CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS IN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Motivated by the long-standing connection between Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this paper presents the first systematic literature review of the most frequent and productive linguistic features from SFL that are applied in practice by CDA analysts. Guided by PRISMA 2020 and following the SALSA framework, 4 databases (Wiley, Scopus, Sage Publications, and ProQuest) were searched, from which 78 papers were extracted and statistically analyzed with the TexMiLAB tool. The linguistic features that are most productive in CDA are lexical choices and evaluative lexis at the lexico-semantic level; while at the grammatical level, it is the type of processes and type of participants, together with the analysis of other linguistic elements, such as metaphors and quotations. The systems of Transitivity and Modality, and Appraisal theory are more recurrent over the remarkably underused Theme system. It could be argued that, to a large extent, SFL remains central to CDA research, although some CDA practitioners do not seem to follow a systematic methodology when applying SFL to their analysis.