Discourse, power and access

Abstract

One of the crucial tasks of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is to account for the relationships between discourse and social power. More specifically, such an analysis should describe and explain how power abuse is enacted, reproduced or legitimised by the text and talk of dominant groups or institutions. Within the framework of such an account of discursively mediated dominance and inequality this chapter focuses on an important dimension of such dominance, that is, patterns of access to discourse.