Over the past two decades, critical discourse analysis has emerged as a major new multidisciplinary approach to the study of texts and contexts in the public sphere.Developed in Europe, CDA has lately become increasingly popular in North America, where it is proving especially congenial to new directions in rhetoric and composition.This essay surveys much of this recent literature, noting how rhet/comp has incorporated CDA methodology in a variety of studies of inequality, ethics, higher education,critical pedagogy, news media, and institutional practices. CDA uses rigorous, empirical methods that are sensitive to both context and theory, making it ideal for the demandsof a range of projects being developed in our field.

This article analyzes the effects of a transparency view of language that is implicit in some technical discourses. Using a legal concept, the excited utterance exception to hearsay, as an exemplary discourse, I show that this view of language is predicated on social norms rather than empirical standards. Indeed, I argue, the measurement of accuracy using an empirical standard creates a situation in which the speaker's rhetorical concerns and the context can be ignored.