The Ideology of Power in NATO Military Discourse

CDA developed in the last years of the 1980s as a programmatic evolution of research in European discourse studies fronted by linguists such as Teun A. Van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Norman Fairclough, etc. Experts in the field of CDA have been trying to decipher and infer the meaning of a text in relation to the context (Van Dijk 2009; Van Leeuwen 2009; Widdowson 2004). Language is examined and defined as a social process in direct relation to the context, whose further interpretation helps determine the meaning of a statement for both the producer and the receiver. Furthermore, discourse analysts have enthusiastically explored and pinpointed the fundamental objective of meaning, that of entailing an ideological message based on sociopolitical, historical, and religious conventions (Blommaert and Verschueren 1998; Chilton 2004; Cameron 2001; Wodak 1989). CDA practitioners have actively trailed discursive practices of ideological impositions, power dominance, and discrimination, as transmitted through text and talk (Fairclough 2001; Van Dijk 2003b; Reisigl and Wodak 2005). Narrative analysis, conversation analysis, stylistics, rhetoric, and media analysis are just some of the methods put forward by experts in the field of CDA. The underlying approach may be used to analyze the discourse of speeches delivered by well-known politicians, parliamentarians, and national leaders.

According to the orientation, discipline, or paradigm involved, the development of CDA as a method of linguistic analysis can be mapped out as originating in the theories of the Enlightenment philosophers, of Marx or of the affiliates of the Frankfurt school (Benjamin, Adorno). After the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas can be nominated as a primary representative (Jay 1973; Slater 1977; Geuss 1981), while Stuart Hall and other members of the CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) are to be mentioned as followers of Antonio Gramsci’s Marxist philosophies on sociology and linguistics in France and in the UK. Other European and American influences in the 1970s and 1980s can be attributed to the works of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Michel Pêcheux, among others.

CDA is not considered to be a precise direction of study, and consequently lacks a unitary theoretical framework. Against the background offered by the requirements above, CDA can split into diverse theoretical and analytical ramifications. Some methods focus on the context that generates the discourse and are consequently less linguistically linked. Others take into view the historical circumstances from which ideologies arise. There are methods that pay equal attention to language and social theory. Regardless of the chosen direction of analysis, “one of the major challenges of CDA is to make explicit the relations between discourse and knowledge” (Van Dijk 2003b:85). For the purpose of the current investigation, the starting point has been the generally accepted assumption that discourse and knowledge are both multifarious phenomena, extensively investigated in a myriad of disciplines, mainly humanities and social sciences. My approach is based on a theory of their relationship against the backdrop of intertwined linguistic, psychological, sociological, and philosophical aspects.