CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS APPROACH

Discourse is a form of power and political discourse is a prototypical example of discourse as power. Discourse joins power and knowledge, and may we realize it or not, triggers realities for us. We grow up under the discourse of our modern society and most of the time we regard it as common sense. But beyond this natural "process" of getting shaped by the realities that our nowadays society's discourse presents, there is always the danger not to fully grasp and comprehend the complex dimensions of discourse. Especially that of Political Discourse. It has been stated lately (Fairclough 1999; Wodak 2002; van Dijk 2001; Bloommaert & Bulcaen 2000) that different scientific disciplines such as history, sociology, political science and philosophy, among others, have been drawn upon in order to satisfy the needs of an extensive and elaborated analysis of discourse and in this regard discourse became an interdisciplinary subject. Viewed from a larger scale, in a world where the progress of technology and the accelerated pace of "globalization" demand multidimensional analysis in any field, the fact that discourse receives such a well-informed tackling is more than welcomed. On the other hand, in Paul Danler' (2006) words: "The danger inherent in this multidimensional approach to discourse analysis is that language itself, as the primary material of discourse no longer receives the analytical attention it deserves."