Texts and Practices Revisited: Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis

This is a second edition of the ground- breaking volume Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, which was the first published collection of chapters presenting critical discourse analysis theory and practice. Critical discursive approaches have now become the main trend in most discursive and semiotic investigations. It was then, and is especially now, predominantly concerned with identifying, demystifying and resisting the ways language and semiotic systems are used to reflect, create and sustain inequalities in specific contexts.

This new collection presents contributions by all six of the living authors who were central to the first edition: Norman Fairclough, Theo van Leeuwen, Teun van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Carmen Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard – plus an edited version of a jointly authored classic chapter originally authored by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress. There are four new chapters written by the other leading members of the foundational 1990s European Critical Discourse Analysis group: Phil Graham, Jay Lemke, David Machin and Louisa Rojo and two by young critical discourse researchers who have risen to prominence more recently: Rodrigo Borba and Germán Canale.

Texts and Practices Revisited: Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis provides a representative collection of work which, while authored by the pioneering researchers of the first wave of CDA, illustrates their most recent concerns and their latest analytical techniques. It is an essential text for all advanced students of English language, linguistics, media and cultural studies.

Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard is Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she taught and researched for many years (1996–2012). She has published extensively in the areas of Critical Discourse Analysis, Media, Gender Studies, Social Semiotics and Visual Communication. Her most recent publication is the edited volume Innovations and Challenges: Women, Language and Sexism, Routledge, 2020.

Malcolm Coulthard is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Linguistics at the University of Aston, UK, and Emeritus Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK. He was one of the founders of the School of Discourse Analysis at the University of Birmingham and his book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis was the groundbreaking work for the area of Discourse Analysis. Recent publications include: A Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, 2021 and (with Alison Johnson and David Wright) An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence, 2017.