how social structure and institutions are affected by advertising discourses.