Habermas and CDA, theoretical concepts

I have recently come to notice that CDA can draw a lot its theoretical concepts on Habermas’s ideas especially the concepts of ‘ideal speech situation’, and ‘deliberate democracy’.

Habermas categorizes four major social formations (societies); Primitive, Traditional, Capitalist (modern) and Post capitalist (post/late modern) society with some more stages being characterized between these four major phases. Each one of these social formations has its own definition and characteristics.

The concern of Habermas is mainly characteristics of modern societies, the future of modernity, and how modernity can protect itself from potential pitfalls. The most determining characteristic of modern mode of life is that it basically functions on ‘collective consensus’, be it genuine or misguided. This is why it can be argued that ‘semiosis’ is the core salient feature of such a society. Hence, modes, conditions, orientations, form, and techniques of application of the meaning formation apparatus-communication- are crucial factors in shaping social knowledge in such a society.

Language or discourse is one of the most-if not the most- influential mediums of such semiosis and analysis of it, is a natural analytical tool in understanding how this important medium is ab/used in creating knowledge. Discourse Analysis can permeate through all levels of social life; from problems of a small town or a classroom to major international political decisions. To put it simply it can work in any action where implicit or explicit, real or pseudo consensus is required that is, any communicative action. A modern society is characteristically very discursive. Other forms of societies rely on discourse and consensus reaching with varying degrees. Where for example in primitive societies the organizational principle of the society is ‘kinship’ system, in traditional ones it is ‘class’ domination and apparatus of bureaucratic apparatus with higher degree of consensus requirement. And as one moves on to modern, liberal and post-modern societies the requirement of ‘consensus’ seems to increase with allocation more resources for pluralistic participation of people in the process of decision making. Yet, in all these forms of societies the questions of power and domination exist in one form or another. From the naked power enforcement in primitive societies to more sophisticated smooth power enforcement of modern societies one can see ‘power’. Thus, it is natural for the analytical tools of critical forces to vary according to the sources and mechanisms of power formation in different societies. Critical sources of power in modern societies are of semiotic nature and discourse is among the most important ingredient of this semiosis of communication.


Drawing on Habermas’s concept of ideal speech situation, deliberate democracy and distinguishing strategic from communicative action, the role Critical Discourse Analysis in modern societies can briefly be considered:

(A) As an attempt through which more approximation towards ideal speech situation can be established by raising awareness and giving more discoursal weight to marginalized sections of the society.

(B) As an attempt to throw light on the pivotal role of discourse in society and showing how-at least- some part of the discursively mediated ‘truth’ in the society
might be misguided or derived from strategic action (discourse) rather that communicative one. Hence, it marginalizes some voices.

(C) As an attempt in explaining the procedural/ historical mechanisms of strategic discourse in creating seemingly consensual social ‘knowledge’/ ‘truth’. Describing and explicating how a social cognition (discourse) is not rooted in endeavours of a communicative rational practice with the aim of trying to reach an all encompassing social consensus. Such knowledge is not ‘valid’ in practice as it creates explicit and implicit discrimination and has been reached by excluding some elements of the involved parties. Thus, the ‘truth’ that such discourse may be projecting is at the cost of oppressing or marginalizing certain groups. CDA can work as a tool to deconstruct such manipulative consensus reaching practices and show how certain groups have been pushed to the margin by not being able to contribute their due weight in discourse, and how this is working away from what Habermas calls ‘ideal speech situation/ communicative action’.

CDA seems to be a natural developmental necessity of modern discursive societies in which a pivotal role is presupposed for semiotics of communication in an increasingly sophisticated discursive nature of democratic life style.

CDA can function as the ‘open eye’ of such a society. Communication in a broader sense and language in a more specific sense are not only a reflection of the society but they are like a ‘melting pot’ in which ‘social cognition’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ of real world is mediated, represented, manipulated, communicated and of course created. The area of language, along with other non linguistic symbolic means of communication is both the most salient characteristic of modern life and an area through/by which an ideal, egalitarian democracy can go astray and start falling into the old vicious pitfalls of pre-democratic systems although in a much more sophisticated modern mechanism.

This is where CDA can act like a gauge in its ongoing reflexivity on social phenomenon and try to ‘cry out’ potential pitfalls by showing a bigger picture of the current events. Critical studies can equip the automatic discursive society with an apparatus to protect the ethical and egalitarian ideals of society from smooth mass production of ideologies in an essentially market oriented culture in which there is a potentiality to sell ‘anything’ e.g. an evil practice to a public who is increasingly drowsy with discourse, media and entertainment.

It seems to me that Habermas correctly concentrates on the fact that ‘communication’ as being a key factor which plays a determining role in modern life much more than it has ever been. He shows signs of concern on how modern form of life will handle or be handled (by) this notion. My understanding of why ‘communication’ –which has discourse as one of its main elements- has a crucial role is influenced by Van Dijk’s recent articles on how big a part of most people’s ‘knowledge’ of life world is derived from discourse or a form of communication rather than personal experience. Personal or interpersonal acquisition of knowledge which is the most reliable forms of understanding comprises very low percentage of general population’s cognitions about issues. Even reliability of such cognition is under a condition that people are not already under the influence of some mass produced definition and do not carry a ‘do-it-yourself’ package of mental model already. Take for example the case of understanding of ‘immigrants’ about which almost all have a more or less detailed ‘knowledge’ as who these people are, what they look like, what they do, how they live, where they come from, why they come, and even what kind of ideologies they have while most of these people may have never come to have a concrete contact with this group. Thus, a big part of everyday ‘knowledge’ of this type is produced by media and discourse.

The attempt of Habermas to argue for the necessity of an ideal communicative context, in which all voices of the society are given a chance to put forward their arguments, is a valuable idealism with the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus.

He argues that the only way to distinguish, as a matter of principle, between genuine and false consensus is to presuppose the possibility-as idealistic as it sounds- of an unconstrained communicative action to which all speakers have equal access and in which only the force of the better argument prevails. This could be, according to Habermas, how modernity can be completed.

This could be considered an obvious idealism. Yet, there is no doubt that different countries and cultures have developed different degrees of such a community in late modern societies with erecting all different forms of civil society apparatus e.g. free press, NGOs and all. Despite all that, the concept still remains an idealistic and optimistic one.

Regardless of whether the concept of ideal speech community is a plausible one, I am drawn to the very notion of such emphasis and concern about the role of discourse and that the conditions of semiosis of communication needs to be investigated and scrutinized in modern world.

Now, having this assumption in mind that communication –discourse- has a pivotal role in creating different ‘understandings about the world’ and ‘knowledge’ about issues out there which can range from more individualistic modes of acquiring mental models to more collective cognitions of a group, a community, a nation or a culture- then we are bound to agree that most of our ‘knowledge’ about phenomena are discursive in essence, that it has come to us through one form of semiotics of communication. (Van Dijk 2005)

On the same note, if this notion of ‘knowledge’ could be extended to the notion of ‘truth’ then modern life will be a life which is basically reliant on discourse in arriving at ‘what there is’ and ‘what are the conditions of ‘what there is’. To make this concept of truth more distinguished from the classic ones to avoid the epistemological debates of what ‘truth’ is and what it means, we can epistemologically differentiate this notion from the traditional conceptualization of ‘truth’ in philosophy and call it ‘pragmatic truth’. This understanding of ‘truth’ is the basis of people’s ontological outlook of domestic or international social or political issues, regardless of whether this ‘truth’ is correct or wrong. What is more important is that ‘actions’ and decisions of different calibre (war, privatisation) are taking place based on this understanding of the world around by people as it is transformed to political power through voting and other forms of consensus. That is why it is called ‘pragmatic truth’ the ‘truth’ which is behind the action whether it is true ‘truth’ or not.
Habermas in his discussion of discourse ethics asserts that (a) the general cognition models of a society functions as ‘truth’ and (b) that this ‘truth’ is created through discourse:

‘Normative validity claims have a cognitive meaning and can be treated like truth claims and … the grounding of the norms and prescriptions demands the carrying-through of an actual dialogue’

Thus, in a late modern society or ‘discursive society’ ‘truth’ as in the mind of an average member of the society is essentially a product of discourse. This ‘truth’ can be considered as a general social cognition about a specific issue e.g. ‘what is terrorism’, ‘what kind of a country is Iraq’ or ‘why should people pay for university education?’

Habermas’s approach about the universalities of ethics is an ambivalent and implicitly paradoxical one. His notion of ideal speech situation seems to be advocating the idea that if such a situation is achieved, humans could have an apparatus of genuine truth making based of which decisions could be made. This seems to be giving an enormous amount of validity to what a community may come to consider as truth. Yet, a wholesome community might come to a hideous understanding of life world in a way that every one of member of the given society identifies and endorses a given understanding which in turn might not be ‘right’ after all. For example if we could say that all German nation were sharing the ideology of Nazism then subsequent atrocities against Jews and Holocaust should be justified?

It could sensibly be argued that Habermas’s notion of Ideal Speech Situation entails that in such a case Jewish people should have give an equal voice as a part of the society and by that process there could never be a real consensus on ‘kill them all’ solution. As convincing as this argument stands, heavy reliant on Ideal Speech Community for taking automatic care of deviances of humans still seems to be scary as (a) Ideal Speech Situation is a far-fetched idealism and (b) do we really need such a big atrocity like Holocaust to happen again to remember ‘Holocaust’? Does discrimination only means ‘killing’ some disempowered people?

What’s more, a consensus reached in an ideal speech situation might still not produce the ‘right’ solution as a given strong discourse may even penetrate the mentality of oppressed groups as they may conceive their marginalized situation as being a natural and normal state of affairs e.g. mentality if inferiority among slaves or colonized people.

In the part titled the task of a critical theory of society he says:

‘I introduced the system concept of society by way of a methodological objectification of the life world and justified the shift in perspective connected with this objectification- a shift form from the perspective of a participant to that of an observant- in action-theoretic terms. Like the theory of value, this justification has the form of a conceptual explication. It is supposed to explain what it means for the symbolic reproduction of the life-world when communicative action is replaced by media steered interaction, when language, in its function of coordinating action, is replaced by media such as money and power’.

Following is originally Habermas’s diagram for Communicative vs. Strategic action which is here adapted and modified for one specific form of social action; ‘discourse’.

Most of Habermas characterisation of different types of social actions can be adapted to account for different types of discourse which can then be used as analytical concepts in Critical Discourse Analysis: