Ruth Wodak & Paul Chilton (eds.), A new agenda in
(critical) discourse analysis: Theory, methodology and
interdisciplinarity. Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society, and
Culture, 13. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xi, 322. Hb $138.00.
The title of this book implicitly raises a number of important
questions about the relationships among discourse analysis (DA), critical
discourse analysis (CDA), and interdisciplinarity: Is CDA one approach to
analyzing text and talk, or is it (by implication of the ambiguous
parenthetical reference in the book's title) somehow merging with (an
increasingly more critical) DA? To what extent does or should (C)DA
embrace interdisciplinary approaches to treating language in use? Finally
(and perhaps most compelling of all), what is this new agenda, what is
wrong with the old agenda, and why is a new agenda needed at this time?
Overall, the book does a fair to good job of addressing these
questions.