Discourse And Ideology A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Political Speeches

In 1979, British linguists R. Fowler,B. Hodge,G. Kress and T. Trew put forward the term of "critical linguistics" in the book of Language and Control, which symbolized the appearance of CDA. In critical discourse analysis, language is regarded as a social practice and a socially-directed application of language. The major methodological resource of CDA is Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics. The systemic-functional linguist Halliday holds that the nature of language relates itself closely to the functions it has, or to the need to serve society. The grammatical features of language are determined by the need of the society as well as the purposes of the language user. Therefore, Halliday's functional grammar can be used as one of the analytical tools of CDA.Nowadays, the main theoretical tools of CDA are Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, Fairclough's three-dimensional model and the neo-Halliday school: Martin & Rose's appraisal theory. And the chief representatives are Fowler, Van Dijk, Kress, Fairclough, Wodak, Martin & Rose and so on.Any kind of new theory or research method will come across many difficulties, and there is no exception of CDA. Although CDA has achieved a lot after its birth, it has also encountered many problems. And people have expressed different opinions on it. Zhang Delu (2006) held that the process of CDA is unidirectional, that is the process is from discourse analysis to the finding or revealing of the hidden cultural, ideological control or power relationships. This kind of research played a minor role in the construction and development of linguistic theories, which would reduce CDA to be parasitic and dried-up, and even drift along because of the turn or change of the relevant linguistic theories. In his opinion, a reverse process should be added to the traditional unidirectional way of discourse analysis, that is to say, after the analysis of from discourse to culture or ideology, we should also focus on the characteristics of language, including vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc, which serves different patterns of culture and ideology. As a result, the whole process of analysis becomes a bidirectional one: discourse analysis→culture, power and ideology→ characteristics and application of language. When the critical approaches are improved, the critical linguistics will become a more useful and powerful analytical tool, and will enhance the development of discourse analysis. Besides that, many scholars also doubted the clarity, objectivity, reliability and verifiability of CDA and thought that the authority of the above appraisal standards was lacking in CDA, which needed further improvements. The final point is that, CDA focuses more on sociology and social philosophy, and relates the texts with social practice, but without a clear explanation of what kind of social theories its social practice is based on, and also without a clear explanation of how the data beyond the texts are used in the analysis of its social practice (Tian Hailong, 2004). Up to now, CDA has experienced criticism and being criticized, which is actually much helpful for its development. Represented by N. Fairclough, the critical linguists have been aware of their analytical insufficiency and are modifying their theoretical framework and analytical methods.At present, for the research or study at home, most of the chosen discourses are some news reports. Therefore, in this thesis, the author attempts to choose a comparatively newer kind of discourse: the public political speeches to do the research from a perspective of CDA. The thesis will be mainly divided into four parts:Firstly, it is the introduction which briefly introduces the present researches of CDA as well as the aim and arrangements of the present study.Part one is literature review, which tells about the relevant studies of CDA at home and abroad, including the development from critical linguistics to critical discourse analysis and the principles of CDA, and the enlightenments from the previous study of CDA as well.Part two is about the features of political speech and the purpose of the present study. There are some defining terms in this part which are necessary and helpful for the explanation of the present study.Part three concentrates on the introduction of the methodology of CDA adopted in this thesis, including Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's functional grammar. This part will show the feasibility and powerfulness of the methodology concerned in the application of CDA.Part four is the analyzing part in which the author mainly follows Fairclough's three-dimensional model. The first step of the analysis is what is called description that applies Halliday's functional grammar to analyze the linguistic features of the data in terms of the three metafunctions including ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The second step is called interpretation which is to explore the relationship between the speeches and interaction, interpreting how the speeches are delivered and produced. It mainly focuses on three questions: "what is going on", "who is involved and in what relations" and "the role of language reflected in what is going on". The third is the last step called explanation which is about the relationship between interaction and social context, explaining why the speeches are presented in that specific way, and what the social determinations of the process of production are.The last part is the conclusion part which summarizes the process of the present study and the findings of it and some further discussions, for instance, the enlightenments and suggestions of CDA and the author's points of view on the application of CDA to cultivating people's critical language awareness and to the current teaching of foreign language or L2.From the analysis, we can see that language is ideological in nature. The formal features such as the use of vocabulary, transitivity, transformation, the modes of sentences, the modality, the pronoun and the different thematic structures are all determined by the functions of language and the language producer's ideologies. President Bush, an authority representative, who is trying to gain the audiences'support and let them believe that what he said matches the facts: Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear weapons test is a threat to the safety of the Asian area, and the America has to stop the test in order to set the Korean people free accordingly. The politicians'use of language is determined by the political purposes at a certain time and in a certain social context. And the textual features all contribute to the purpose of establishing solidarity and authority. Bush uses the speeches to construct Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) a general dangerous "enemy" and constantly emphasizes that America, as a super power, has the obligation to save Korean people from the dangerous situation of nuclear weapons test and to bring "democracy" and "freedom" to them. The ideologies such as authority, solidarity are reflected in the discourse, and in turn the discourse helps to reinforce these ideologies. This shows the dialectical relationships between language and ideology. So the political discourse can be used as an effective tool for political purposes. For us, when doing analysis of the political discourse, we should not only focus on the language itself, but also take into consideration its social factors, such as the social culture, ideology, power, the international relationships, etc.The critical discourse analysis of Bush's speeches provides us a different perspective of discourse analysis. The methodology: Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's functional grammar are applicable in critical discourse analysis. In addition, critical discourse analysis is also helpful to enhance people's ability of critical reading and cultivate their critical awareness in language learning.