A Comparative Study Of Ideologies In Bush's And Obama's Presidential Victory Speeches

This research mainly applies Fairclough's Three-dimensional Model and Halliday's Systematic-Functional Linguistics to compare and analyze Bush's and Obama's presidential victory speeches. It first describes the relevant linguistic features in the light of transitivity, mood structure, modality, and personal pronouns. Then, by answering three questions:"what is going on","who is involved and in what relations"and"what is the role of language reflected in what is going on", the research interprets the relationship between the speeches and interaction. Finally, it explains the relationship between discourse and social factors in the light of social-historical context and power relations in discourse. The main findings are: (1) Bush and Obama choose material processes to review the tough presidential election; to express their sincere thanks to the family members, supporters; to interpret the policies on politics, economy and national security; to appeal to different parties and the American people to construct America. They choose relational processes to establish interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the hearers on the one hand, to construct the American people's confidence to review"American Dream"on the other hand. (2) In the course of speech, Bush and Obama use declarative clauses so as to sound more real, objective and convincing; they use imperative clauses to appeal to the hearers directly and arouse their interests and passion to understand their purposes on the one hand, they establish and embody close relationship between them and the hearers, express their identities and statuses on the other hand. (3) Bush and Obama use the high degree modalities"will"and"can"to clarify the future policies on politics, economy, national security, to appeal to the American people to stand with him, and to rebuild the American people's confidence and ability to make change. (4) The use of inclusive"we"makes the speakers stand with the hearers, who have the same goals, mission and interests. The use of inclusive"we"can shorten the distance between the speakers and the hearers, which sound intimate. In addition, the use of"I"shows the identities, thoughts and attitudes of Bush and Obama.The contribution of this research can be outlined in two perspectives: (1) The integrated framework testifies the feasibility of exploring the hidden ideologies and power relations in Bush's and Obama's presidential victory speeches. (2) In order to investigate the hidden ideologies and power relations, it needs an interdisciplinary study. This research makes an attempt to describe the linguistic features and to explore the social-historical context of political discourse, which can reflect the interdisciplinarity in CDA.