Fairclough's line of study, also called textually oriented discourse analysis or TODA, to distinguish it

from philosophical enquires not involving the use of linguistic methodology, is specially concerned
with the mutual effects of formally linguistic textual properties, sociolinguistic speech genres, and
formally sociological practices. The main thrust of his analysis is that, if according to Foucauldian
theory practices are discursively shaped and enacted, the intrinsic properties of discourse, which
are linguistically analysable, are to constitute a key element of their interpretation. He is thus
interested in how social practices are discursively shaped, as well as the subsequent discursive
effects of social practices.
Language and Power (1989; now in a revised third edition 2014) explored the
imbrications [1] between language and social institutional practices and of "wider" political and social
structures. In the book Fairclough developed the concept of synthetic personalisation to account for
the linguistic effects providing an appearance of direct concern and contact with the individual
listener in mass-crafted discourse phenomena, such as advertising, marketing, and political or media
discourse.[4][5] This is seen as part of a larger-scale process of technologisation of discourse, which
englobes the increasingly subtle technical developments in the field of communication that aim to
bring under scientifically regulated practice semiotic fields that were formerly
considered suprasegmental, such as patterns of intonation, the graphic layout of text on the page
or proxemic data.
His book New Labour, New Language? looks at the rhetoric used by the Labour Party in the United
Kingdom, with a particular focus on the party's developments towards New Labour.

Influences[edit]
Fairclough's theories have been influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin and Michael Halliday in linguistics and
by ideology theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Pierre
Bourdieu in sociology.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Fairclough