I should be - I’m just finishing off a rather long essay on it. But what about you guys, especially in the US?
Does critical discourse analysis mean anything to you? If so, who are the figures that you associate with the endeavour?
I know only very little about it-- I’ve run into Teun van Dijk in my research (art history) but wasn’t sure what to make of it-- I’ve only dabbled a bit in heavy critical theory and postcolonial theory and feminism and such and may have run into it but wasn’t aware of it. Honestly I’m not sure how it differs from critical theory-- seems a more linguistic take on things than Foucault or Barthes, maybe? If I just ran into the phrase alone I’d think “Foucault?” Perhaps it’s an updated/ current version? Feel free to educate me, however.
I think a pretty good summary. Van Dijk, who founded the journal Discourse and Society, paddles his own canoe rather. Very quirky chap.
But this is actually a survey, to ascertain how much of a foothold CDA (any CDA) has gained in the US and other places.
If you’re referring to the “subfield” (for lack of a better word) of linguistic analysis, then I have some experience with it. I took a graduate seminar on it in college and the University of California, Santa Barbara has a pretty active program. Names that I remember are Labov, Tannen, Halliday, Lakoff (Robin, not George), among others. Is this what you mean?
Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics is one of the main influences on CDA (UK/Australian varieties especially), while Labov, Tannen and Lakoff, R. are generally considered to be more involved in sociolinguistics. Nonetheless, given that CDA is as close to sociolinguistics as any other sub-discipline within linguistics, it’s exactly what I’m looking for.
To give a bit more background, in my thesis I have a small section on CDA in different countries. Its growth in the US is of especial interest to me, since it is commonly perceived (e.g. Deborah Cameron in a 2001 book) that CDA hasn’t taken off in the US, but there is some evidence to suggest it might be.
You appear to be providing some confirmation for that. Does J.P. Gee mean anything to you, or others?
No, sorry, J.P. Gee doesn’t ring a bell…although it has been six years since I took that class and I’m not doing linguistics anymore. As far as others, I would have to dig out my old reader and see who we covered.
I’m not familiar with other programs (here in the U.S.) that specialize in discourse analysis, other than UCSB. That said, my graduate school was very, very formal and we tended to look down on all those functional people 
.
Heh, that’s curious because what little of it I’ve run into was also at UCSB. Maybe UCB and UCSB should be a little geographic realm of their own?
Did you study at Berkeley?
Nah, but everyone that teaches at UCSB seems to have. It’s like Berkeley goes to the beach, 1st generation.