An Proximisation Study Of Critical Discourse Analysis

CDA analyses discourse in public use.Language use in public discourse is controlled and manipulated.After decades of developing,Critical Discourse Analysis embodies shining prospects.On the one hand,CDA researches continues to incorporate the latest developments from sociology,philosophy,psychology,and many other branches of social sciences.On the other hand,growing number of linguists turn to a cognition-oriented approach to critical discourse analysis in the light of Cognitive linguistics’ special attention on the construing operations inside human’s brains.Distinct from traditional systemic-functional approach to critical analysis of public discourse,a cognitive approach pays more attention to the process of the ideological construals and manipulations in public discourse,as well as its reproduction of ideologies.This thesis selects the innovative interdisciplinary research theory in CDA,the Proximisation Theory,to describe,illustrate,and discuss the language phenomenon in three Economist reports on 2016 America’s presidential TV debates.The main goal is to uncover and interpret the forced construals of ideologies beneath the language use in these selected discourses.These three articles are issued after the televised debates,respectively.The concept of “proximisation” was firstly proposed by Paul Chilton in 2004.Piotr Cap(2006,2008,2010,2013,2014,2015,2017 a,2017b)furnished the concept of proximisation in his papers and systematically introduced the Proximisation Theory.The proximising operations help the discourse to manipulate ideology and legitimise implied administrative policies.The language use in these three articles are divided into three subtypes according to the Spatial-Axiological-Temporal analytic model by Piotr Cap.This series of TV debates were held less than two months before the final vote.The newest development from these three debates would positively affect the result of the final vote.Preliminary review of these three reports showed that the reports are not biased at all.Research findings show that large coverage is about the temporal proximisation and axiological proximisation.The first article sees an average coverage of three proximisation types.The second article is mainly occupied by temporal proximisations and axiological proximisations.The last article is mostly featured by temporal proximisations.Proximisation Theory holds that the spatial and temporal proximisation serve the axiological proximisation.Contextually,the axiological proximisation aid the discourse achieve ideological manipulation.The analysis on the language use of the three articles concluded that Economist believed domestic affairs overvalues international agendas in this year’s presidential election.What the language use reflects is that it is preferable that the democratic candidate wins the election.Whatever the Republican candidate performs are criticised by the public,and the traditional views.By trigging historic events which echo nowadays’ ideas,geographically entities which might pose real-world threats if not properly coped with,and deeply-rooted beliefs and feeling about the surrounding world,the selected discourse successfully construed spatially and temporally,finally achieving axiological acceptance.If Trump becomes president of United States,the political environment might get worse.This thesis adopted the proximisation theory into a critical analysis of the magazine discourse about American’s presidential TV debates.A brand-new angle is supported for traditional CDA researches.This thesis works on second-handed materials,rather than previous studies on speeches.The application should provide hints for further development of the proximisation theory,and as well as critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics.