Discourse And Power—A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Animal Farm

As one of the most classic masterpieces of George Orwell,Animal Farm enjoys the majority of high evaluation and reviews.A quantity of studies on Animal Farm has been done mostly from the perspective of literature.The themes incorporate totalitarianism,symbolism,humanism Gothic angle etc.The power relations in the book draw some attention,but the research products from the perspective of critical discourse analysis have been few.In China,more and more scholars and students do their linguistic research by adopting critical discourse analysis.Critical Discourse Analysis,as a branch of linguistics,synthesizes the research products of linguistics,psychology,sociology,stylistics,and mass communications and so on.Its emergence is also due to the need for solving the social problems.That language only functions as a tool for communication cannot meet the need.That?s why Fowler defines CDA as an instrumental linguistics.Therefore,what CDA is really intrigued by is not the linguistic unit,but the complex social phenomenon in which language exists.The aim of CDA is to analyze the discourse so as to understand and solve the social problems,like racism,sexual discrimination,power abuse and so on.In CDA,language is not just regarded as a communicating media.Language is also considered as a social practice,because it does not only reflect the social reality but also constitutes it.The analyzing discourse may include media discourse,racist discourse,themed discourse,gendered discourse and so on.By analyzing the discourse of mass media or official speeches,the purpose of improving the audience?s sensitiveness towards language can be reached.So they can realize the subtle relation between language and social life as well as language use and unequal power relationships.Because of the Orwell?s special childhood and life experience,the most representative signature of his works is political.He even evaluated his early works as being lifeless for lacking a political purpose.The discourses in Animal Farm accord with the word political,with three periods of different reigns,the reign of Mr.Jones(human),the reign of Snowball,and the reign of Napoleon.Each reign has its own power relations together with the different discourses,which has been the researching point of the topic of study.As a political allegory,Animal Farm is penetrated with the main line of political power.In the novel,through discourses of delivering speeches,singing songs,making laws,discourse becomes the tool for power-holders to establish and stabilize the regime.Thus,in this topic of study,the discourse will be analyzed in perspective of CDA.First,by applying M.A.K.Halliday?s Systemic Functional Grammar,discourses in Animal Farm will be analyzed by ideational function,interpersonal function,and textual function.Ideational function helps to comprehend the power relations between animals with the assistance of transitivity and the frequency of the words.Personal pronouns and modal verbs are adopted to analyze in interpersonal function.Textual function asks theme-rheme system to analyze the discourses.The analysis of systemic-functional grammar helps to find the different functions discourse has in various periods of reign: inspiring function,misleading function and forcing function.Secondly,Teun.A van Dijk?s socio-cognitive approach and Foucault?s theory of discourse order respectively apply the notions of ideology and knowledge to discuss how the political power and discourse functions each other.van Dijk puts forward an essential concept ideology,which is functioned by society,mind and discursive interaction.He also points out that it is ideology that leads to dominance and power abuse.In the novel,the leaders impose their ideology by stressing the membership,common aims and opponents in the song.Foucault?s theory of discursive power can be used to probe into the relationship between knowledge,discourse and power in Animal Farm.Not only does discourse function power,but power acts on discourse with the help of knowledge in reverse in order to consolidate the political power.The discourses in this book that are used as analytic object are composed of the address of Old Major,the speeches of all the animals,the song,and the law of the farm—Seven Commandments.Therefore the aim of this study is to analyze the relation between language use,ideology and power in the discourses.What functions the discourse plays in the operation of power in Animal Farm is also our goal.By exposing how discourse is used to achieve political goals,we can be enlightened to see other works of Orwell from this perspective.Also,people?s anti-control ideology to public discourse of mass media may be enhanced after probing into the deep relationship between language and power.