CDA, Critical Events and Critical Event Studies: How to Make Sense of Critical Events in a Society of Radical Change

Abstract

This chapter argues that critical discourse analysis (CDA) provides a fruitful methodology for CES. This is due both to its eclectic, abductive research methodology that engages in a dialogue between, theory(ies), methodology(ies), data and the socio-historical context (Reisigl and Wodak 2009). Secondly, CDA, like other critical approaches, adopts a layered approach to research methodology, focusing from the global to meso and micro aspects of an event, or from social structures, to social institutions and social events, always considering the discursive as being both constituted by and constitutive of social structures. It will illustrate this through a brief description of the discourse-historical dimension in CDA which assumes a distinction between content analysis, the analysis of discursive and argumentative strategies and, finally, the analysis of linguistic features (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001). Those basic assumptions will be illustrated through the description of a theoretical-methodological framework recently employed for the study of the Occupy movement in Spain (Montesano Montessori & Morales Lopez, forthcoming). It shows how a framework was assembled that brought social constructivism, narrative analysis, rhetoric and finally the discourse theoretical concept of ‘rearticulation’ together in order to analyse how the Occupy movement helped Spanish citizens to gain agency and voice.