WHAT THE CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS CANNOT CRITISIZE?

Abstract

This study proceeds from the assumption that the discourse analysis is a diffuse approach, one that has almost as many manifestation variants as there are researchers using it. The introductory part is focused on the traditional epistemology, a linguistic and inter-disciplinary shift in humanistic and social theories that led to the analysis of discourse. Following a reference to this approach’s dominant authors, practices and shortcomings, the central part of the study is focused on research practices of a linguist and a classical philologist Dubravko Škiljan (1949-2007), who was involved in deconstruction and unriddling of (un)hidden ideological meanings in public and daily communication, i.e., the analysis of discourse, much before this term or approach became a popular recourse for theoreticians of communication, sociologists and philosophers. A Škiljan’s view of the language as a result of rules originating in social power, along with the analytical procedures he uses to illustrate the strategies of social power’s establishment and maintenance, represent an unresearched archaeology of the discourse analysis, one that can be at the same time a corrective and a useful tool in the self-analysis of this approach.