A Case Study Of 2008 U.S. Presidential Debate From The Perspective Of CDA

Language is among the social behaviors which are always infiltrated by the ideology. Critical Discourse Analysis refers to an analysis tool which is mainly concerned about the social and political discourses. The paper aims to take advantage of Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the presidential debate to reveal the relationship between language and influence to the audience.Critical Discourse Analysis belongs to a branch of linguistics. Represented by Roger Fowler and Kress, it is also called critical linguistics. Its methodology is mainly based on Halliday's systemic-functional grammar and it is defined as an analysis tool which is mainly used to analyze social and political discourses. Through the language forms on the surface it aims to reveal the relationship between language and ideology in terms of linguistics and psychology. The main objects of study include news reports, political speeches as well as other official discourses. Political speeches belong to the special public discourses which are characterized by strong agitation and psychological control of the speaker to the audience.The author will use Halliday's systemic-functional grammar as the tool and Fairclough's three-dimension framework as the theoretical frame to analyze the three debates between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. The specific method of analysis includes transitivity, mood, modal auxiliary verbs and grammatical metaphor.