Research On The Inspiration In One Of Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Since the publication of Language and Control, a new approach to analyze language has been set up. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been regarded as instrumental linguistics. In this dissertation, with the help of CDA, researcher will make a detailed analysis on one of Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats. For one thing, the ways in which Franklin Roosevelt inspires his discouraged people can be found. For another, the latent power relationship will be disclosed implicitly. Eventually, people's awareness of language is surely increased.Based on Halliday's functional grammar and N.Fairclough's three-dimensional framework, this dissertation is developed with a profound theoretical foundation. Halliday sees language as a multi-functional system and concludes the functions into three metafunctions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Ideational function means that language serves to express 'content', that is, the speaker's experience of the real world as well as speaker's inner world of his consciousness. Interpersonal function means language serves to establish and maintain social relations. It is usually realized by modality. Textual function means language serves to link itself and the situation in which it is used. Fairclough views language as a social practice. It means that in the process of conducting an analysis, text itself, the production of text and social context of text should be taken into researcher's consideration. The three-dimensional framework Fairclough proposes is in accordance with his view on language. The three corresponding steps to three-dimensional framework are description, interpretation and explanation.In this dissertation, one of Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside chat will be analyzed from the angles of transitivity, classification, transformation, modality and thematic choice.The finding is that there is speaker's ideology hidden in the language. It is this hidden ideology that Franklin Roosevelt manages to convey to Americans. Finally, Americans are inspired as Franklin Roosevelt expects.However, due to a comparatively short history, CDA still has a lot of shortcomings which it can not overcome. There is no exception to the research in this dissertation. For example, it is a controversy to clarify authoritativeness in CDA. Thus, to some extent, objectivity and reliability of CDA have been undermined.