A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Political Discourse From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) is a rapidly developing area of language study which is concerned with social power abuse, dominance and inequality. CDA reveals the hidden intention, ideology and the relationship between language and power by means of analyzing the surface language structure of discourse. CDA is a type of discourse analytical research on social problems which is usually multidisciplinary. It often embraces linguistics, anthropology and sociology and so on. The Appraisal Theory of Martin and White provides a sympathetic framework for dealing with interpersonal meaning in the political discourse to analyze how the speakers in the discourse adopt stances, how they approve and disapprove, applaud and criticize and how they position their listeners to do likewise. This thesis conducts the CDA under the framework of Appraisal Theory from three Appraisal systems:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation and the respective sub-systems.United States Presidential Debates are vital for the election campaigns held every four years which are generally thought to be of paramount importance for winning the presidential elections. They are big events not only for American people but also for future global situation. Presidential Debate is the typical sample of political discourses. We notice that the role of candidates in some ways resembles that of the parties they belong to. They determine the future policies of the country and lead the responses of live audiences, putative addressees and potential voters. Such particular political discourse not only reflects power and true intentions in linguistic selections, but also how specific choices express intentions. This thesis selects the United States Presidential Debates in2012between President Obama and Governor Romney as the discourse for analysis. This study takes the Appraisal Theory by Martin and White as the tool to analyze this political discourse so as to find out the relations between discourse and power, the approaches to influence people’s mind which may indirectly control people’s actions through persuasion and manipulation. The analysis of the discourse is conducted both at the micro level and macro level. At the micro level, the Appraisal Theory is used to analyze the resources in the discourse, at the same time these analyses may enact the hidden situation and intention of the candidates, which belongs to the macro-level analysis. Via the detailed analysis of the appraisal resources in the United States Presidential Debates in2012, appraisal resources are found widely used in the debates. Resources in Engagement are most frequently used accounting for59.7%f the total Appraisal system. The ratio of other two systems of Attitude and Graduation are close, accounting for18.7%and21.6%espectively. Appreciation, Expansion and Force are the three subcategories which outnumbers others resources in the total Appraisal system. Candidates in the debates see the use of language as an ideological activity. Language use and understanding require certain sets of assumptions to be in place between the speaker and hearer. And we also find that informal chatty manner of speaking is taken obviously by two candidates, which reveals the relationship of power and control such as repetitions to enforce the emphasis; colloquial speech and short sentences which often mark conversations; personal observations insert and narrative format to illustrate and elaborate the point; etc.Generally speaking, this thesis analyzed typical features of this particular political discourse to show how candidates in the debates use resources of appraisal systems and other linguistic resources with persuasive purposes; how these resources contribute to revealing the ideology and power. The analysis under the framework of Appraisal Theory in this thesis can also establish the validity of Appraisal Theory in critical discourse analysis which verifies the interpretation of ideology and power in political discourse. In addition, it brings a totally new research angle to critical analysis of political discourse as well. And what’s more, it helps people enhance their critical awareness and cultivate the critical attitude towards the political discourse. The critical manner of looking at language will provide us with tools to analyze different types of discourse used in a variety of situations and gain a greater understanding of the role that language plays in producing and reproducing social issues.