Discursive Construction Of Context: The First 2004 Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate As A Case

U.S presidential debates are a special political discourse, in which candidates are in a position to construct a context which is beneficial to their different purposes, by acclaiming themselves, attacking the opponent, defending their own stances and persuading the audience to vote for them. The present thesis attempts to investigate the realizations of context construction in U.S presidential debates, based on theories of discourse and Verschuren's dynamic context and assisted by functional theory of political campaign discourse. The present study, taking the first 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential debate as a case, focuses on how context is discursively constructed through lexicon, syntax, text organization and general discursive strategies. The process of candidates'conscious construction of context in the framework of adaptation theory is, in respect of mental world, construction of his own personality, belief and credibility as a president, destruction of his opponent's personality, belief and credibility to be a president and adaptation to the audience's mental needs, desires and wishes; in respect of social world, construction of his own political identity and solidarity with audience and destruction of his opponent's political identity and solidarity with audience. Specifically, construction functions of first personal pronouns, modal auxiliaries and content verbs are surveyed, choices of tense and voice are analyzed, the roles of parallelism and metadiscourse devices are investigated and pragmatic presupposition and lexical reiteration as discursive strategies are explored. The results indicate that candidates differ dramatically in employing linguistic choices and discursive strategies to construct a favorable context despite commonalities which they share, coinciding with the purposes to be served and different contexts to be constructed. Bush, as the incumbent, is inclined to defend his past record; while Kerry, acting the role of a challenger, tends to be on the offensive.This study is a rudimentary research on dynamic context construction. The implication lies in the fact that people in communication, especially in professional settings, can not only act under the constraint of context, but also consciously manipulate language choices and strategies to construct a context in which they may seem favorable to the audience.