This study uses Teun A. van Dijk's socio-cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine how power and identity are constructed and negotiated in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. It explores how characters' words, narrative framing, and performative acts reveal and challenge prevailing notions ingrained in rural Irish culture in the 1930s. It is based on the idea that discourse functions at the nexus of language, cognition, and society. Van Dijk's socio-cognitive model highlights how discourse creation and interpretation are influenced by shared mental representations that are formed by both individual beliefs and broader social norms. Michael's retrospective narration of the play's memory structure highlights how memory control’s identity formation and expressive freedom under the constrictive framework of Catholic morality and patriarchal expectations (memory theme). Discourse reinforces and challenges power relations, which are expressed through gendered labor, religious authority, and societal stigma, as demonstrated by an analysis of dialogues, narrated reflections, and the sisters' embodied dances. Important sequences show how nonverbal semiotic tools like dance and silence serve as substitute discourse modes, revealing repressed urges and defying prevailing social norms. These results show that Friel's drama depicts the ideological processes by which social authority is absorbed and disputed in addition to recounting the history of a family. The work advances theoretical knowledge of how language, culture, and cognition co-construct identity and social power in dramatic texts and methodologically advances discourse analysis in literature by applying a socio-cognitive CDA to literary theater.
