Ruth Wodak, 2006

Mediation between discourse and society: assessing cognitive approaches in CDA
Ruth Wodak, Discourse Studies, 2006, Vol 8(1):179-190

Ruth Wodak is one of the few CDA scholars whose work is based on huge data and empirical material. That is, she is the one who has actually been DOING a lot of CDA rather than discussing the theoretical bases of it. Obviously this is neither to say that she has not been dealing with theoretical front nor it means that all the others have done is only theory.

On the same note, in my own experience, after 1996 when I was introduced to CDA and when I was badly in need of some sample analyses I realized that I couldn’t find a lot and that is another reason I find her work interesting and practical. Wodak's analysis and style seem to be more inductive, bottom - top kind of analysis. While she incorporates a lot of theories and models, she also comes to a lot of new and novel understandings by actually doing the research. I find that not only interesting, but also academically healthy and necessary in a field like CDA.

I her newest article published in ‘Discourse Studies’ she talks about how cognitive models are important in understanding and accounting for social phenomenon in discourses of Racism, Anti Semitism, Xenophobia and the like.

She asserts that almost all the scholars are convinced that mental models exist even though nobody can actually look into the 'black box' (180). And in response to Fairclough and Chouliaraki's 1999 criticism she points out that the situation is the same for cognitive models concepts and ideology concepts. However, this doesn’t solve the problem and make it two problems for a person like me.

Later on, she asserts that there is a need to develop a model of analysis which can combine Cognitive, Linguistic, and sociological categories together. This can probably account for the gab between discourse and society. (181)

At the same time she argues that the question for us as 'researchers' should be ‘what conceptual tools are relevant for a particular research question’ rather than 'Do we need a grand theory'. This is exactly what happened to me when I was doing my research on Conservative and reformist ideology in Iranian's press. I was very insecure as I wasn’t sure if I have covered all that there is and couldn’t see a common theory to put all the approaches together. I finally came to the idea that I had to pick what is relevant to my particular study.

She goes on and supports the validity and necessity of cognitive models using a lot of empirical data and says:

‘These empirical results strongly suggests the assumption of a cognitive link between language/discourse and society’ (183)

She also, like Van Dijk asserts that it is naïve to think that there is a one to one link between social variables and linguistic realization.

Towards the end of the article there is an interesting point which is reminds of an issue that I have been thinking about. She says that the nature of mental models is in a way that when they are formed it is very difficult to change them and that is why by raising the critical awareness about a wrong or prejudiced use of language or discourse or even metaphor we can not necessarily change the mental model.

To me it is a very salient point that by enforcing a certain unprejudiced discourse ( if such a thing ever exists) we are not taking care of the mental model which is causing that certain discourse rather we are just forcing it to a more complicated and sophisticated levels. It is like a hide and seek game that we as Critical researcher play with those ideologies or mental models.

Wodak says in this regard:

‘These examples also prove, on one hand , that superficial changes of language might not be effective; on the other that deeply embedded cognitive concepts have to be assumed to explain why prejudices have such long, even ‘eternal’ lives (Adono 1973/1950) (page 186)

In a research group session once I said that it seems that humans have not learned enough about how and why something like Holocaust happened and that it is not addressed well in the society. What I meant was that, we are just treating that seriously prejudiced ideology as a something wrong swing which took place at a certain time and place while to me we should look into how this process started and how it worked not just as an isolated incidence but rather as something which can happen today too. I like the Bauman’s account of ‘Holocaust and Modernity’ in this regard.

What we see in a society, as far as I can tell is a whole project of ‘nicification’ of the society in a sense that we don’t refer to things which are controversial and resort to staying polite and nice and that is it. This is also apparent in the use of language (probably because we have raised the critical awareness by criticising the wrong usages) in a sense that wrong ideologies are becoming more and more embedded into the language in an increasingly complicated rate and manners and we as CDA analysts look for the traces with more and more complicated techniques but the ‘evil’ stays alive.

I have thought about this not only in the sense of discourse analysis but in the way a modern society is run. If you take England for example we see that everything is done in smooth soft and polite manner but it doesn’t mean that all these niceties are genuine and real rather it might feel that it is a way of life only.

When I was in South India more than several times I encountered European tourists who felt very liberated in the crowdedness of India. There was no need to necessarily say nice where it was not expected or way of life. I noticed interesting changes in the mode of encountering of a person who may not be able to act the same in his most probably modern country. And they loved the feeling there.

I don’t want to take this any further now partly because it is just an observation but at this point I could not help remembering this observation of mine.

I am open to any accusation that my observation has been skewed as a single subjective observant but it is, nevertheless, what my mental model/ subjective participant construct told me to see!!!