An Analysis Of American Racial Discrimination From The Perspective Of CDA

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) first put forward by Fowler, Hodge and Kress in Language and Control (1979) is a method to study the relationship between language power and ideology. It seeks through the minute details of linguistic structure in the light of the social and historical situation of text to display the value, belief and ideology which are encoded in the language and which are invisible by most people.The performance of CDA is based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which proposes that language as the product of social process can both reflect and influence the society. Halliday considers that language as a social signal system can express meanings in the social and culture background. Almost every culture in the world can be found out the general metafunctions, i.e., ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. That is the Halliday's three metafunction of language. In Halliday's point of view, the discourse is the basic unite in people's interaction. Out of the similar idea of discourse and Hallidays' detailed and specific analytical approach of language, SFG is taken by critical discourse analysts as the theoretical and methodological base of CDA.The present thesis picks up the 44th American President Barack Obama's speech on racial issues as the critical study object. In the beginning, the thesis begins with a brief introduction to the general background of the material and the reason of choosing it as study object. It also provides detailed description of its theoretical principles:Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar which is the guidance of analyzing process.The uniqueness of the thesis lies on the corpus—Barack Obama's speech on race issue A More Perfect Union. It is well known that in America, racial issues are historically subtle and complex, especially the relationship between White Americans and African Americans (also black American in this thesis). After the dream of first black president came true, Obama's speech on racial issues which won him most votes in Pennsylvania is worth studying. The present study analyzes the speech from Halliday's three metafunctions, to display Obama's application of language strategies; and explains the purposes of applying language strategies from social and historical factors.From the study the author finds that Obama preferred material process, which took advantage of American's desire for government's actions to change stagnant economy and unsteady social situation. He frequently used the first personal pronoun "I" to show that he is the one who stands on the side of the people who call for change and hope for a fairer and more democratic world. However, he used much more low value finite operators to state specific racial problems so as to avoid answering the sensitive questions directly and making clear his specific plans.Through the study, the author makes the conclusion that Obama's speech on racial issues, and his effusive words which express his opinion on this topic are not so encouraging and positive as many audience thought. Race is just once more manipulated by politician to confuse supporters and voters. In addition, the finding of the study suggests that more attention should be paid to the statements of the so-called "the history rewriters". Surface language meanings can't be considered as a standard to judge speaker's ideology and purpose; however language structures can do that. This thesis once more reminds us that we need strengthen our critical consciousness so as to distinguish what is right and what is wrong.