Critical Discourse Studies

ISSN: 1740-5904 (Print) 1740-5912 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcds20

Critical analysis of discourse and of the media:

challenges and shortcomings

Pedro Santander Molina

To cite this article: Pedro Santander Molina (2009) Critical analysis of discourse and of
the media: challenges and shortcomings, Critical Discourse Studies, 6:3, 185-198, DOI:
10.1080/17405900902974878

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405900902974878

Published online: 19 Jun 2009.

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 Critical Discourse Studies
Vol. 6, No. 3, August 2009, 185 –198

Critical analysis of discourse and of the media: challenges and shortcomings

Pedro Santander Molina

School of Journalism, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaı́so, Lusitania 68, Viña del Mar, Chile

The main objective of this paper is to show what we consider to be weaknesses and
shortcomings in discourse analysis, in general, and critical discourse analysis, in particular,
when journalistic articles are analysed but omit or overlook intermediate levels of analysis
and medium-range theories guiding data interpretation. For this purpose, this paper
presents a theoretical and methodological discussion including analysis cases where such
errors have been detected.
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Keywords: media discourse; critical discourse analysis; communicative situation

The problem
Any attempt to carry out discourse analysis (DA) or critical discourse analysis (CDA) must be
based on two basic supositions:
(1) accepting the opacity of language;
(2) making a scientific attempt to go ‘beyond the text’.

Language opacity and contents as simulacrum

The first supposition involves a part that is evident: if language were not opaque but transparent,
what would the point be of carrying out an analysis? However, there is a second part that does
not appear so clearly to us: why is it opaque? Since, in order to explain such opacity we must
resort to – since they play a fundamental role – elements of the extra-linguistic world, such as
social structure, context, taboos, interpretation, previous knowledge, etc., a discourse analysis –
critical or not – that intends to link language with the outside (Baumann, 2002) must take those
elements into consideration.
However, the opacity problem also sets forth challenges that go in the opposite direction and
makes reference to a problem of text contents, a problem that, it seems to me, is crucial and must
be considered, so that any type of DA – let alone CDA – may be differentiated from textual
linguistics (TL), even before establishing a problematic and a link with notions such as social
structure or context.
Both DA and CDA must admit that a text’s contents may, under certain circumstances, be a
deceitful, even an irrelevant, data. This consideration is particularly important to CDA since DA
may not have a text’s contents as its focus; DA can, for instance, centre either on persuasion or
politeness strategies, but CDA cannot evade contents, considering that its followers and founders
manifest that their vital interest is oriented toward certain texts which they consider a priori to be
discriminatory and the contents of which exercise abuse of power and discursively reproduce
social injustice. For this same reason, it is worthwhile to analyse the problem of the importance
of contents rather than to deify it beforehand.


Email: pedro.santander@ucv.cl

ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17405900902974878
http://www.informaworld.com
 186 P. Santander Molina

The linguist Deborah Tannen (1996), for example, demonstrates in her researches on the
relationship between gender and the use of language in face-to-face interactions how identical
linguistic means are used for completely different purposes (solidarity vs domination). The
author states that the fact of not acknowledging this potential ambiguity of linguistic strategies
to mark both power and solidarity in dialogue interaction ‘has been detrimental to research on
language and gender’ (Tannen, 1996, p. 41). The source of domination cannot, without further
consideration, be located in the linguistic strategies used by speakers of different genders,
reduced to the form, a conceptual and methodological error to which we are often witnesses
in CDA works.
Another linguist, Scollon (2003), warns about the irrelevance that the contents of journalistic
chronicles, used as a corpus to approach certain social problems, may represent, considering the
distance existing between what the media state, for example, about AIDS and drug consumption,
and the reality of AIDS patients’ or consumers’ actions.
In line with the communication media, critical tradition warns us that, at least according to
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the guidelines of the Frankfurt School, the contents of the media’s message may be a secondary
data. This school demonstrates that the media’s contents vary little when it comes to certain
prototypes and stereotypes that are incessantly repeated in the discourses of capitalist societies.
In this sense, for those who study the cultural industry, it would not be surprising at all – rather
evident and entirely expected – that a considerable number of CDA works should over and over
again discover the presence of racism or sexism in the discourse of Latin America’s media, the
owners of which belong to the white bourgeois minority. Horkheimer and Adorno (1969,
p. 186), without the need for a linguistic analysis but with a theoretical one, used to call it
the ‘deceitful substitution of the individual by the stereotype’. From this view, it is not surprising
that we should detect European and Latin-American journalists using similar linguistic
strategies when they make racist or sexist representations in the media, as illustrated by
Bolı́var (2000). That would rather be proving what was expected, since the cultural industry
does not escape capital laws and accounts for them ideologically and discursively, either
south or north.
Another problem which text contents face in the media, particularly in television, is the
prevalence of the discourse genre. Through its permits and prohibitions (which are not only lin-
guistic), a type of language that causes discourse genres to have primacy over contents has been
positively established. According to Horkheimer and Adorno (1969, p. 151), ‘all genres cycli-
cally return as invariable entities’. Research on media discourse shows that new genres have
been ineffectively and slowly incorporated into television and that, once a genre becomes con-
solidated (such as soap operas, reality shows, talk shows, reports, video clips, etc.), contents
become repetitive and secondary.
For instance, we often come across news broadcasts on different TV channels, by different
journalists, whose texts are very similar. Our own research (Santander, 2003, 2004) has demon-
strated the similitude shown in Chilean journalistic texts, not only in their contents but also in
their syntactical structures and in the use of images. An event is frequently represented as
news by various TV newscasts that compete for audience and commercial spots in a very
similar fashion. The reason for this phenomenon is not to be found in the text. The news tran-
scription and its later linguistic analysis do not give the basic answers that could explain why
different journalists, working for competing TV channels and without beforehand agreeing to
do so, produce such similar representations and interpretations, so that they coincide in the
source of the interviews, the use of direct and indirect quotes, lexical repetitions, macro-
propositions and even syntactical and argumentative structures. The explanation for the above
has to be found outside the grammatical and textual categories and must resort to conceptual
categories, such as structural affinity, which has been historically built up between institutions
 Critical Discourse Studies 187

with social power and news rooms, the informative subsidies, which agents from various social
fields provide to journalists, the values of news under the liberal view, etc.
To the above we may add a last point which means a significant challenge to the linguistic
analysis of the media: often the informative identity of a media, particularly the written press, is
provided by its informative omissions, i.e. by what is not informed and kept in silence – rather
than by what is published.

Scientifically going beyond the text

The second assumption mentioned above (to make a scientific attempt to go beyond the text) also
entails no minor challenges because, on the one hand, we linguists are faced with a long and pro-
ductive tradition anchored in the study of the sentence that operates as a centripetal force on the
study of language. On the other hand, since text linguistics is the most serious and scientific
attempt to go beyond the limits of the sentence, DA and CDA must necessarily include different
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objectives and objects of study to differentiate themselves from TL, in this sense, to theoretically
and methodologically account for linguistic elements that, in a sort of analysis unit, affect the
entire text; for example, the so-called discourse markers (Portolés, 1998) are insufficient to
assert that DA is being carried out, because that is clearly the objective and the achievement
of TL. The objective and object of study of both DA and CDA are different in that they are
necessarily linked to the discourse – society relationship. This point does not imply confusion
of the notion of text with the notion of discourse, nor belief that discourse is equivalent to a
chain of texts.
TL, especially in the German tradition, has known how to creatively and scientifically react
to the challenge of going beyond the sentence, thus demonstrating that the text is a qualitatively
different communicative unit of the sentence and that it is not its grammaticality but its textual-
ity that makes a text be considered as such. In this task, TL comes near to the textual margins
and surroundings, but decides to keep within the same, so that all steps taken that imply the risk
of going out to the extra-linguistic world remain anchored in the text, for example when it is
stated that, concerning the relationship between the micro-level of cohesion and the macro-
level of coherence, not only are we facing a set of grammatically and semantically intercon-
nected sentences, but they are updated (reified) by the interlocutors, i.e. by elements outside
the text, implying, moreover, that one single text can be open to more than one interpretation
(de Beaugrande & Dressler, 1997; Brown & Yule, 1983). In other words, textual coherence
is not only a quality of the texts themselves, but it is also related to what occurs outside the
texts; therefore, it is at the same time a quality of the interpretations. In this sense, text is
conceived as having a cognitive construction, articulated by directed or activated inferences
due to textual signals.

Challenges of DA and CDA

According to the above, we may state that DA and CDA face the following challenges:
(1) Accepting the relativity of the linguistic data – as considered above, a text’s contents can
at times be confusing (identical linguistic strategies for opposing purposes), secondary
(genre prevails over contents) or irrelevant (when omissions are more important than
the contents or when language serves the function of masking reality).
(2) The linguistic aspect is not guaranteed only by providing the method with a scientific
character – this point emerges as a consequence of the above. Let us remember that
one of the problems and challenges faced by TL when it was first proposed to surpass
the sentence’s limits was not only the suspicion and the weight of quite a tradition
 188 P. Santander Molina

which, as Benveniste (1971) believed, stated the sentence to be the highest unit of
linguistic analysis, but also the challenge of knowing how to apply the scientific
method, already assumed and incorporated by modern linguistics, as from Saussure,
to this new level. In view of the relativity of the linguistic data we are proposing, it is
now very difficult to determine at which level the discourse analysis is to be anchored
(in the text itself, in the communicative situation, in social practice?). What seems to
be evident is that the grammatical level by itself is not the sufficient and only guarantee
for this undertaking. In this sense, and contrary to what the major tendencies have
observed in AD and CDA, the analysis cannot be reduced merely to the contents of
the text and, for this reason, the grammatical analysis per se may be insufficient and
can even lead to misinterpretations and erroneous conclusions if, based exclusively on
the latter, DA and CDA are to be carried out, as we shall observe below.
What has been stated so far does not intend to sustain that linguistic analysis is not necessary in
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DA or CDA; evidently, this is not the objective – rather, the aim is to present the limits of the
problem and the challenges that should be taken into consideration. There are types of analysis in
which not only can the strictly linguistic view not be disregarded, but the whole sense of the
analysis depends on same. However, in DA, and all the more so in CDA, this is not always
the case, since the object of its study establishes those restrictions, because the relationship
between the social and the discursive views is at the core of its concerns.

The communicative situation

What is beyond the text has received various denominations in social sciences and hermeneutics:
context, social structure, situation, register, the outside, etc. For the purposes of this work, we
shall use and analyse the problems of the communicative situation notion, which includes
extra-linguistic aspects in different dimensions. This is the intermediate instance between the
text and the historical – social situation. Fairclough (1992, 1997) calls it discursive practice,
but I prefer communicative situation because the notion of situation can be considered inter-
mediate between text and social context; in turn, ‘communicative’ refers to elements which,
not being linguistic, keep some closeness to these elements, since they are related to routines
and practices of production, circulation and consumption of signs.
To face the above-mentioned problems and challenges, I believe it is essential to make
efforts to link the linguistic analysis level with an intermediate analysis level, such as the one
we are mentioning herein. The first analysis level is descriptive, text-bound and works with
the elements of the surface structure. It feeds on grammar and methods of analysis provided
by currents such as critical linguistics (Fowler, Hodge, Kress & Trew, 1983; Hodge & Kress,
1993; Fowler, 1996) as well as systemic –functional grammar (Halliday, 1994; Halliday &
Hasan, 1990), etc.
The second level is linked to the communicative situation in which the text is inserted, and is
primarily interpretative. Results observed and obtained from the first instance are interpreted in
the light of medium-range theories to which one resorts, depending on the specific problem
under study (media, gender, power, etc.).
Theories that account for the relationship between text and the situation surrounding same
and, often, conditioning it, are required here. Diverse authors have advised about this. Billing
(2008, p. 791), for instance, states that ‘typically discourse analysts, including critical analysts,
examine the discursive and linguistics features of given texts, rather than examining the process
of producing and consuming texts’. Also Fairclough (2008, p. 817) insists upon the need of con-
necting the analytical levels, since not doing so causes that ‘we often short-circuit the connection
 Critical Discourse Studies 189

between linguistic features of text and social-historical processes’. In this sense, Bourdieu
(2000), for instance, uses the notion of field and employs it as an intermediate and mediating
instance between text and context. What we avoid with this theoretical – methodological
option is to operate as if the relation between discourse and society were direct and not mediated,
a presupposition that may cause the interpretation not to definitively consider historical, social
factors when performing the internal reading and interpretation (exegesis) of the linguistic
corpus. This is what Bourdieu (2000) justly calls ‘short-circuit error’, which supposes setting
up a direct relation between text and context. In the Latin American domain, Barbero (2003) pro-
poses the theoretical and analytical term ‘mediation’ in order to move from the textual structure
to the social structure and vice-versa; not to do so is not to consider the live reading of persons
and social movements. In a similar direction, Fornäs (2008, p. 900) mentions ‘the materialization
of mediation as a way of widening the scope of understanding how meaning is constructed in
communicative practices’.
We shall hereafter illustrate some cases that demonstrate that, if we base and anchor the
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discourse analysis only on the linguistic level, disregarding the information provided by the
communicative situation, this may lead to making erroneous inferences and hypotheses. We
shall give examples where one of the three instances on the intermediate level (production, cir-
culation, consumption) was not sufficiently considered when the analysis was carried out. We
also state that we wish to illustrate cases; therefore, the view is intense rather than extensive
or generalizing. For instance, rather than CDA in general, this time we draw our attention to
the social – cognitive oriented CDA, in the lines of Teun van Dijk, a Dutch researcher who
has a strong influence over CDA practised in Latin America.

Production conditions and the function of text structures

Dutch linguist T. van Dijk is a common reference for researchers performing CDA, at least in
Latin America. Certainly, this author has done a series of interesting research regarding the
language used by the written press regarding issues of power, racism and discourse proces-
sing (see, amongst others, Van Dijk, 1990, 1995, 1996a, 1997). With his contribution, a series
of linguistic categories, such as local coherence, semantic macrostructure, propositions,
macropropositions and superstructure, began to be applied in the analysis of journalistic
texts. Those categories, however, are often applied in an acritical way, without considering
the intermediate instances to which we have formerly referred, and how such instances
affect texts.
By observing CDA proposals, we can see a constant concern on the part of many media dis-
course analysts for discovering and describing the semantic macrostructures of journalistic texts.
Upon referring to the above, Van Dijk (1990), in this respect, asserts that the topic is summarized
in the headlines and that these, in turn, would fulfil the function of summarizing. Van Dijk
applies three macro-rules of semantic transformation or mapping (suppression, generalization
and substitution or construction) to the texts in question. It is an analysis that, from a micro-
level, starts from what he calls propositions of the different sentences that make up the text.
To these the macro-rules are applied, thus transforming the local semantic information in
such a way that, once all propositions are known, macro-propositions can be extracted. These
macro-propositions must have a hierarchical organization, so that each sequence can be sub-
sumed under another, higher one, which leads to the highest, which constitutes the central
topic of the text. Moreover, the topic need not be literally present in the text but the analyst
can interpret it from this highest macro-structure.
The above faces us with two problems.
 190 P. Santander Molina

Uncertainty regarding the analysis model

Although the rules of semantic transformation – suppression, generalization and substitution –
are specified, the rules for suppressing, generalizing and substituting are not specified, so that we
ignore how the process occurs and the analysis cannot guarantee an agreement in the transform-
ation operations. As far as this weakness is concerned, Raiter (2002) illustrates, for example,
how van Dijk (2003) entirely suppresses, in an analysis proposal, a text’s initial paragraph
which, from the perspective of the ideological analysis, contains the most relevant information.
However, since the methodological considerations that should guide the process of suppression
are not explained, the reasons for that elimination are not made clear.
Speaking of rules and not indicating how to apply them analytically does not guarantee
higher degrees of intersubjective agreements among analysts, since the method and conclusions
are left open to multiple interpretations. For instance, when a text’s central topic is not looked for
in a literal proposition but in a logical – semantic one and when a logical – intuitive reduction is
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suggested in search of larger units, the validity of the method of analysis still resides, to a great
extent, in the analyst’s talent and expertise and in the reliance placed on him/her. This is just
what must be avoided if DA and CDA are to be endowed with scientific character.
In such situations, it is very easy to fall into a kind of circular analysis, since we give priority
to the analysis of what interests us in a text, over and above the analysis of use of language.
When this occurs, texts are adapted to hypotheses, due to the lassitude of the analytical tech-
niques and the methodological problem of searching in the text for a specific item.

Non-scientific generalizations
Another problem lies in the generalizations about the analyses. Because the level of grammatical
analysis has proved to be rich in generalizations and has made linguistics into a modern science,
the temptation to do the same by moving from the notion of text to that of discourse is under-
standable, but the difficulty is immensely greater. Van Dijk (1990), for example, erroneously
generalizes when, upon applying the macro-rules to journalistic texts, he sustains that headlines
fulfil the function of summarizing. True, that may occur, but it is also true that it may not.
Were the communicative situations surrounding journalistic texts duly considered, specifi-
cally, the way in which the production conditions typical of the journalistic field affect the
texts, then the above would be avoided. We would observe that, for example, the demands on
macro-structures show different and particular behaviours in journalistic discourse, as compared
with others. Various elements – of both linguistic and non-linguistic nature – bear on the greater
or lesser presence and placement of global topics in text structures, such as the headline, the title
or the epigraph. Thus, in the informative genre, i.e. the genre directly linked to news, there really
exists a tendency to summarize the news into headlines, but in the written press, this tendency
depends heavily on the available space and on the importance assigned to the news, so that it can
be asserted that it is co-relational: the less the space for the news, the greater the function of the
title as summary and the greater the attachment to the semantic transformation rules; but by
having a greater availability of space (e.g. a front page headline), the communicative function
of captivating the reader before the semantic projection begins to prevail. In the case of TV
news, there is no equivalent to the title, and the text’s semantic macro-structure is almost
always placed in the first paragraph of the news, which is read by the newscasters before the
cameras.
The relationship between macro-structure and press headline is, therefore, very dynamic and
non-univocal. The various formats, the availability of space, the emphasis placed on the event
and the genre have, among others, some influence as well. In the genre of opinion and interpret-
ation, for example, a more literary style prevails, not the factual style found in the informative
 Critical Discourse Studies 191

genre, which also affects the title; furthermore, opinion columns or editorials are often entitled
with what Pardo (1986, 1996) calls textual rheme, which is frequently to be found at the end of
the text and which, even though it is a macro-structure, does not represent a global topic but a
sort of textual closing.
As may be noted, knowing the textual dynamics is not enough to make generalizations or
discourse hypotheses; the communicative situation framing the same must also be considered,
since it affects the text. The manner in which oral narrations, novels or journalistic texts are pro-
duced is very different. While oral narration, as a form, presupposes a basic community of values
relating the narrator to the audience in shared contexts, the novelistic narration is an author’s
intimate activity, isolated from his/her public, and lacking the phatic guarantee, journalistic
articles are produced through collective routines by a team playing various roles in spatial
and temporal contexts, almost always separated from their interlocutors.
Furthermore, it is advisable to consider – according to an entire line of media research – the
media’s present profit-oriented trend in capitalist societies and the resulting commercial impera-
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tive (Hackett, 1995) under which they operate. This causes the function of captivating the
audience’s attention, which the media sell to the publicists, to be really at stake. Evidently,
headlines play an essential role in this respect.

Conditions of circulation and the limits of the grammatical level

Not only production conditions but also circumstances under which signs circulate affect texts,
and such circumstances must be considered in the analysis. To disregard these instances in the
communicative process may lead to erroneous conclusions, no matter how correct the gramma-
tical analysis may be.
The way in which signs circulate varies significantly, according to the social field in which
circulation occurs. The manner texts circulate in a classroom, in a doctor’s office, in the collo-
quial face-to-face interaction or in the media, is very different. In the case of the media discourse,
there is always a structured rupture of contexts between the production of signs and their recep-
tion. Unlike what occurs in face-to-face communication, in media communication the context of
production is always separated from the context of reception, and the flow of messages circulates
preferably in one single direction, establishing what Thompson (1998) calls structural asymme-
try of the communicative process.1
Let us observe the following example. In an article by the well-known Argentinean linguist
Martı́n Menéndez (2003) entitled ‘Gramática y Discurso: Las relaciones evidentes’ and where it
is established that any discourse analysis is conditioned by a grammatical theory, a direct quote
from the then Cardinal Ratzinger is analysed. In his article, Menéndez suggests the following
(emphasis in bold type):
Propondré, por último, un fragmento de una nota sobre la salud del Papa aparecida en La Nación el 1
de septiembre de 2003 y firmada por Elizabetta Pique. Dice el fragmento: (. . .) En el mismo artı́culo
de Bunte, el cardenal Ratzinger, de 76 años, no excluyó que el próximo Papa pueda venir del
continente africano, ‘aunque no creo que pueda suceder, porque el número de cardenales blancos
es muy superior’, sostuvo. Y ante una pregunta sobre las voces que lo indican a él como eventual
‘papabile’, contestó:’Dios mı́o, no fui creado para esto’.
Next, Menéndez analyses the direct quote grammatically, emphasizing, among other aspects, the
following:
Tenemos, en principio, dos opciones disponibles:

– no creo que suceda [. grado de probabilidad]

– no creo que pueda suceder [, grado de probabilidad]
 192 P. Santander Molina

Al elegir la menos probable, se la justifica a partir de un argumento que afirma que el número de
cardenales blancos es muy superior.
La cláusula relacional es atributiva. La superioridad es un atributo del número e intensifica esa atri-
bución. Por otra parte, la construcción muy superior elide estratégicamente el elemento comparado
que se repone a partir de una relación cohesiva de colocación que está fuera de la cita textual del
cardenal Ratzinger y que alude concretamente al ‘continente africano’. (. . .)
No deja de llamar la atención la utilización del adjetivo ‘superior’ en este contexto ya que la oposi-
ción paradigmática en la que participa es ‘inferior’ cuando podrı́a haberse optado por ‘mayor’ y
‘menor’.2

Nevertheless, in this analysis there is a crucial element which is not considered and which is
related to the conditions of circulation: the direct, analysed quote which appeared in the Argen-
tinean newspaper La Nación has been published in at least two different languages and, very
likely, in three. If we read carefully, we will see that the quote was taken from Bunte Magazine,
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a weekly German magazine. Therefore, we can assert that what Ratzinger manifested had pre-
viously been expressed in that language. If, moreover, we consider that Ratzinger’s permanent
residence is Italy, it is possible (although this cannot be assured with the same certainty as the
above) that he was interviewed in Italy, either by the magazine journalist or by an agency, and
this makes Italian become involved as a third language.
What is surprising here is that the grammatical level – supposed to be the most formal –
leads to speculation: which German expression did Ratzinger really use, that was later
translated as superior? Viel höher, viel grösser or simply mehr? Did he really use a qualifying
adjective such as superior, with all the connotations it might imply or did he use a comparative
adjective? Did he use an absolute superlative or a comparative adverb? Whatever the case
might be and because we do not know, we cannot assert anything at all about the paradigmatic
oppositions.
Neither is a syntagmatic contrast based on the greater or lesser degrees of probability viable,
since we do not know whether he actually used the subjunctive or the indicative mood; further-
more, in German either of the two requires the use of an auxiliary in a relative clause.
Besides, if we consider the editing process which journalistic texts – and especially inter-
views – always undergo, we cannot know who is responsible for the omission of the nominal
phrase African continent; it may have been Ratzinger, as Menéndez assures, or the journalist,
in some instance of the textual production.
It is then surprising and interesting that, in situations like these, the interpretative level
associated with the communicative situation in which the text is framed should provide us
with more certainties than the descriptive or the formal one. The limits of the grammatical analy-
sis are shown when the information provided by the conditions of circulation is not taken into
consideration.
Lastly, it is worthwhile to make two additional comments, from both a historical and a
linguistic point of view. On the one hand, beyond modal differences, historical considerations
are sufficient to know that a black man will probably not be Pope, which causes a critical
analysis such as this to lose its political, racial and symbolic dimension upon centring itself
only on the text. On the other hand, it can be argued that, beyond syntagmatic modal opposi-
tions, the text from the Argentinean newspaper La Nación states what it states and the phrase
that is likely to happen has undoubtedly been written and is to be so read. This is true; the
problem arises when the translated grammatical form is referred to the addresser’s intention
(in this example to Ratzinger) and, in that case, I believe it is advisable to make a distinction
between the speaker’s intention and what could be called, following the structuralist tradition,
effects of reading.
 Critical Discourse Studies 193

Conditions of reception and the text’s surroundings

We have previously stated the need to avoid a direct relation between text and context, and to
consider mediation in the light of middle range theories. In this sense, frequently the cognitive
flow of CDA seems to perform media analysis, on the basis of the fact that those who control the
media’s textual production also control their readers’ thoughts. However, the effect of the
communication media upon their audience, i.e. finding out how the contents which the media
put in to circulation affect the belief or the attitude of persons, represents the most slippery
and risky field of the media studies.
Many authors have warned against making linear inferences about the effect of semiotic
products. Voloshinov (1993) referred to the social orientation of the statement and the real
and potential audience, in respect of that problem; Verón (1993) also makes the topic proble-
matic when he refers to the maladjustments to communication processes, and this leads him
to make the distinction between grammars of production and of recognition. Why, then, does
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CDA constantly fall into what Bourdieu calls short-circuit error (Bourdieu, 2000), which
supposes a direct relationship between text and context? For instance, when it supposes that
acceding to and controlling the discourse of the media is equivalent to cognitively acceding
to and controlling readers mind?
I tend to think that believing in this assumption about the effects of the text in such an acri-
tical way has to do, firstly, with a structuralist tradition which strongly consolidated primacy of
the text. Secondly, it has to do with not giving sufficient consideration to the contribution of
communication theory to the analysis of media, either in its functionalist or in its critical ten-
dencies. Theoretical contributions made by both sociology and psychology have been devoted
to studying the effects as from the 1920s onwards, and should be considered in the linguistic
analyses of the media. It is a field of study that, further to being complex, is very dynamic
and in which there has been a transition between an interest in the short-term effects and the
long-term effects; from the direct ones to the accumulative ones; from the question ‘what do
the media do to people?’ to ‘what do people do with the media?’; from theories that appeal to
weak audiences to others that notice the re-semantization and allegation strategies of audiences.
Thirdly, I believe that the (acritical) influence of van Dijk over a large number of CDA prac-
titioners,3 especially in Latin America, leads to neglect of the complexity of the problem.
Throughout his work, he justifies to a great extent the importance of the linguistic analysis of
the media under the following assumption:
Los actores sociales con poder, además de controlar la acción comunicativa, hacen lo propio con el
pensamiento de sus receptores (van Dijk, 1997, p. 21). [Social agents with power, apart from con-
trolling the communicative situation, do the same with their recipients’ thinking.]
La mayor parte de nuestro conocimiento social y polı́tico, ası́ como de nuestras creencias sobre el
mundo, emanan de las decenas de informaciones que leemos o escuchamos a diario en la prensa
(van Dijk, 1997, p. 29). [Most of our social and political knowledge as well as our tenets of the
world emerge from dozens of pieces of information that we read or listen to in the daily press.]
Beyond the control of contents or style, thus, the speakers may also control audience (van Dijk,
1996a).
Newspaper editorials play a role in the formation and change of public opinion (van Dijk, 1996b).

As may be observed, these assertions suppose weak and cognitively vulnerable audiences and
very powerful media in the shaping of beliefs and attitudes.
Fourthly, I believe that the effect issue is appropriate for CDA followers with a good linguis-
tic instruction, but with deficits in the social and communication theories, when making hasty
inferences about the effect of texts, influenced by the idea that language has both a generative
capacity (Echeverrı́a, 2003) and a performative one (Austin, 1975) and, in this sense, it helps
to build social reality. Such considerations, coming from the philosophy of language, from
 194 P. Santander Molina

the constructivist paradigm and referring us to speech acts, are based on speech situations that
are quite formal and prefigured in their contexts (baptism, marriages, promises, dialogue, etc.); it
has to do with typical moments of micro-level emissions, instances far from the present struc-
tured social conditions in which media interaction occurs. Thus, the theory of speech acts and
the resulting performative capacity of certain linguistic emissions are extrapolated to journalistic
texts, attributing to the latter’s messages an untested constitutive nature and a perlocutionary
force upon the social issue.
Fifthly, as Thompson (1998) warns us, for linguists it is obviously tempting to focus on the
symbolic contents and messages of the media, but this incurs in the risk of thinking that studying
the media is equivalent to analysing the signical objects of its language. On one hand, we thus
confuse media texts with the object of study (the media) and, on the other, the textual analysis
defines its object of study erroneously as a homogeneous object, where the concepts of producer
and audience are made into formulations and discursive strategies.
For all the above-stated reasons, it may be affirmed that it is not sufficient that assertions
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about the effect of the media hold textual analysis as the only element of support. Besides, it
is contradictory, since, if CDA defines discourse as a social practice, it cannot, in turn, treat
the notion of discourse exclusively as a semiotic object. Let us recall that the definition of dis-
course as a social practice places the discursive phenomenon outside the textual limits and
makes it participate in dialectically conforming social events and structures. Hence, one thing
is to make a linguistic description of a text and another is to apply that description to the
logical turn of discourse which implies opening the surroundings of such a text. Because
these considerations are overlooked, semiotic hypotheses are often confused with social hypoth-
eses; for instance, when it is sustained that semiotic violence causes social violence, an assertion
made during various forums, but never proved.

The reception of texts: methodological considerations

Finally, we wish to make some observations about the methodological difficulties arising from
the moment we wish to measure the effect of media texts on audiences. A great deal of audience
studies and linguistic analysis of press texts – for instance, those made in the context of political
campaigns – attempt to measure the media’s short-term influence, despite the theoretical
warning that the influence of media on people is essentially cumulative and long-term. In this
sense, three or four weeks is too brief a period to establish and formulate generalizations. On
the contrary, studies that, being aware of the cumulative impact, attempt to measure the long-
term effect, meet with a crucial problem in the research of effects: how to distinguish
between the influence of the media discourse and the influence of other factors, i.e. how to
isolate variables. It might seem that, the greater the observation time-curve, the scarcer the
media’s influence would be; consequently, the only effective way of isolating this additional
contextual influence is by means of experimental methods, thus disregarding the natural contexts
of appropriation and re-semantization of messages on the part of readers and TV viewers.
To the above is added the difficulty of knowing how many recipients of traditional media
perform a critical and oppositional reading of those texts, since it depends significantly on the
access to alternative media, a dynamic which is outside the terms of reference of audience
studies (Curran, 2002), which generally investigate traditional media.

History and texts

Undoubtedly, on the one hand, together with the media’s concentration of property, in Latin
America as well as a large part of the western world, what we may call as a discursive
 Critical Discourse Studies 195

closure has been produced, in the domains of production and circulation. In turn, it seems that at
times and regarding certain subjects, there appear to be more hegemonic interpretations, partly
due to the action of the media. However, if the effect on the audience’s mental models were as
linear as CDA’s cognitive current sustains and depended so much on the media’s content, the
situation in Latin America would be different due to the growing concentration of media prop-
erty in the hands of oligopolies.
However, the observation of the political and social processes that presently are taking place
in our American continent are a good reference to make us ask ourselves whether the media
discourses really have such a strong influence over the audience’s mental models.
Yet stark facts show us the opposite: even though the economic right wing of our country is
the owner of the general reference media, which attempts to discursively build what Gomis
(1997) calls the shared social present, the media’s agenda has not become the social agenda
(going against one of the basic principles of the Agenda Setting Theory) and the public discourse
that circulates hegemonically has not been able to form the desired political settings, nor has it
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demonstrated constitutive or performing capacity at a macro-social level. The triumphs of Hugo

Chávez, Lula, Rafael Correa and Evo Morales in South America are clear examples of the limits
of the effect of media discourse upon the will of the population. In a context of long-standing and
systematic media campaigns against those continental leaders on the part of the majority of the
traditional media, the same, submitted to the popular scrutiny, have repeatedly obtained a solid
majority.
In fact, history teaches and shows us that the traditional media have not been able to read the
social telluric dynamics and did not foresee the emergence of the feminist movement, ecological
movements or those advocating Africa’s or Latin America’s national liberation, Zapata fol-
lowers or advocates of alter-globalization. And, despite the fact that these movements had
little or no access to massive media – or a negative and stigmatized access – they developed
and grew in the heart of social movements and played or play significant roles in changing
power relations.
For this reason, we maintain that it is one thing to have a privileged access to the context of
textual production – as is the case of the elites facing the media discourse – and an entirely
different thing to believe that this strongly unidirectional flow of communication allows us to
make linear inferences about the effect of texts on the audience.

Final reflections
This paper attempted to demonstrate that it is necessary for discourse analyses to be different
from the analyses performed in text linguistics and to show the fascinating complexities invol-
ving the fact of going beyond the text, wherefore we focussed on the intermediate level of the
communicative situation that is part of the context. As was observed, human communication
may undergo a systematic distortion, influenced by intermediate elements such as those
described herein, a situation that becomes even more serious if macrosocial notions, such as
power, class and social structure, are considered.
The focus was placed on the social-cognitive oriented CDA and on specific cases, not in
order to generalize, but to illustrate concrete situations, where it is worthwhile to stop in
order to generate meditation as well as theoretical and methodological discussion.
To all the above we would add two points which could be developed in another instance. If
CDA wishes to become a discipline, it also faces the challenge of distinguishing itself from
sociolinguistics, the aim of which, similarly, is to go beyond the description of the code form
and reach deeper into the relationship between language and society (Lavandera, 1984). What
makes them different? It seems to me that it is where each one places the emphasis. Whereas
 196 P. Santander Molina

sociolinguistics begins with language focusing on the social, CDA intends to go from the social
to the linguistic or, as Kress states, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis sees the linguistics as within the
social’ (Kress, 1990, p. 87). The analysis of linguistic structures cannot, for the same reason, be
the only element in CDA. Although linguistic knowledge is essential to a discourse theory, it is a
mistake, as pointed out by Verón (1993), to believe that discursive problems can be accessed by
projecting the linguistic knowledge onto social contexts or, as Foucault warned Derrida 30 years
ago, ‘to textualize discourse practices and believe that there is nothing outside of the text and that
therefore it is not necessary to seek anywhere else’ (Foucault, 1999).
In that same sense, to understand the need to start from the events and not from the text,
since the events allow to pick up the necessary texts may be, for those who perform discourse
studies in Latin America, an essential element to contribute with our own features to this area of
knowledge. History shows us that social, political and discursive Latin American events are very
distinctive, at times even symptomatic, with regard to the function of world politics. Let us
recall, for instance, the decade of the sixties and the world influence exercised by revolutionary
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movements inspired by Cuban Castro in respect of this and other parts of the world, or the sur-
prising appearance of neo-liberal populisms in the nineties (the so-called neo-populisms), or the
unique continental response of Latin America to the capitalist globalization in the twenty-first
century.
However, in spite of the richness of this rebellious reality of the Latin American context, our
own theorizations in the domain of the discourse analysis are scarce. What we undoubtedly have
achieved is to produce an important and abundant accumulation of empirical information, but
the same has not transcended the descriptive level nor has it opened the door to new theoretical
interpretations, since, while our objects of analysis are located in the south, our conceptual
frames pre-eminently come from the north.
As far as media discourse is concerned, it may be maintained that undoubtedly and just as
CDA considers, they are subject to permanent and significant pressures exercised upon them
by power structures; likewise, it is evident that they partake in the ideological struggle by, for
example, hiding or masking reality, as is the case of the US media coverage of the Twin
Towers or the Iraq invasion. However, the contribution and participation of the media in the
articulation of power relations is still kept quite opaque, and discourse studies can help to
reduce that opacity because the symbolic dimension, the circulation of signs, is an irreducible
media phenomenon. Without signs, there is no media, but the study of signs does not account
for the entire phenomenon.

Notes on contributor
Pedro Santander Molina is a journalist as well as Doctor in Linguistics. His lines of research are focused on
discourse analysis, specifically in respect of the media. He currently works as professor at the School of
Journalism, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaı́so, Chile, where he is in charge of lectures on
Language Theory and Discourse Analysis.

Notes
1. This is particularly valid for traditional media (written press, radio and television), whereas the internet
seems to count on an alteration potential, in this sense, at least as far as the asymmetrical flow is
concerned; blogs are a good example of same.
2. We shall finally propose a fragment of a note on the Pope’s health which appeared in La Nación 1
September 2003, and signed by Elizabetta Pique. The fragment reads:
In the same Bunte article, Cardinal Ratzinger, 76, did not exclude the possibility that the Pope
might come from the African continent, although he said that: I do not believe that this is
 Critical Discourse Studies 197

likely to happen, because the number of white cardinals is quite superior’. And, answering a ques-
tion on the voices indicating him as papabile, he said: ‘Oh God! I wasn’t created for that’.
We have, in principle, two options available:
I do not believe that will happen [. degree of likelihood]
I do not believe that this is likely to happen [, degree of likelihood]
In choosing the less likely option, it is justified from the following claim:
The number of white cardinals is quite superior.
The relational clause is attributive. Superiority is an attribute of number and enhances that
attribution. Besides, the construction quite superior strategically elides the compared element
that is replaced from a cohesive relationship, which is out of Cardinal Ratzinger’s textual
quote and concretely alludes to the African continent (. . .).
The use of the adjective superior in this context also draws our attention, since the paradigmatic
opposition in which it participates is inferior, when greater or fewer could have been other options.
3. This is, of course, not van Dijk’s fault.
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