8- 12): 1) Language use (discourse) shapes and is shaped by society. In other words, discourse and society are in a dialectical relationship. 2) Discourse helps to contribute and change knowledge and its objects, social relations, and social identity. 3) Discourse is invested with ideologies and is shaped by power. 4) The shaping of discourse is a stake in power struggles. 5) Critical language study sets out to show how society and discourse shape each other. These five propositions stem from the assumption that language is both socially constitutive and socially determined. Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis is influenced by Halliday’s functional …show more content…
A text has an “ideational” function through its representation of the world, an “interpersonal” function through social interactions between participants in discourse, and a “textual” function through uniting separate components into a meaning whole and combining this with a situational context. Likewise, Fairclough (1992) views any discursive event, or any instance of language use, as having three dimensions: text, interaction, and context. Text here can be expanded to semiosis, which is meaning-making through language, body language, visual images, or any other way of signifying. Text is also “an interaction between people, involving process of producing and interpreting the text, and it is part of a piece of social action—and in some cases virtually the whole of it” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 10). In other words, an interpretation of a text is the individual’s interaction with the text, which is part of social action or context. The context here refers to social conditions of production/interpretation, or order of discourse— “totality of discursive practices of an institution and relationships between them” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 138). Corresponding to the three dimensions of discourse, critical analysis also has three dimensions: description of the text, interpretation of the interaction processes, and explanation of how the interaction process relates