Expert Biography

Teun Adrianus van Dijk (born May 7, 1943 in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands), is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

With Walter Kintsch he contributed to the development of the psychology of text processing. Since the 1980s his work in CDA focused especially on the study of the discursive reproduction of racism by what he calls the 'symbolic elites' (politicians, journalists, scholars, writers), the study of news in the press, and on the theories of ideology, context and knowledge.

He founded six international journals: Poetics, Text (now called Text & Talk), Discourse & Society Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communicationand the internet journal in Spanish Discurso & Sociedad, of which he still edits the last four.

Teun A. van Dijk was a professor of discourse studies at the University of Amsterdam from 1968 until 2004, and since 1999 he has taught at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. He has widely lectured internationally, especially in Latin America.

Selected bibliographyEdit

• Some aspects of text grammars. A Study in theoretical poetics and linguistics. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.
• Text and context. Explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. London: Longman, 1977.
• Macrostructures. An interdisciplinary study of global structures in discourse, interaction, and cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Studies in the pragmatics of discourse. The Hague/Berlin: Mouton, 1981.
• Prejudice in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1984.
• Communicating Racism. Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987.
• News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1988.
• News Analysis. Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1988.
• Racism and the Press. London: Routledge, 1991.
• Elite discourse and racism. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1993.
• Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage, 1998.
• Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2005.
• Discourse and Context. A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Society and Discourse. How social contexts control text and talk.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Discourse and Power. Contributions to Critical Discourse Studies.Houndsmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

• Discourse and Knowledge. A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press
• Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. with Walter Kintsch. New York: Academic Press, 1983.

Edited books

• Pragmatics of language and literature. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1976.
• Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 4 vols. London: Academic Press, 1985.
• Discourse and communication. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1985.
• Discourse Studies. A multidisciplinary introduction. 2 vols. London: Sage, 1997. Second, one-volume edition, 2011.
• Discourse Studies. 5 vols. Sage Benchmark Series. New Delhi: Sage, 2007.
• Discourse and Discrimination. With Geneva Smitherman-Donaldson. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1988.
• Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European Countries. With Ruth Wodak. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag, 2000.
• Communicating Ideologies. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Discourse and Social Practice. With Martin Pütz and JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2004.
• Racism and Discourse in Latin America. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2009.

Critical Discourse Analysis & Political Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis

Since the late 1980s, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has become a well-established field in the social sciences. However, in contrast with some branches of linguistics, CDA is not a discrete academic discipline in the traditional sense, with a fixed set of research methods. The manifold roots of CDA lie in a myriad of disciplines including rhetoric, anthropology, philosophy and cognitive science, to name a few. This four-volume set brings together seminal articles on the subject from varied sources, creating an invaluable roadmap for scholars seeking to consolidate their knowledge of CDA, and of its continued development. Sculpted and edited by a leading voice in the field, this work covers the interdisciplinary roots, the most important approaches and methodologies of CDA, as well as applications in other disciplines in an updated and comprehensive way.

Political Discourse Analysis

We have seen that political discourse analysis first of all should be able to define its proper object of study: What exactly is 'political discourse'? The easiest, and not altogether misguided, answer is that political discourse is identified by its actors or authors, viz., politicians. Indeed, the vast bulk of studies of political discourse is about the text and talk of professional politicians or political institutions, such as presidenta and prime ministers and other members of government, parliament or political parties, both at the local, national and
international levels.

Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture

contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction — disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies.