D&S Forum
Abstract
568 DISCOURSE & SOCIETY Critical Discourse Analysis? Over a series of Discourse & Society Editorials, Van Dijk has rightly empha- sized the need to make discourse analysis critical. His proposal for achieving this 'political dimension' involves asking 'how is illegitimate power abuse reproduced by directly enacting dominating forms of talk or text ... by manag- ing the minds of others through a manipulation of their beliefs or through manufacturing consent?' (1994: 435). This proposal is reiterated in an earlier paper where he states: [Modern] power is mostly cognitive, and enacted by persuasion, dissimu- lation or manipulation, among other strategic ways to change the minds of others in one's own interest. It is at this crucial place where ... critical discourse analysis come(s) in: managing the minds of others is essentially a function of talk and text. (Van Dijk, 1993b: 254) This version of critical discourse analysis (CDA), targeted at the manipu- lation of knowledge to illegitimately shape thinking, could be called 'ideology critique'. But what makes something 'ideology', in this discourse (dissimulat- ing, manipulative and abusive), is its designation as illegitimate. The issue of legitimacy, we argue, should not be a starting point for CDA, but a subject