Norman Fairclough and Critical Discourse Analysis: Armaments for a Materialist Linguistics

The main purpose of this article is to highlight some distinctive epistemological, methodological and axiological guidelines of British linguist Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach. The article seeks to contribute to the development of a materialistic linguistics project and for that it relieves the onto-epistemological foundations of this version of CDA, its normative - explanatory criticism of the relations between language and society, and the weapons it offers for the semiotic struggle in contemporary capitalism. In addition, a brief analytical exercise is presented in order to highlight the strategic and tactical value of the contributions of Norman Fairclough to confront the semiotic dimensions of the neoliberal ideology and, thus, orient the analytical work towards the transformation of degradation conditions of human life that neoliberalism has promoted as globalization administration project. Finally, some weapons, as means available for attack and defense, are discussed in order to develop a materialistic linguistics project that challenge the current order and that generate new and better conditions for human life in contemporary societies.