Approaching Grammatical Metaphor Of President Obama's Weekly Radio Address: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a research method was brought up by R.Fowler et al in Language and Control, (R.Fowler et al, 1979) aiming at revealing the influence of ideology over language, the counter-influence of language over ideology, and the ways in which the influence stems from social structure and power relation and then work for them. The major methodological basis of CDA is Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics, because they are both concerned with the phenomenon that language as a"social semiotic"constructs the society while being constrained by it at the same time. In regard of such kind of connection, this thesis adopts Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's grammatical metaphor in his systemic-functional linguistics as the theoretical basis to analyze American President Obama's Weekly Radio Address, trying to explore the relationship among ideology, power and discourse in political discourses by analyzing grammatical metaphors adopted in the data from the perspective of CDA, trying to verify that the use of grammatical metaphors in political discourses is ideologically motivated, and attempting to find out how President Obama tries to achieve his political purposes through language choices under the influence of ideology, social context and power relation. The present thesis adopts Fairclough's three-dimensional model: description, interpretation and explanation as the overall framework. Firstly, the author applies Halliday's theory of grammatical metaphor to the analysis and description of the grammatical metaphors used in the data in terms of two types: ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor respectively at the first stage. Secondly, based on the identified grammatical metaphors, the author interprets the production of the grammatical metaphors in terms of what's going on, who's involved, in what relations and what role language plays at the second stage. Finally, the author goes further to explore the social context and power relation to identify their influence over the choice of grammatical metaphors.The present thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction which includes the research background, research objectives and significance, together with the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two presents a brief review of the previous studies on critical discourse analysis both at home and abroad. It also examines the relationship among ideology, power and discourse. Chapter Three elucidates the theoretical basis: Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's theory of grammatical metaphor and methodological ground of the thesis. It also briefs on the data collection. Chapter Four carries out the first stage of analysis by identifying and analyzing two types of grammatical metaphors: ideational metaphor and interpersonal metaphor. Chapter Five includes two parts in which the analysis moves on to the second and the third stage: interpretation and explanation. The author interprets the identified grammatical metaphors answering the four questions: what's going on, who's involved, in what relations and what role language plays in the first part, and then fulfills the second part in terms of social context and power relation. Chapter Six is a conclusion, in which the author summarizes the new findings, points out the limitations and provides suggestions for further study.The analysis finally proves that the adoption and realization of grammatical metaphors are ideologically guided which is in turn determined by the social structure including social context and power relation. The grammatical metaphors identified in President Obama's addresses are aimed to meet his political purposes either to make his statements sound objective thus convincing or to indicate his authority and power as the President so as to narrow the distance from the people, win people's understanding, arouse people's supports and establish people's confidence.