ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, discourse analysis has developed beyond earlier descriptive frameworks (e.g., Sinclair & Coultard, 1975) to encompass work that takes a more critical approach to the examination of language use. In this chapter, we focus our discussion on critical approaches to discourse. In particular, we draw on critical discourse analysis (CDA), social construction theory (SCT), and discursive psychology (DP) to examine the issue of “selfhood” within the context of dementia. Critical approaches have become very influential in the area of dementia studies, particularly within the “caring professions” and social psychology (e.g., Golander & Raz, 1996; Kitwood, 1990, 1997; Sabat, 2001). CDA, for example, allows “practitioners of such disciplines whose professional practices are most obviously languaged, a means of describing, interpreting and explaining how their practices are discursively accomplished and thus offering a way of clarifying the ideological bases of the purposes, and methods of the professions themselves” (Candlin, 1995, p. xi).
