ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly outlines the history of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and presents its theoretical basis and major concerns. By addressing some of CDA’s drawbacks, this chapter highlights the necessity and significance of a pragmatic perspective as a complement to existing critical approaches. To prepare for the critical discussions in the forthcoming chapters, it provides a detailed introduction to the pragmatic approach, covering its origin, aims, targets, paths, theoretical underpinnings, and methodologies. After a brief survey of some well-established pragmatic theories, such as those on speech act, deixis, pragmatic presupposition, (im)politeness, and linguistic adaptation, is conducted, a procedure for doing critical pragmatic analysis is proposed for practice.
