Comparing and Contrasting Poststructural Discourse and Critical Discourse Analysis: Divergent Conceptions of Discourse and Distinct Analytical Strategies

This paper critically compares and contrasts the analytical approaches of the "What’s the Problem Represented to Be?" (WPR) framework and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in policy studies, highlighting their divergent conceptualisations of discourse and distinct analytical strategies. Both WPR and CDA share an anti-positivist stance in policy analysis, yet they differ in their treatment of discourse, problem representations, and the purpose of policy documents. CDA views discourse as a tool for examining how language shapes power dynamics, ideologies, and social relations, with a focus on how dominant groups use language to maintain their power. In contrast, WPR, influenced by Foucauldian theory, understands discourse as knowledge systems that are socially and historically contingent and emphasizes how policy representations of problems are constructed to regulate and normalize societal behaviours. The paper first clarifies key differences in the definitions of discourse within these two frameworks. While CDA focuses on language's linguistic structure and functions in shaping policy texts, WPR investigates the deeper knowledge systems and presuppositions underpinning these representations. The author demonstrates these differences through examples, such as the application of WPR to China’s World-Class University (WCU) plan and CDA to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) education policies. The analysis further examines how these frameworks conceptualise policy problems. CDA explores how policymakers use language to define and frame problems in ways that serve their ideological interests, whereas WPR views the problem as constructed within the policy itself, shaped by underlying knowledge systems. Through a discussion of policy-as-text and policy-as-discourse, the paper illustrates how CDA and WPR approach policy analysis from fundamentally different epistemological and ontological perspectives.