CFP: Theme Session on Meaning Construction in Critical Discourse Analysis

[Christopher Hart]

Dear all,

This call for papers is for a theme session at CADAAD'08. For full 
conference details visit http://cadaad.org/cadaad08

Chair: Christopher Hart (University of Hertfordshire) and Dominik Lukeš 
(University of East Anglia)

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) identifies three analytic stages: 
description, interpretation and explanation. Halliday's systemic 
functional linguistics has become synonymous with description-stage 
analysis of representation in text. And at the explanation stage, CDA is 
associated with Marxism and Critical Theory. Very little work, however, 
has been carried out at the interpretation stage, which is concerned 
with discourse processing. Discourse processing, of course, involves 
meaning construction as understood in cognitive linguistics or cognitive 
pragmatics. Cognitive linguistics is a broad paradigm subsuming a number 
of distinct theories and thus offering a range of potential analytical 
tools to CDA. But whilst CDA has made use of conceptual metaphor theory, 
it has not recognised cognitive linguistic approaches to discourse and 
the input they provide at the interpretation-stage. Similarly, cognitive 
approaches to pragmatics have not been recognised in CDA.

This methodologically-oriented session then, invites papers addressing 
meaning construction in political text and discourse from the 
perspectives of cognitive linguistics and cognitive pragmatics. As such, 
papers applying conceptual blending theory, construction grammar, 
discourse space theory, frame negotiation, mental space theory or 
relevance theory, for example, are particularly welcome.

Please send abstracts of no longer than 400 words to 
c.j.hart at herts.ac.uk <mailto:c.j.hart at herts.ac.uk> by *30 November 
2007*. Authors should include their name, affiliation and email address. 
Successful authors will be notified via email by *15 February 2008*.

Kind regards,
Christopher Hart


-- 
Christopher Hart
Lecturer in English Language and Communication
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire

www.hartcda.org.uk