Critical Discourse Analysis: The Forensic Approach

What this framework does

This framework examines how linguistic choices construct social reality, distribute agency, and naturalize ideologies. It treats texts as sites where power is juggled—strategic constructions that advance certain interests while marginalizing others. The goal is denaturalization: making visible the linguistic work that presents contested arrangements as inevitable, historical choices as natural forces, and structural problems as personal failings.

So What

When a text says "mistakes were made" instead of "the CEO made mistakes," or frames policy as inevitable rather than contested, it is doing ideological work. When discourse reifies social relations into "natural" forces (like "the market demands"), erases histories of struggle, or individualizes structural problems, it prevents people from recognizing shared interests. This framework is designed to make that mystification visible.

The Forensic Approach (CDA-SFL)

Grounded in Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and communication theory, this version audits systematic linguistic patterns. The output is descriptive and explanatory—it reveals how discourse constructs reality without requiring imagination of alternatives. The tone is forensic, the stance scholarly. Endpoint: Understanding how power operates through language.

Core Analytical Audits

1. Transitivity & Agency Analysis

• Question: Who does what to whom? How is agency distributed?
• Focus: Identifies agentless passives (e.g., "The model is trained") which erase the actors involved (engineers, capital investment).
• Outcome: Describes grammatical choices neutrally to reveal where responsibility is obscured.

⠀2. Lexical Choice & Ideology

• Question: Which words carry ideological weight? What values do they naturalize?
• Focus: Analyzes specific word choices versus available alternatives.
• Outcome: Maps the value systems implicit in the vocabulary (e.g., "collateral damage" vs. "civilian deaths").

⠀3. Positioning & Social Distance

• Question: How are participants positioned in power relations?
• Focus: Looks at how the text constructs "Us" vs. "Them" and establishes authority.
• Outcome: Describes the social distance and authority constructed by the text.

Methodology Summary

Feature	Specification
Theoretical Foundation	Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, Fairclough)
Primary Question	How do linguistic choices construct social reality?
Complexity	Moderate (4 Tasks + Synthesis)
Tone	Scholarly, Objective, Analytic

Typical Output Structure

1 Primary Discourse Strategies: The overarching linguistic moves found in the text. 2 Construction of Social Reality: How the text builds its version of the world. 3 Implications for Power Relations: Who gains and who loses in this construction. 4 Alternative Framings: How else this story could have been told.