A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Barack Obama's Inaugural Address

Critical Discourse Analysis aims to reveal the ideological information hidden in any public discourse and the interrelationship between discourse and ideology. One of the main objects of study in CDA, the political speech provides linguists with a perfect research material in which all kinds of linguistic devices are subtly and craftily used by the speaker so as to influence or manipulate the ideology of the audience. The inaugural addresses of the U.S. Presidents have always been significant ceremonies in American politics. Beneath their meticulously chosen words, there is buried a wealth of information on ideology and power. It is no wonder, therefore, that the inaugural address of the newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama, who took office in January,2009, at a time when the global economic crisis had dealt a heavy blow to the country's economy as well as its people's faith in their government, has attracted great attention of critical linguists. In this thesis, the author conducts an analysis of Barack Obama's Inaugural Address from the perspective of CDA, in an attempt to unveil the ideological information hidden in the discourse as well as the relationships between discourse and ideology.The analytic methodology of the thesis is mainly based on Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Framework and Halliday's Systemic-functional Grammar. Fairclough regards language as social practice; he holds that any discourse is composed of three dimensions:text, discursive practice (process of interaction) and social practice; and the analysis of a text is to be combined with the analysis of the process of production of the text and the analysis of the social context. Corresponding to the three dimensions, Fairclough puts forward three steps of CDA:description, interpretation and explanation, which respectively refers to:1) the step to describe the formal properties of a text,2) the step to interpret the relationship between the text and the process of interaction in which the text is produced, distributed and consumed, and 3) the step to explain the relationship between the process of interaction and the social context. The above views of CDA require that language be seen as a multi-functional system, which is obviously compatible with Halliday's Systemic-functional Grammar. In Halliday's view, almost all the languages perform simultaneously three metafunctions:1) ideational function, through which the speaker or the writer embodies in his language his experience of both the real world and his inner world; 2) interpersonal function, which reflects the social and personal relations; and 3) textual function, which is the tool of the above two metafunctions and through which the speaker or the writer can produce a text and the listener or the reader can recognize one.In the thesis, Functional Grammar is applied in the first step of Fairclough's three steps of CDA, namely, the step of description. In this stage, the author makes an analysis of the formal features of the speech from seven aspects:1) transitivity and 2) transformation, both representing ideational function; 3) personal pronouns,4) modal auxiliary verbs and 5) modes of sentence, which are typical approaches to fulfill interpersonal function; and finally,6) thematic choice and 7) lexical repetition, both realizing textual function. In the second step, i.e. the step of interpretation, the author focuses the discussion on how Obama achieved his ideological manipulation through a variety of linguistic devices in the speech, from the perspective of the process of interaction. And in the last stage—explanation, the social and historical context of the speech, i.e. the background information of the current political and economic situation in the U.S. is discussed so as to reveal the relations between the linguistic devices the speaker used and the social factors, thereby achieving the final aim of CDA study—to unmask the relationships between discourse, ideology and social structure.From the analysis, we discover that the speaker adopted a great variety of linguistic devices, through which he has succeeded in not only inspiring the pride and the patriotism in his people but also establishing his image as a "president of reform" Therefore, we conclude that the language that a politician uses when he delivers a speech is closely connected with his ideology, power and political intentions. In a political speech, the speaker would make conscious use of various linguistic devices in manipulating the audience's ideology, so the task of CDA is to bring to the surface the hidden relations between language and ideology and the ways in which the ruling class manipulates ideology and establishes or asserts his authority through the use of language, thereby making readers'critical awareness in language cultivated and improved.