Jürgen Habermas’ LanguagePhilosophy and the Critical Study of Language

Abstract

Why is critical discourse analysis (CDA) critical? CDA takes the position of those being excluded or suffering and, thereby, reminds the audience of modernity’s unredeemed promises.  However, it seems as if critical discourse analysts have understood critique mainly against the background of their progressive consensus.  That is: critical standards have been based on a conventionalist understanding of what is right or wrong.  But this provides neither a theoretical- nor a grounded notion of critique which has led to accusations of CDA being unprincipled.  In this paper, I argue that especially Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach (DHA), which draws on the Frankfurt School, could avoid this by referring in even more detailed ways to Jürgen Habermas’ language-philosophy.  For this, the paper introduces and relates his categories to those of the DHA in order to explicitly outline an emancipatory and grounded concept of critique.