A Critical Discourse Analysis Of 2020 American Presidential Television Debates

Before the 2020 American Presidential Election,due to the of American hegemony abroad,political polarization and the intensification of various contradictions in the American society at home,making the 2020 presidential election receive people’s attention around the world.As a kind of political discourse,the uniqueness and characteristics of Presidential debates making this kind of discourse worth researching.Discourse,power and ideology are three main concepts in Critical Discourse Analysis,which decides that the Critical Discourse Analysis is a method closely related to the political practice,especially for the presidential debates of America.This thesis will combine Fairclough’s textual analysis and Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach to study and analyze the debate strategies and political intentions in the three presidential debates between Biden and Trump to answer 4questions: 1)What are the strategies and skills employed by Biden and Trump to convince the audience in the debates in order to get their votes? What are the effects of those skills and strategies? 2)What are the similarities and differences of political intentions between Biden and Trump? 3)Why do Biden and Trump use those debate skills and strategies in their discourse? 4)How are social power and ideology reflected in the discourse of 2020 American presidential debates?First,it is found that some similarities exist in the process of discourse analysis:first,both of them in order to win the election,the two candidates use material process in the debates most.Second,it is found that although Biden represents the Democratic Party and Trump represents the Republican Party,the two parties are consistent externally and both represent the national interests of American capitalism and American supremacy for the analysis of style.Third,Biden and Trump use the referential strategy most frequently because they would like to emphasize the in-group and out-group relationship to shorten the distance between public or emphasize their own policy differences with the other side and different views and positions.Meanwhile,the diffierences are: first,Biden uses material process more frequently than Trump,which reflects Biden pays more attention to the process which a thing has been done,which is apparent in the discourse of his tax policy.second,Trump’s mental process is much more complex than Biden’s,and he uses fewer verbal process,which shows that he only focuses on his own ideas,but Biden quotes the words or statistics of many others to enhance the credibility of his words.Third,on the analysis of intertextuality and nominalization,it is also found that the problem that he selectively ignore his mistakes and he complicates simple problems in Trump’s discourse so that makes them sounds very convincing,but it lacks logic and evidence.Forth,for Biden,he uses strategy of mitigation more than Trump to solve the problem that Trump interrupted the flow of debates many times and obcure the conflits in reality in his discourse.Fifth,for Trump,he always combines the referential strategy with strategy of argumentation.He uses “we” and statistics in his discourse to increase the credibility of his words and emphasize his determination.But sometimes it makes Trump overconfident or even arrogant.On the contrary,Biden combines strategy of argumentation with strategy of mitigation,which can better show his confidence and good manner.Moreover,the thesis has also found three main factors which influence the use of those strategies and skills: gain more approval rating,adapt to the debate topic and change from the offensive to defensive.Finally,it also explores the power and ideology behind the discourse of the 2020 American presidential debates.Biden and Trump belong to different social groups,and hold different beliefs and attitudes,and the dominance relationship and inequality exist between them and in American society,which determines they different performances and views in the debates.The research results will provide reference to the research of presidential debates based on Critical Discourse Analysis.Meanwhile,it provides references to debate skills and strategies.