| Being a complex and advanced human activity,political discourse plays a central role in the organization and management of society.As one kind of the most typical political discourse,the presidential speech has evoked extensive studies from a wide range of perspectives,such as politics,rhetoric,sociology,linguistics as well as communication studies.Donald Trump is the first America president who has no ruling experience.Although the existing researches on Trump’s speech are mainly conducted from the perspective of linguistics,no examinations have been tried to analyze the style,the language features as well as the underlying triangle relationship among discourse,power,and ideology in his speeches under the framework of CxG.In view of this,taking CxG,critical discourse analysis and pragmatics as the theoretical background,the US President Trump’s tax reform speeches as the research object,this thesis proposed DPR~+theoretical model based on DPR,context model and speech acts theory.Combined with the self-built closed linguistic database,this project delves into the style of Trump’s political speech,the language features,together with the relationship among language,power,plus ideology.With a full sample analysis of seven tax-related speeches during Trump’s presidency,the study finds:1)Trump is accustomed to using interactive mode and continuous use of speech acts similar in meaning to shape an image of populism,constructing a president caring about the people and striving to unite the people.2)At discourse level,the dps of Tramp’s tax reform speeches share an interactive feature by and large.However,this interaction differs in detail.The interaction before-tax is mainly indirect whereas the interaction after-tax is mainly direct and face-to-face.At local,the social action chain schemata before-tax are slightly different from those of after-tax.Before-tax,Trump attaches more importance to how to persuade the people to support his tax reform,so he is committed to the public to provide various benefits for them.Thus,much elucidation is given to the background and reasons for tax reform as well as the specific measures for tax reform.In contrast,after-tax,Trump pays more attention to propagandizing the economic benefits the tax reform has brought,consequently,the economic situation after-tax and the invitation to representatives in tax reform occupy a great deal of space in his speeches after-tax.3)At utterance level,regarding to syn features,the syn features present the following hierarchy:simple sentences>complex clauses>phrases>words.As far as the semantic features are concerned,before-tax,the hierarchical feature of sem is C>P>D>A,while after-tax,the sem features demonstrate a C>D>A>P hierarchy.The superficial reason lies in the slight difference of the dp,to be more exact,the subtle difference of social action chain schemata.Due to the divergence of the social action chain schemata,the semantic and pragmatic information inherited varies accordingly.The purpose of the speeches before-tax is to convince the public to be in favor of him.Therefore,Ps will be used more frequently than Ds.However,the primary task after-tax is the propaganda of tax reform effect and the proving of the success of the tax reform.So,plenty of beneficiaries are invited to speak for him,which causes the more frequent utilization of Ds than Ps.The deeper reason goes to Trump’s different political motives in different phases.Before-tax,the main political purpose is to persuade whilst after-tax is to prove.4)Regarding to the relationship among language,power,and ideology,power generates discourse and ideology,and discourse serves as an media of power and ideological control.In turn,discourse exposes power relation,and ideology upholds such power relation.By a series use of Cs,Ds,As,Ps,Trump has managed to construct beliefs among people that his government cares people and works for people.Since such discourse is uttered by Trump with the supreme power,it makes the construction more legal and convincing.The contributions of this thesis are:1)Under the theoretical background of CxG,critical discourse analysis and pragmatics,this study constructs a framework for the analysis of the political speech.On the one hand,it deepens the study of CxG.On the other hand,it provides another alternative approach for the understanding of political speech from the perspective of DCxG.2)This study establishes a closed linguistic database to analyze and discuss Trump’s speech style,language features manifested in Trump’s tax-related speeches,exposing the relationship among language,power as well as ideology. |
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