Critical discourse analysis and cognitive science: new perspectives on immigration discourse

The book contributes to critical discourse studies and critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) in two ways. Firstly, it is concerned with the aspect of ‘linguistic theory’, which has been postulated from the beginnings of CDA as a necessary theorisation, together with a social theory, for the critical analysis of discourse. Secondly and more specifically, the book contributes to what we might call ‘cognitive turn’ in CDA, advocating and presenting a cognitive linguistic theory. Advocated early on by Paul Chilton and Teun van Dijk, taking cognitive processes into account has recently become a theoretical trend in CDA, with the employment of Cognitive Metaphor Theory. The book is a welcome step forward in looking also at other aspects of cognition as it is manifested in discourse, affecting both discourse production and discourse processing.