ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of how the social has been understood, that is, of social theory in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Corpus linguistics studies related more or less explicitly to CDS have usually defined themselves through reference to linguistic sources but have also pointed to social theories. The chapter looks briefly at CDS's widely acknowledged predecessor, Critical Linguistics. It addresses post-structural sources, the work of Foucault as well as Laclau and Mouffe. Social life aims for closure and requires certainty – something which emerges through discourse. Discourse provides a system of relations between elements – but as its elements cannot gain their meaning from anything extra-discursive, the separation between the discursive and the non-discursive collapses. Traditional notions of power emphasise power as resting in individual or collective actors. L. Chouliaraki and N. Fairclough complement a post-structuralist, productive notion of power with a view on power linked to domination, of power as systemically linking practices and positions in social fields.
