A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Obama's Inaugural Address

Critical Linguistics, also called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), is a new branch in linguistic analysis which absorbs the achievements of scientific researches in the field of linguistics, sociology, psychology, and mass media etc and it gains more and more attention from scholars of different disciplines. CDA practitioners assume that discourse is not only the reflection of reality, but also a force of social practice. Thus, they conduct critical analysis with the aim of identifying and analyzing the ideological assumptions and power relations underlying in the discourse that have largely been taken for granted.Critical discourse analysis draws heavily on the theories and methods associated with Halliday's Systemic-functional Grammar. Halliday holds that language is a system network, or meaning potential, made up of a number of subsystems available for option. The option of the linguistic system is mainly determined by the need of the society and the intentions of the language user. Therefore, Functional Grammar can be used as an effective analytical tool for CDA study.This thesis conducts a critical analysis of American President Obama's inaugural address, combining the linguistic features of the political discourse and the social background of the inaugural ceremony, so as to expose the relationship between language, ideology and power hidden in this political speech, and then to represent how the language producer uses language to convey his or her ideological assumption to others and exercises the power to achieve the political purposes. The present study is conducted in Fairclough's three stepwise procedures: description, interpretation and explanation. The first stage is to describe the linguistic features of the language in this inaugural address in terms of the three metafunctions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Then during the second phase, the author attempts to interpret in detail how these linguistic features are produced and presented. In the third phase, the author tries to explore the relations of language, ideology and power with the consideration of social context.From the analysis, the author arrives at the conclusion that although the politicians attempt to lay stress on the objectivity and rationality of what they claim, the speeches can not avoid being influenced by the ideological assumption of the politician and the power of the politicians' side. Therefore, to some extent, the political speeches are persuasive and veiled. In the political discourse, politicians prefer to employ various linguistic tools provided by Halliday's three metafunctions, for instance, transitivity, nominalization, mood, modality and thematic choice, which make power and ideologies hidden in the speeches difficult to be identified. Therefore, it is very necessary for the audiences to raise their critical awareness so that they can better understand the underlying information in the political speeches.Academically, critical discourse analysis applied in this study can provide a means of decoding the political speech to see how linguistic strategies are employed by the politician to convey his ideological assumption. This work is also practically significant. First, it is helpful for the audiences to raise their critical awareness and critical way of thinking in reading. Second, it is instructive to English teaching and learning. It provides English teachers with a new concept of English teaching—a method associated with structural and social perspectives. It also can help the English learners better comprehend what they read and thoroughly grasp reading and writing abilities.The originality of this thesis lies in its significance of the topicality and timeliness. Since the inaugural addresses of US are the epitome of US history which can disclose the dominant ideologies and strong national power will in the addresses, the critical study of Obama's inaugural address can open a new perspective of the study of the present US.