Lilie Chouliaraki & Norman Fairclough, Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Pp. 168. Hb $40.00, pb $25.00.

Extract

Discourse in late modernity purports to demonstrate the significance of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), principally a European disciplinary formation, for constructionist social theory across disciplines and social settings, and to argue for the specific importance of CDA within a broader sociology of modernity. The book is principally a work of theory-building and exemplification, meant for a broad scholarly audience. Unfortunately, however, scholars outside the CDA community will be frustrated by the book's dense and sometimes confused use of undefined technical terms, as well as by the very thin analyses of the volume's few empirical examples of complex theoretical points. Terms such as “discourse,” “structure,” and “text” are used in diverse ways, but often without apparent concern for the conflicting traditions in which they are central concepts. The book also politicizes questions of social power in ways that may alienate many readers who do not share the authors' Eurocentric politics. Finally, the writing in this volume suffers from needlessly dense and complex prose syntax. These rhetorical problems are not as minor as they may sound, for they disguise – and, thereby, ironically reveal – more substantial flaws in the core arguments of the volume.