Preface : Nicolina Montesano Montessori, Hans Schuman, Rob de Lange. Critical Discourse Analysis. The power and strength of language and text
Abstract
Thought, communication and language are social, cultural, political, economical, ... They cannot be excluded from our social worlds, and need to be studies as such.
Often we find authors to provide lip service to the discursive component of our societal reality, to then aim the gaze at the more 'real' (read material) aspects of this reality. What we need is a series of radical discursive approaches, positioned as an integral part of the societal reality, that take the idea that the discursive matters as starting point and think it through consistently.
In addition, the underestimation of the discursive implies ignoring one of the most significant locations of power. Ideas as location of power, hegemonic projects that try to fixate and encapsulate these ideas, illusions of consensus and post-political projects that sustain these illusions, but also the always-present resistance and the mutability and contingency of discourse are substantial objects of analysis that disappear from the radar screen if the discursive doesn't receive enough attention.
That is why the critical study of discourse is that important; it is an instrument to, as Said expressed it so eloquently, speak truth to power; a task that intellectuals need to cherish.