ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why there is a need for a distinctly feminist approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) and suggests how such an approach might manifest itself in an analytical model for the critical study of discourse. CDA draws on a Foucauldian view of discourse as inextricably bound up with the social and, radically, as constitutive of social identities and relations. It presents the significance of aspects of women's subordination. Poststructuralist feminists have argued that the inherent instability of gender as an identity category has rendered problematic all feminist approaches that rely on an overarching metalanguage. A corollary of viewing language as a fluid, rather than a fixed, code is that the process of intertextual interpretation needs to be seen as a potential site of ideological struggle and contestation. The chapter draws upon larger quantitative studies on language and gender carried out by feminist sociolinguists.
