A Critical Analysis Of The Television Debates In The2012U.S. Presidential Election Campaign

The televised debates in the U.S. presidential election campaign are typicalpolitical discourses. Both candidates skillfully used debating strategies to convincethe voters and win their support. From the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis,this thesis applies Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to conduct a critical analysisof the2012U.S. presidential televised debates. This thesis aims to improve people’scritical awareness by revealing the language strategies hidden in the discourse. It alsohelps people have a better understanding of the argumentative strategies used in thepolitical discourse.As a branch of Critical Discourse Analysis, DHA was firstly proposed by RuthWodak, the distinguished professor of Lancaster University, and her research group.This thesis mainly adopts four of the discursive strategies of DHA, namely thereferential strategy, the strategy of predication, the strategy of argumentation and thestrategy of intensification and mitigation (Wodak,2001:71). Due to the features ofthe research data, it is inappropriate to apply the strategy of perspectivation, framingor discourse representation in this thesis.The research data of this thesis are three debates conducted between PresidentObama and Governor Romney in the2012presidential election campaign. Based onresearch purposes and hot debating topics, ten typical examples are selected. Startingfrom the language itself, the author analyzed how the candidates convinced voters andwon their support only through debates. This study showed that the floating figures ofsupport rating after each debate were not accidental. Positive relationships existedbetween the manipulations of language strategies and win the voters’ support.This thesis has some practical significance. Firstly, this thesis helps to improvepeople’s critical language awareness and improves their appreciation ability ofpolitical discourses. Therefore, they can have a better understanding of the speakers’political intentions and communicative purposes. Besides, they may have abilities tojudge the debates and critical news instead of being misguided. The second one is of pedagogical importance. This thesis is enlightening for the teachers on the teaching ofdebating skills. Finally, this thesis may be helpful to improve Chinese people’s abilityto use language skills in daily communication. For example, they can achieve theircommunicative purposes more effectively in speeches.