Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore the complexities of domain-specific knowledge dissemination

This study focuses on the suitability of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for the investigation of various aspects of knowledge dissem-ination discourse in domain specific areas of communication. It is first argued that on account of its ability to lay bare ideological slant in discourse, CDA is especially useful in the analysis of the knowledge dissemination process as the transformation of special-ised knowledge into ‘lay’ knowledge and its re-contextualisation (Calsamiglia 2003; Calsamiglia, van Dijk 2004; Garzone 2006) inev-itably leave scope for manipulation, bias, or alterations. Secondly, it is shown that because of its interest in the relationship between evo-lutions in discourse and social change, CDA can also be useful to describe how discourse evolves in time reflecting developments in specialised knowledge and at the same time it plays a role in trigger-ing and/or reinforcing associated social changes (Fairclough 1992: 4). It is concluded that the use of CDA in the analysis of knowledge dissemination discourse contributes to highlighting the social inter-face (van Dijk 2003: 85) between knowledge, discourse and the process of dissemination in its social dimension, and does so using linguistic analysis to lay bare any ideological bias or slant and to un-derstand the impact of the elements identified on social representa-tions and social cognition.