Discourse and Social Change

Abstract Since the discursive turn of social science in the 1960s, language studies have extended beyond linguistic analysis to reveal power dynamics, manipulation, exploitation, and discrimination inherent in social discourse phenomena, as discourse is understood as a multimodal social practice intertwined with elements of social structure. The primary goal of critical studies on discourse and social change is to raise awareness of language's role in social domination and its potential to foster social emancipation by challenging oppressive ideologies and practices. At the core of this program lies the claim that discourse is a privileged space for the struggle between social sectors and ideologies because discourse anticipates, propels, manifests, or resists social changes. This means that discourse not only influences people's material lives but is also promoted, constrained, and shaped by power structures, relations, and roles in a dynamic and reciprocal interplay. Since the 1990s, Critical Discourse Analysis as an interdisciplinary endeavor with various methods and theoretical inputs from sociology, philosophy, and critical and neo‐Marxist cultural studies has tackled the discourse of politics, racism, education, and minorities, among other spheres and topics, analyzing discourse aspects such as content, (im)politeness, speech turns, intertextuality, genres, narratives, speech acts, or address forms. Transformations in discourse production and interchange in today's digital and AI age demand new interpretative frameworks and more critical scholarship and creativity for action to address the complex entanglements between discourse and social change, while decolonial perspectives demand acknowledging the researcher's positionality and a broader spectrum of contexts, languages, participants, and theoretical‐methodological traditions.