A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The State Of The Union Addresses (2010-2015)

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)is a new interdisciplinary achievement of linguistics,which originated from the late 1970 s in Britain.Critical discourse analysis is to expose the influence of ideology on discourse and the counteraction of discourse to ideology through the surface level of language.Critical discourse analysis mainly analyzes the relationship between discourse,power and ideology.In critical discourse analysis,language is viewed as a social practice,which is closely related with social development.That is to say,critical discourse analysis not only emphasizes the language features,but also pays more attention to the social background in order to have more profound understanding of ideology and power hidden in the language.The theory and analysis tool of CDA is based on Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar and Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Framework.To Halliday's mind,language is not only a tool for communication,but also a social practice.The form of language that people choose in communication is determined by the social function.The Systemic-Functional Grammar not only describes the structure of the text,but also tries to explain how it produces.Fairclough interprets the discourse from the perspective of social practice.Discourse,as a part of social practice,is inevitably influenced by social,historical and cultural backgrounds and closely related to social structure.He argues that discourse can be divided into three dimensions,which include text,discourse practice and social practice.According to the three dimensions,Fairclough proposes a three-dimensional analysis model,that is,description,interpretation and explanation.The author of the thesis systematically analyzes the State of the Union Addresses(SOUAs)from 2010 to 2015 by means of Systemic-Functional Grammar with Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Framework.The analysis of the thesis is divided into three parts: describing the discourse,interpreting the discourse and explaining the social context.In the part of the description,the author mainly analyzes the language features of the discourse by combining the three meta-functions theory.In the part of the interpretation,the production of the language features in the first part will be interpreted,including the content of the SOUAs,the relationships between the participants in the SOUAs and the role of language in the SOUAs.In the last part,the author analyzes the formation of the SOUAs from the perspectives of the social context and social determinants of the SOUAs.Through the analysis of the State of the Union Addresses,the author finds that Barack Obama utilizes various language skills to build the discourse,transmit the basic policies to the audience,and win the support of people and consolidate Obama and government's status and power.The choice of vocabulary reflects the focus that the speaker wants to highlight in the State of the Union Addresses.And the choice v of mood,modality and personal pronouns constructs his relationship with the public,and narrows the psychological distance between the two sides.The interpretation of SOUAs and the explanation of the social context can help people understand how the ideology hidden in the language affects people's choice and judgments directly.In the political discourse,the ideology in the language is not easy to be found,the reader should establish the critical awareness in order to uncover the speaker's true intention and the ideology conveyed.