A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Hillary's Identity Construction In 2016 U.S. Presidential Debates

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),originated from Critical Linguistics in the 1970 s,aims to reveal the interactive relationship between language,ideology and power in which participants in discourse can recognize and construct their own or others' identities in the course of discourse practices through some particular ways.This thesis,mainly based on CDA,takes Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG)as an analytic tool to explore how Hillary builds up some specific identities through discourse practices to guide the ideology of voters and win their support.The research procedures go as follows: Firstly,this dissertation selects all transcripts of 2016 Hillary's presidential election debates as discourse research objects.As a typical political discourse,her presidential debates can reflect the complex relationship between language,ideology and power efficiently.Secondly,the author classifies all the three debate texts according to six processes in Transitivity based on Halliday's three meta functions: material process,mental process,relational process,verbal process,behavioral process and existential process.Finally,through qualitative analysis,the author tries to discover the prototypical constructions of Hillary's identities by revealing the ideology and power hidden in her discourses.The research results show that material process,mental process,and relational process occupy a large proportion in the three texts,accounting for approximately 67% of all texts with its high representation,thus,they serve as the main analytical tool in this paper.During the campaign,Hillary expounds what she is saying more objective and convincing through material process;she makes what is happening resonate with audiences and builds a closer relationship with audiences through mental process;and she consciously takes language as a medium to guide the ideology of audiences through relational process.At the same time,Hillary hides the ideology and power into her discourses through the material,mental and relational processes and tactfully constructs political identities from five dimensions,the first dimension: a spokesperson for the middle class;the second dimension: a successful leader with rich political experience;the third dimension: a person who dares to admit mistakes and take responsibilities;the fourth dimension: a political leader who always fights for the rights of women;the fifth dimension: and a leader to advocate and maintain racial equality and to devote herself to opposing racial discrimination.In addition,the author also finds out language and identity are rooted in mutual construction dynamically,both of which not only originate from social structure and power relations but also serve for them.This thesis is helpful to enhance people's critical thinking and consciousness when reading political discourses.