Critical Discourse Analysis Of Cameron’s Speeches On England Riot2011

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has become one of the most valuable andinfluential approaches of discourse analysis in the last30years, aiming to explorethe ideology dominance and power manipulation realized through the use oflanguage. Political speech, given its role in the reproduction and legitimization ofideology and power, has taken priority in the field of CDA.Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, this thesis first analyzes thelanguage features of Cameron’s two speeches on England Riot2011from theperspectives of experiential values and relational values. Following that, the studygoes on to interpret how those language features are employed to realizeideological transmission and power control within the social and political contexts,thus revealing the interrelation of language, ideology and power in Cameron’sspeeches. In terms of experiential values, this study concentrates on the analysis ofclause transitivity, syntactic transformation and rhetorical devices in Cameron’sspeeches; In terms of relational values, this study focuses on the analysis of moodand modality.The critical analysis of Cameron’s two speeches elicits the following findings:1. Material process functions as the dominant process type in transitivity, whichhelps to display Cameron’s determination and confidence in a quick recovery;2.Nominalization and passivization are frequently adopted, which contributes to theimprovement of language objectivity and persuasion;3. Parallelism is the mostsalient feature in rhetoric use, which works well in the consolidation of thegovernment’s authority and encouragement of patriotic spirit;4. The mostfrequently used modality are the modal auxiliary verb “will” and personal pronoun“we”, which are effective in the reinforcement of harmonious relationship between participants of different races, social and political status;5. The use of presentcontinuous tense better illustrates Cameron’s leadership ability than present tenseand future tense. All these language features are efficient in ideology transmissionand power control.This study testifies the importance of socio-political context in a profoundunderstanding of the interrelation between language, ideology and power inpolitical discourses, which contributes to critical language awareness and ability.This study is also of practical significance for English teaching and learning inChina: it inspires teachers to value the interpretation of cultural backgroundinformation or socio-political contexts in reading materials apart from the analysisof language forms so as to improve students’ ability to judge and evaluate whatthey read.