Critical Discourse Analysis Of U.S. Presidents' Speeches In China

The essential task of Critical discourse analysis is to investigate the interrelationship between language and ideology. The United States and China have to rely on each other economically but the two people still have different ideologies which can be reflected in the speeches delivered by their leaders while paying visits to each other. This thesis chooses U.S. presidents' speeches made in China as targeted language material, analyzing the relationship between language and ideology, showing how U.S. presidents transmit their purposes and opinions by language choice, and how they take advantage of language to realize their political purposes in China.As Kristeva emphasizes, all the discourses are integrated by quotations and a discourse is an absorption and transmission of another. This characteristic of language is called "intertextuality". In line with Xin Bin's classification of intertextuality into specific one and generic one and his definition of specific intertextuality:the nature of a discourse containing speech with specific and clear source from other texts, this study divides U.S. presidents' speeches in China into two groups:intra voice (the speakers' voice) and outer voice (others' voice). The study focuses on how the speakers blend their subjective attitudes into quotations from other texts and how the speakers integrate their ideology into their own language to affect the audience.The author analyzes how outer voice can be blended into the speakers' discourse and serves for the new discourse by analyzing from the aspects of sources of quotations, forms of quotations, purposes of quotations and frequently-used keywords and collocations. Meanwhile, this thesis takes Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar as its analytical tool to analyze the implied ideology and value system lying in the speakers' own voice in terms of transitivity, modality, and transformation.The research finds that quotations in U.S. presidents' speeches are carefully selected, including both words of the celebrated from America and wisdoms of Chinese, serving for the speakers' purposes. Quotations in the U.S. presidents' speeches are mainly for the purposes of showing their friendliness to China, implying their dissatisfaction and publicizing their value system and ideology. The outer voice is integrated into the speakers'own voices through the use of indirect speeches and preset direct discourse. Analyzing the frequently-used keywords, the author finds that words like "freedom", "rights", "equal" are often mentioned which are endowed with strong American ideology.On the other hand, the analysis of the intra voice is done in terms of transitivity, modality and transformation of U.S. presidents' own voice. It can be disclosed that in material process and relational process, the actors and attributes are usually related to positive words about United States, which improves the image of the United States in the heart of Chinese audience. Passivization enables the speaker to put what they emphasize on the important position; nominalization endows dynamic words with stable meaning, which serves for U.S. presidents to transfer their ideologies and value systems. The widely used personal pronoun "we" shortens the psychological distance between the speakers and the audience, and convinces the audience that they are given much attention, which makes it easier for the speakers to convey their subjective intentions; by means of employing modal operators such as "can", "must", etc., the speakers present themselves as authoritative as possible and enforce their inclination to the audience. In conclusion, the choice of quotations and the organization of the speakers' own words are determined by the purpose of the speeches. U.S. presidents have applied intertextuality successfully in their speeches in China influence the audience.This thesis attempts to provide a different view of language analysis for CDA of political discourses from the perspective of intertextuality. It has been proved that analysis from perspectives of outer and intra voice is conducive to disclosing hidden intensions of speakers. The choice of quotations, as well as the choice of transitivity, modality and transformation, is determined by the speakers'ideology.