Discourse And Ideology

The inaugural addresses of US Presidents play a significant part in inauguration ceremony. They are the epitome of US history. They are not the representative of the Presidents themselves alone, but also of their parties and country. In possession of a strong national power will, it discloses its major ideologies everywhere in the address. Therefore, the study of US ideologies can take advantage of US presidents' inaugural addresses. This methodology opens a new perspective of the study of US.Van Dijk takes "ideology" as "the foundation of the social representation of a social group". As the foundation of the social value system, ideology means a lot. It is the content of the language, whereas language is the crust of it.The traditional discourse analysis is confined to the study within the linguistic system. 1970s saw the birth of critical discourse analysis, given by'the popular study of mass communication. Language was no longer regarded as an objective, rational and transparent instrument. Instead, as a social practice, it is economic, social and political in itself. It offers a new perspective for discourse analysis. It starts with the linguistic analysis as the dominant method, and then links the results into the social-historical context of the discourse, so as to open out the ideologies behind the discourse and their relationship with discourse. (Fowler, 1991)Critical discourse analysis works with the major source from Halliday's systemic-functional grammar. Halliday assumes that language is a system network, or meaning potential, made up of a number of subsystems available for option. The option of the linguistic system depends on the social-semantic function. He adds his explanation of three metafunctions of language: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, and builds up a corresponding relationship between these functions and various linguistic systems.