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• Critical Discourse Analysis | Definition, Guide & Examples

Critical Discourse Analysis | Definition, Guide & Examples

Published on August 23, 2019 by Amy Luo . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Critical discourse analysis (or discourse analysis) is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. It aims to understand how language is used in real life situations.

When you conduct discourse analysis, you might focus on:

• The purposes and effects of different types of language
• Cultural rules and conventions in communication
• How values, beliefs and assumptions are communicated
• How language use relates to its social, political and historical context

Discourse analysis is a common qualitative research method in many humanities and social science disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology and cultural studies.  

Table of contents

What is discourse analysis used for, how is discourse analysis different from other methods, how to conduct discourse analysis, other interesting articles.

Conducting discourse analysis means examining how language functions and how meaning is created in different social contexts. It can be applied to any instance of written or oral language, as well as non-verbal aspects of communication such as tone and gestures.

Materials that are suitable for discourse analysis include:

• Books, newspapers and periodicals
• Marketing material, such as brochures and advertisements
• Business and government documents
• Websites, forums, social media posts and comments
• Interviews and conversations

By analyzing these types of discourse, researchers aim to gain an understanding of social groups and how they communicate.

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Unlike linguistic approaches that focus only on the rules of language use, discourse analysis emphasizes the contextual meaning of language.

It focuses on the social aspects of communication and the ways people use language to achieve specific effects (e.g. to build trust, to create doubt, to evoke emotions, or to manage conflict).

Instead of focusing on smaller units of language, such as sounds, words or phrases, discourse analysis is used to study larger chunks of language, such as entire conversations, texts, or collections of texts. The selected sources can be analyzed on multiple levels.

Discourse analysis is a qualitative and interpretive method of analyzing texts (in contrast to more systematic methods like content analysis ). You make interpretations based on both the details of the material itself and on contextual knowledge.

There are many different approaches and techniques you can use to conduct discourse analysis, but the steps below outline the basic structure you need to follow. Following these steps can help you avoid pitfalls of confirmation bias that can cloud your analysis.

Step 1: Define the research question and select the content of analysis

To do discourse analysis, you begin with a clearly defined research question . Once you have developed your question, select a range of material that is appropriate to answer it.

Discourse analysis is a method that can be applied both to large volumes of material and to smaller samples, depending on the aims and timescale of your research.

Step 2: Gather information and theory on the context

Next, you must establish the social and historical context in which the material was produced and intended to be received. Gather factual details of when and where the content was created, who the author is, who published it, and whom it was disseminated to.

As well as understanding the real-life context of the discourse, you can also conduct a literature review on the topic and construct a theoretical framework to guide your analysis.

Step 3: Analyze the content for themes and patterns

This step involves closely examining various elements of the material – such as words, sentences, paragraphs, and overall structure – and relating them to attributes, themes, and patterns relevant to your research question.

Step 4: Review your results and draw conclusions

Once you have assigned particular attributes to elements of the material, reflect on your results to examine the function and meaning of the language used. Here, you will consider your analysis in relation to the broader context that you established earlier to draw conclusions that answer your research question.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

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Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Discourse — A Case Study of Trump's TV Speech

• Lirong Tian Chongqing Normal University

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an effective method of the discourse analysis. It is aimed at analyzing the special relationship between power and the traditional ideology in implied discourse. Traditional discourse analysis always analyzes the structure and composition of discourse in terms of linguistic features, CDA makes language analysis more creative. It deeply explores the inherent potential of language and systematically interprets the deep meaning of discourse. This paper will take the specific corpus, namely Trump's TV speech, as the language material, Halliday's systematic functional grammar as the theoretical basis, and physicality, modality and personal pronoun as the framework. This paper studies how speakers in political speech use language to shorten the distance between people and win people's affirmation and support from the aspects of transitivity analysis, modality analysis and personal pronoun.

Author Biography

Lirong tian, chongqing normal university.

School of Foreign Languages and Literatures

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President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's Political Speeches: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Politics is a struggle for power in order to put specific political, economic and social ideas into practice that is crucially played by language.The general purpose of this qualitative study employing critical discourse analysis was to examine the political speeches in terms of linguistic features, rhetorical strategies and uncovering the issues behind these discourses of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.The corpora comprised of thirty political speeches that were retrieved in an online archive and hard copies that were furnished in the office of the President. Findings revealed that the linguistic features are personal pronouns that show inclusivity and exclusivity. Passivity, transitivity and the dominating verb tenses and aspects are also evident. The use of loaded, dramatic, and stereotyping adjectives, adverbs and nouns are central to the construction of an event, the use of non-hedged adverbs position a contention as being incontrovertible " fact " , presupposition, rhetorical questions, ellipsis and Intertextuality were also utilized. The recurring issues in his political speeches are centered on socioeconomic , legal and political but War on Drugs, Criminality, Graft and Corruption are highlighted. The President who is the highest official of the land is expected to lead the country in a crusade to alleviate the condition of the constituents and to provide fast solution to these prevailing issues and problems.

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This descriptive qualitative study seeks to unravel the microstructure elements of the interviews of President Rodrigo Duterte and how he represents himself and his opponents using political discourse analysis. The corpora consisted of his 30 recent interviews at the time of writing this paper and were retrieved in an online archive of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO). The findings indicated that Duterte’s discourse has these various linguistic features: modality, attributions, disclaimer, presuppositions, validity claims, pronoun use, transitivity, passivation, number of game, lexicon, idioms, metaphors, intertextuality, and profanity. The study revealed that Duterte manipulatively uses language to reflect a positive representation of himself and negative representation of others, legitimizing his authority and delegitimizing those in opposition.

Teresa van der Zee

This study entitled, CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT BENIGNO S. AQUINO III, aimed to determine the structure and discourse features of the three (3) speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino III. The structure and discourse features of the three (3) significant speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino III, the Inaugural Address 2010, State of the Nation Address of 2011 and 2012 were analyzed base on the transitivity and modality meta-functions of Halliday (1985). Based on the analyses of data, findings revealed that 1) The over- all structure of the speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino III used linguistic units which express determination, willingness and intention on the part of the speaker; could easily be understood by the hearers and spectators; was easy to embrace and understand despite of the different issues he brought up on economy, health, education and even the on-going corruptions of the previous administrations; he used personal pronouns that are associated with a grammatical person in the first person plural form and linguistic constructions that indicate a relationship of possession, which highlighted foremost his successful and competent administration as well as the people and supporters who believe in his current leadership and better governance; and 2 (a) The discourse features in terms of transitivity in speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino III expressed something that is done; (b) in terms of modality, he used linguistic units to seek common ground and/ or cooperation as well as sense of belongings within the group. It revealed his attitude or opinion about the truth of a proposition expressed by a sentence and made his audience to plainly accept his speeches, thus, it aided him great emphasis to serve and show his positivity to achieve greater goals. Based on these findings, the researcher recommended for the emphasis on critical discourse studies using micro and macro-structural approach in the analysis of text; that language learners are advised to be taught and be motivated to critically analyze text in the form of spoken or written discourse using the Critical Discourse Analysis. For language teachers, the researcher suggested to systematically apply Critical Discourse Analysis as an approach in their language teaching as an effective pedagogical tool. Finally, for future researchers, it is suggested to conduct similar studies of spoken discourse in different contexts and genres with more outputs.

Presupposition triggers play a vital role in verbal communication. It is a linguistic element that can be employed in utterances. Language has a significant role too in the communication and interpretation of intentions by analyzing presupposition in political speeches. One example of these is the speech articulated by politicians which often serve as vehicles toward achieving their ultimate goals. This study analyzed the presupposition triggers found in the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte’s 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA). Data was analyzed using critical discourse analysis (CDA), an approach to cognitively analyze how Duterte communicated his political intentions through the use of presupposition triggers. The results show that his SONA was filled with propositions that were erroneous and ambiguous. One example of his propositions was the frequently used lexical item “rest assured”, i.e., “Rest assured that we will not dodge our obligation to fight for human r...

Rolly Salvaleon

This paper used the transitivity system to critically analyze how President Rodrigo Duterte explored language utterances in his 2016, 2017 and 2018 State of the Nation Addresses to convey his political promise of change to the Filipinos. The paper employed quantitative and qualitative approaches. Content analysis closely examined the communicative meanings of the linguistic choices used in the addresses. Results reveal that Duterte predominantly used material process in the three addresses to account and concretize his tangible actions and developmental plans for the country. Moreover, verbal process stressed his convictions and directives and to emphasize his charismatic and humorous style of talking. Duterte’s use of relational process is an effort to recognize himself as the prime mover who leads a new foundation to construct a better Philippines. Thus, linguistic choices and structures facilitated the creation of meanings and ideologies which may be hidden to the audience.

Juland Salayo

Purpose: Language is essential in creating ideologies and power as a means of delivering a politician’s agenda. Building such power, this study explored the transitivity processes and how they constructed ideological frame used in the first seven speeches of the Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on the precautionary measures of the government during the COVID-19 crisis. Approach/Methodology/Design: Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were applied in this study. The corpus of the study was downloaded from the website of the Presidential Communications Operations Office of the Philippine government. These consist of his first seven (7) public speeches and addresses with the 15,749 total number of words. Findings: Guided by Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004; 2014) transitivity system, it was revealed that Duterte has a total 1,371 processes with a preponderance use of material, relational, and mental processes showing that the president’s concrete action, clarity of d...

Julia Daantos

In the last ten years, the world has seen an increase of political leaders using sexist and misogynistic language in their public speeches or social media platforms. In the case of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has been accused of being sexist and using misogynistic language. Women have been referred to as the cause of rape, ‘should be shot in their vaginas’, called ‘incompetent’, ‘ignorant’, and ‘dumb’ and more. Is he indeed, sexist? This thesis project combines corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine the collocational profile of the female gender-related words babae [woman], nanay [mother], mother, women, and wife and male gender-related words father, tatay [father], son, men, and lalaki [man] in President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s June 2016 to December 2019 speeches. Using WordSmith Tools 8.0 (Scott, 2020) to carry out collocation and concordance analyses and guided by van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors (van Leeuwen, 1996) and Mill’s ...

Asian ESP Journal

Ferdinand Bulusan , ferdinand bulusan

Language conveys powerful meaning, especially when they are used in political discourses. This study explored the first State of the Nation Addresses (SONAs) of the three recent presidents of the Republic of the Philippines. Focusing on the ethos, pathos, and logos, this study specifically analyzed the rhetorical appeals and devices used in their speeches using discourse analysis. It also analyzed the most commonly used rhetorical devices by the speakers in making successful rhetorical appeals. Dominating the rhetorical appeal employed by Presidents Duterte, Aquino, and Arroyo to encourage the audience to support their policies and mandates is “ethos.” As regards the rhetorical devices, the use of ‘parallelism' dominates in President Duterte's SONA. On the other hand, ‘anaphora,' and ‘epiplexis’ dominate in the speech of President Aquino while ‘anaphora' is the most common rhetorical device utilized by President Arroyo. It implies that in their SONAs, the use of rhetorical appeals and devices depends much on the manipulation of discursive resources to construct their credibility and expertise as leaders. Secondarily, appeals to emotion are used in order to establish a connection with the audience. In the context of this study, it finds that there was a tendency for speakers to adapt their rhetorical appeals to the context of their tenures.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Cezanne Dimaculangan

JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research

lilibeth calonge

The art of public speaking has been one of the commonly feared tasks for some people because they are not prepared and equipped with knowledge in rhetoric. The study was conducted to analyze the State of the Nation Address (SONA) delivered by the three presidents of the Philippines. Speech videos and speech manuscripts were analyzed using validated rubrics. A survey was also conducted to gather information on students’ perception on the study of rhetoric. Frequency, standard deviation, and weighted mean were used to analyze the rhetorical devices and canons of rhetoric employed in the speeches. It was found out that metaphor is a common rhetorical device used by the Presidents. The results show that the canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery were utilized in the speeches. Majority of the students of Rhetoric and Public Discourse, selfreported (or agreed) that the rhetorical discourse analysis of the SONA is beneficial to them as Rhetoric and Public...

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Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed

Excerpts from his speeches do not do justice to Trump’s smorgasbord of vendettas, non sequiturs and comparisons to famous people

Donald Trump’s speeches on the 2024 campaign trail so far have been focused on a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly menacing tone.

He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.

Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.

Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.

Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.

Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:

Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.

Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”

Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.

Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.

Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.

Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.

This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.

But it’s also often the shortest part.

Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of injecting bleach during the pandemic.

But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.

Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose ). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”

These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.

During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly , to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).

He made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.

One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home, we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting, he said.

“Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad thing,” he said.

These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.

The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.

Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:

“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”

Or another Hollywood-related bop, inspired by a rant about Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s romantic relationship:

“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”

He still claims to have “done more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln” and also now says he’s being persecuted more than Lincoln and Andrew Jackson:

“ All my life you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, he was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else, second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it.”

You not only see the truly bizarre nature of Trump’s speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.

His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.

“Democrats said please don’t call them ‘animals’. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals,” he said during a speech in Michigan this week.

“In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said during his March appearance in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it,” he said.

And he has turned more authoritarian in his language, saying he would be a “dictator on day one” but then later said it would only be for a day. He’s called his political enemies “vermin”: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said in New Hampshire in late 2023.

At a speech in March in Ohio about the US auto industry he claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, which some interpreted as him claiming there would be violence if he loses the election.

Trump’s campaign said later that he meant the comment to be specific to the auto industry, but now the former president has started saying Biden created a “border bloodbath” and the Republican National Committee created a website to that effect as well.

It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.

But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.

“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”

If you ask Trump himself, of course, these are just examples that Trump is smart.

“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.”

• Donald Trump
• US elections 2024
• Republicans
• US politics

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Sumita Pahwa, "Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers" (Syracuse UP, 2023‪)‬ New Books in History

• Society & Culture

Despite expectations that the deeply held political and religious organizing principles at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood would prove incompatible and contentious should the organization ever come to power, the Brotherhood succeeded in maintaining a united identity following the 2011 ousting of Hosni Mubarak and the election of a Brotherhood-majority government.  To understand how the movement threaded these disparate missions, Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (Syracuse UP, 2023) examines the movement's internal debates on preaching, activism, and social reform from the 1980s through the 2000s. In doing so, Sumita Pahwa finds that the framing of political work as ethical conduct has been critical to the organization's functioning. Through a comprehensive analysis of texts, speeches, public communications, interviews, and internal training documents, Pahwa shows how Islamic and religious ideals have been folded into the political discourse of the Brotherhood, enabling the leadership to shift the boundaries of justifiable and righteous action. Over a period of three decades, the movement has built an influential Islamic political project and carved a unified identity around how to "work for God." Sumita Pahwa is an Associate Professor of Politics at Scripps College in Claremont CA, where she also teaches in the Middle East and North Africa Studies program. She grew up in India, and received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Middlebury College. Her research focuses on religion and politics and social movements in South Asia and the Middle East, with older research on Egypt and Morocco, and newer research on civil society in India. Cooking and gardening are her main hobbies, and she has done informal comparative research on mango varieties in Egypt and India. Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

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