El Proceso por delito común atribuidos a Congresistas y otros altos funcionarios públicos

Among the existing approaches to CDS, the present study is largely based on the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) elaborated by Wodak and Reisigl (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009; Wodak, 2011). According to its proponents, the DHA as a research strategy has the following general characteristics: it allows for the elaboration of analytical frameworks that are specifically tailored to the research problem (problem- orientation) and the broader context in which the latter is embedded (context- specificity); it is suited to exploring a very wide range of social practices, discourse genres, as well as intertextual and interdiscursive relationships; it is open to theoretical and conceptual contributions from other areas of research in order to better understand the phenomenon under investigation; finally, it encourages researchers to make their findings available both to practitioners in the relevant field and to the general public. In the light of its clear commitment to eclecticism, flexibility and interdisciplinarity, the DHA appears to be very well equipped to inform the present research project. In addition to this, there are also more specific reasons for choosing this particular approach to critical discourse analysis over others. One is that a careful examination of the ways in which post-Yugoslav public intellectuals perform the role of

spokespersons for the nation requires taking into account the broader socio-political and historical background that characterises the post-Yugoslav context (which has been discussed in Chapter 2). In this regard, not only does the DHA allow researchers to incorporate aspects of the broader context in their investigation, but it explicitly focuses, as its name suggests, on the historical and socio-political context as a fundamental dimension of analysis (see below: the four-level concept of context elaborated within the DHA). The other reason is that topics related to nation-building and national identities are at the centre of the DHA research agenda, as attested by the seminal research on the discursive construction of Austrian national identity conducted by Wodak et al. (2009), upon which this study draws extensively.

As stated above, the notions of power, ideology and critique occupy a central place in critical discourse studies. The DHA also considers these notions as constitutive of its own approach, and conceptualises them in specific ways. With regard to the relationship between discourse and power, the DHA assumes that power, which relates to asymmetric relationships between different social actors, is constantly legitimised and de-legitimised in discourse. Therefore, the analyst is expected to approach texts as potential sites of struggle, looking for linguistic traces of ongoing ideological confrontations and fights for dominance and hegemony. Furthermore, the nature of the social occasion in which a certain text is produced and consumed should also be explored, particularly in terms of the constraints and affordances related to specific genres, and how access to the text is regulated across various public spheres. According to the DHA, the establishment and reproduction of unequal power relations through discourse is a key expression of ideology. Ideology is defined as “an (often) one-sided perspective or world view composed of related mental representations, convictions, opinions, attitudes and evaluations, which is shared by members of a specific social group” (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009: p. 88).

The reason why scholars working in the DHA are particularly concerned with how language and other semiotic practices sustain and reproduce certain ideologies across social spheres and institutions is that ideologies function as a means of transforming power relations, for instance, by framing hegemonic identity narratives or through gate-keeping. Thus, the DHA seeks to demystify the ideological character of specific discourses by unveiling how language is used to establish, perpetuate or contest

various forms of dominance. Doing critique, according to the DHA, consists precisely in making explicit the implicit relationship between discourse, power and ideology. More specifically, the very notion of critique has been systematically conceptualised into three interrelated aspects: i) discourse-immanent critique, which aims to detect contradictions and inconsistencies at the textual level; ii) socio-diagnostic critique, which involves drawing on theoretical and contextual knowledge to interpret discursive practices and unveil their potentially manipulative character; iii) prospective critique, which consists of drawing on analytical findings to suggest ways to improve communication in relevant areas of social life.

As an established approach to critical discourse analysis, the DHA has elaborated a set of principles and concepts intended to guide the analytical process. To begin with, discourse is defined as a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices related to a macro-topic (discourse about or on a macro-topic X) and situated within specific fields of social action. Moreover, it is seen as being linked to argumentation in the sense of conferring validity on certain truth or normative claims upheld by various social actors with different perspectives. Since discourses never occur in isolation, but are in fact dynamic and hybrid entities open to constant reinterpretation and recontextualisation, the DHA also embraces intertextuality and interdiscursivity (discussed above) as key analytical principles. Furthermore, the notion that texts and discourses are always linked to other texts and discourses, both in the past and in the present, requires treating context as a specific analytical category. According to the DHA, context includes four different levels: i) the immediate co-text and co- discourse; ii) the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship existing between utterances, texts, genres and discourses; iii) the extralinguistic social variables and institutional frames; iv) the broader socio-political and historical context. Such a comprehensive notion of context, which stresses the interconnectedness of discursive practices and extra-linguistic social structures, enables the DHA to explore all four levels in a recursive manner on the basis of the principle of triangulation (see Cicourel, 1969), which implies taking into account a whole range of empirical observations, theories, methods, as well as background information, in order to gain a better understanding of the discursive events at hand and also as a bias-reduction strategy.

As stated above, the DHA is inherently interdisciplinary, due to its propensity to integrate theoretical contributions from other disciplines in order to produce a synthesis of conceptual tools that is tailored to the specific problems under investigation. Indeed, interdisciplinarity, theoretical openness and conceptual pragmatism are key characteristics of critical discourse studies in general (Weiss & Wodak, 2003), to the point that it is practically impossible to identify a uniform theoretical foundation being used consistently within critical discourse analysis (Meyer, 2001). Such eclecticism and lack of systematicity may appear to be a weakness, but it has been argued that it is precisely to this plurality of theory and methodology that critical discourse studies owes its dynamic and productive character (Weiss & Wodak, 2003). Proponents of the DHA have developed a rather flexible interface with social theory, distinguishing between ‘grand theories’, which can serve as a foundation, and ‘middle-range theories’, which may provide conceptual tools that are better suited to analyse specific discursive events (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). Furthermore, the intrinsically abductive character of research, i.e. the fact that empirical findings necessarily feed back into theory as the research proceeds, has been explicitly acknowledged.