The title of this book implicitly raises a number of important questions about the relationships among discourse analysis (DA), critical discourse analysis (CDA), and interdisciplinarity: Is CDA one approach to analyzing text and talk, or is it (by implication of the ambiguous parenthetical reference in the book's title) somehow merging with (an increasingly more critical) DA? To what extent does or should (C)DA embrace interdisciplinary approaches to treating language in use? Finally (and perhaps most compelling of all), what is this new agenda, what is wrong with the old agenda, and why is a new agenda needed at this time? Overall, the book does a fair to good job of addressing these questions.
Readers will most likely identify the first editor, Ruth Wodak, with CDA and thus draw some preliminary conclusions about how the book answers the questions implicitly raised in the title. According to one of the contributors, Teun A. van Dijk, “CDA specifically deals with the study of the discursive reproduction of power abuse, with forms of domination and social inequality. This also means that CDA needs to make explicit the way socially shared beliefs are discursively reproduced and how such beliefs are abused in the maintenance and legitimation of domination” (pp. 87–88). One might thus assume, given the editor's interests and editorial influence, that the book is concerned to a large extent with CDA, especially with promoting an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to CDA. Indeed, Wodak's influence on the collection is unmistakable. For example, we learn in the Acknowledgments that the book grew out of a workshop organized in 2003 by Wodak at the University of Vienna and entitled “New Agenda in CDA.” Moreover, the majority of the essays in Part I are written by well-known CDA scholars, while the majority of essays in Part II are written by researchers who worked under the direction of Wodak at the University of Vienna and who have been influenced by her “discourse-historical” approach (see the essays by Krżyzanowski, Oberhuber, and Bärenreuter). Wodak also contributes a chapter to Part II, cowritten with Gilbert Weiss. Finally, one of the three essays in Part III, by Irene Bellier, bears the clear stamp of Wodak's influence, as evidenced through in-text citations.
The book's 13 chapters are organized into three parts. In Part I, “Interdisciplinarity and (C)DA,” contributors draw on the trope of interdisciplinarity to build a new agenda for CDA. Some of the biggest names in the field of (C)DA contribute essays to Part I: Theo van Leeuwen, Paul Chilton, Norman Fairclough, Teun A. van Dijk, and Ron Scollon & Suzie Wong Scollon. Not surprisingly, the essays in Part I are also the best in the book. They raise important questions about the very viability of CDA (Chilton), the need for greater interdisciplinarity in CDA research (van Leeuwen, Fairclough), and the relationship among cognition, texts, and action (Chilton, van Dijk, Scollon & Scollon). Chilton's essay is a must-read. Taking seriously the call for greater interdisciplinarity in CDA research, Chilton argues that CDA scholars (with the notable exception of van Dijk) have “neglect[ed] the cognitive aspect of communication” and thus “may be incapable of going beyond description” (44). By drawing on a “blend of blending theory and cognitive evolutionary psychology” (41), Chilton develops a cognitive approach to ideology and concludes, tentatively but provocatively, that “CDA as an academic and pedagogical enterprise might not be necessary at all” (31) because “humans may already have a critical instinct, even perhaps something like a [cognitive] module for CDA” (43). What “prevents people using their innate cheater-detecting logico-rhetorical modules to protect their own interests” (45) is not a cognitive deficit per se but “economic forces or socio-political institutions that restrict freedom of expression and freedom of access to information” (45). If this is true, then what is needed is “historical, social, economic and political analysis not the analysis of language itself” (45–46).
Chilton makes a compelling case for interdisciplinarity in CDA to address neglected fields such as psychology and cognitive science. The cognitive dimension is addressed in two other essays in Part I. Van Dijk offers a model of “the way knowledge in discourse production and comprehension is managed as a function of context” (72). For van Dijk, the interface between context models and common knowledge among speakers and listeners (or readers and writers) has not been adequately theorized. Van Dijk's theory hinges on what he calls a “K-device,” which “calculat[es] what the recipients know at each moment of a communication or interaction” (76). He applies his model very briefly to knowledge management in CDA and to a news article about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Three implications for CDA are worth noting here: Symbolic elites (e.g., journalists) may presume that “ideologically based beliefs [are] certified knowledge of the community” (88), treat others as ignorant by being “too explicit” (which van Dijk calls a form of domination; 89), and/or assume that “knowledge is only conveyed by elite discourse” (89).
The essay by Scollon & Scollon is also concerned with the cognitive dimension, specifically the ways in which discourse is internalized as action, and action is externalized as discourse. For the authors, the “weak link [for CDA] in this chain of discourse and action, of action and discourse is the psychological one” (101). They argue that language theorists have been too quick to embrace the concept of “habitus” as an explanation for how discourse may be internalized over time through a sequence of actions (106). In place of “habitus” they offer the work of Nishida Kitaro on the “historical body,” since Kitaro's work arguably provides a better link between psychological and social theory. Bringing these ideas to bear on the question of interdisciplinarity, Scollon & Scollon suggest that the links among discourse, actors, and actions “are the minimal necessary units for our interdisciplinary development of what have largely been independent academic disciplines” (111).
The other two essays in Part I focus on the question of interdisciplinarity and how we might more fully integrate discourse analysis with other disciplines. Van Leeuwen presents three models of interdisciplinarity (centralist, pluralist, and integrationist), and suggests that the integrationist model more fully realizes the goal of leveraging the expertise of a number of disciplines to solve common problems through a common vocabulary. Fairclough's essay might be read as an application of the integrationist model. For Fairclough, interdisciplinary research should aim for a “dialogue” between disciplines in which each discipline develops through an encounter with the logic of the other(s). This is the essence of “transdisciplinarity.”
The essays in Part II, “Implementing interdisciplinarity,” clearly reflect the influence of Wodak (with the exception of that by Peter Muntigl & Adam Horvath). In the opening essay of Part II, Wodak & Gilbert Weiss discuss their theoretical framework for explaining European identities and European Union (EU) discourses. This framework is the result of an interdisciplinary approach, but one that still lacks a “uniform theoretical framework” for “reconciling different (sociological and linguistic) perspectives without reducing them to one another” (125). Wodak & Weiss offer steps for addressing this “mediation problem,” steps that might be read in terms of Fairclough's earlier call for transdisciplinarity. The next three essays in this section take up the topic of European identity. All are written by younger scholars who worked under Wodak's direction at the “Discourse, Politics, Identity” research center at the University of Vienna. The essays by Michał Kżyzanowski and Florian Oberhuber are in fact different sides of the same research project (167): Kżyzanowski reports on the ways in which European identity is mediated through the discourses of the European Convention; Oberhuber focuses on the “context of Convention discourse” (165). Since both essays are influenced by Wodak's “discourse-historical approach” (142, 166), they provide examples of Wodak's methodology in action. Both essays also build on the concept of “mainstreaming,” in which the discourse of the European Convention is arguably shaped by an “overriding ideology” (150), and they suggest how the ideal of “deliberative democracy” is not realized in practice (173). Bärenreuter also takes up the topic of European identity as a function of popular/news discourse in which “discourses on European issues are closely intertwined with discourses on national identities” (191). For those readers specifically interested in EU issues and the ongoing construction of a new European identity, and especially for those who are also interested in Wodak's influence on CDA, these four essays raise important questions, offer insightful readings of interactions, and open avenues for further exploration.
The final four essays in the book (the last in Part II and the three in Part III) might be read as an invitation to assess how well the questions raised in Part I are taken up by scholars who are not so closely tied to or influenced by Wodak's research agenda. The last essay in Part II, by Muntigl & Horvath on “Language, psychotherapy and client change,” does an excellent job of implementing interdisciplinarity. The authors adopt an integrationist perspective (borrowing from van Leeuwen) in which linguistic theory and psychotherapy research co-evolve. By bringing together the linguistic and relationship levels under “a more general semiotic level” (234), the authors implicitly suggest another way in which Fairclough's transdisciplinary ideal might be realized.
The three essays that comprise Part III, “Inside and outside traditional disciplines,” are worthwhile insofar as they provide a forum for scholars from outside the field of discourse studies to reflect on its impact on their own disciplines and research. But I suspect that discourse analysts and others interested in discourse studies will find them lacking for at least two reasons: They do not analyze examples of discourse at anywhere near the level of detail discourse analysts will expect (for contrast, see the essay by Muntigl & Horvath), and they fit unevenly, and sometimes not at all, into the larger discussions that make up the book, especially the issues raised in Part I.
Overall, I would recommend A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis, especially the essays that make up Part I, to scholars in discourse studies. It is not intended for those who are new to the field or new to CDA in particular. Moreover, the preface, which serves as the introduction, is only about 500 words long; a much longer introduction, which identified and tied together the various threads in the book, would have gone a long way toward unifying the chapters, clarifying their interconnections, and demarcating the “new agenda” from an old one. Finally, prospective readers should keep in mind the decidedly European ethos that shapes the book: Four of the 13 chapters focus on the discursive construction of European identity, and virtually all of the contributors hail from Europe.
