The important aspects of the proclamations that support the fundamental argument and also connect with the relevant CDA concepts will be identified and subsequently evaluated.
1.1 Critical Discourse Analysis .
To define Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is not a straightforward task. CDA practitioners claim that it is more than a mere theory or a humanities discipline. A more precise definition might be that CDA is a combination of an interdisciplinary theory and a research method. Historically, origins of CDA may reach back as far as the Frankfurt School2 of critical theory is concerned. Nevertheless, more modern formulations of language and discourse appeared in the period of late the 1970s within the discipline of Critical Linguistics (CL). CDA as a theory has to take into consideration other inter-related social sciences and humanities such as sociolinguistics, psychology, as well as history, among others (van Dijk, 2001). Since 1991 there has existed a 'CDA Group' which is a network of scholars that share similar views on CDA. This group comprises auhors such as Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Theo van Leeuwen and Ruth Wodak (Wodak, 2008). .
The core focus of CDA, as a research method, lies in the analysis of language and discourse within a social and political environment. 'It primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk' (van Dijk, 2001, p.352). The central concept of the CDA is power. As stated by Fairclough (1989), CDA is principally concerned with power relations in discourse. He suggests that so called common sense assumptions, which according to him originate in the forms of language, and that are outcomes of language based discourses (i.e. social practices) are ideologies, and that ideologies are closely connected to power (Fairclough, 1989). .
Discourse is a crucial element in CDA that plays an irreplaceable role.