Power And Ideology In Political Discourses

As a multi-dimensional discourse analyzing framework, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) takes certain social structures and cultural context into account, and analyzes the text from both macro and micro levels. Political discourses are invested with addressers'ideologies; thus, CDA is an ideal tool to it.This paper adopts CDA to study eighteen political speeches on climate change by the Chinese and American leaders to investigate the ideologies and power behind the addressers'language; and to investigate how do their intentions realized through linguistic devices? This paper applies Thompson's methodological framework of depth hermeneutics to explore the relationship between discourse, ideology and power from social-historical and discursive perspectives.To sum up, the present study has the following several findings.Firstly, on the level of social-historical critical analysis, focus of discourse analysis shows the Chinese addressers prefer words like'China, developing country/developed country, UN (Framework/Convention)/the international community, Kyoto Protocol and Common but differentiated responsibility', reflecting China's intention to speak for developing countries and attitude to take responsibilities on the basis of national strength; while the American addressers focus on words like 'America, China, developing nation or all the major economies', trying to weaken differences to shirk responsibility.Secondly, on the level of discursive analysis, consensus building shows they all prefer the first person plural form'we'to draw a consensus, but with different referents like'Chinese central government, the developing countries'in the Chinese discourses, and'all the countries'in the American discourses to divert public attention and weaken due responsibility. On modality and transitivity, the Chinese addresses have frequently used the model auxiliaries'should/shall'and material process with 'actors' like 'China, international community and the United Nations'reflecting China's proposition of active participation in international affairs and a peaceful rise; however, the American addressers have frequently used model auxiliaries 'would/will' and material process with 'actors' like 'I and rapidly-growing nations', demonstrating their conservative attitude in taking its responsibility on combating climate change; it is deeply affected by America's hegemony and power politics in international affairs. On rhetorical strategies, it is found the addressers consciously use parallelism and intertextuality to strengthen the expression of their words.Thirdly, the different linguistic preferences of the two countries'addressers show that, on climate change, the American addressers actually hold a'negative responsible'attitude comparing with the'proactive responsible'one derived from the Chinese addressers'discourses.