DISCOURSE IN THE SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM OF CRITICAL LINGUISTICS
The article investigates the concept of "discourse" through critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis. The main representatives of the approach are T. A. van Dijk, R. Wodak, R. Fowler, N. Fairclough. Within this framework, discourse is considered as a form of social interaction where power, exercising its dominance in a society, forms negative images of "others" as representatives of other races, ethnic groups and cultures. The attitudes underlying the critical discourse analysis, namely, understanding discourse as a communicative resource that contributes to the formation and reproduction of the unequal distribution of power between social groups, recognition of the variability of social norms and regulations, consideration of the discourse of power structures and media discourse as the main sources of power asymmetry determine the relevance of its application as a discourse research methodology. Critical discourse analysis is the approach to studying communication in a socio-cultural context, as it establishes connections between signs, meanings and social and historical conditions that define the semiotic structure of discourse, explicates the determinism of textual structures in social, cognitive, political, historical and cultural contexts. It explains the study of a discourse as a social phenomenon based on the conceptual and methodological basis of the critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis reveals and explains the political and ideological basis of discourse - the mechanisms of formation, manifestation and reproduction through the discourse of power relations in society; determines the role of discourse in the reproduction of social, gender, racial or ethnic inequality, relations of implicit subordination; explains the meaning of interdiscourse, intertextual relations in the construction of a new discourse and the sociocultural reality that is being structured by it; critically substantiates the knowledge embodied in the discourse in their relationships with power and ideological structures; studies various discursive patterns as forms of social and political interaction. The thematic review of critical studies devoted to the analysis of the concept of "discourse" demonstrates an increased interest to this issue in the works of modern linguists.