Critical Discourse Analysis Of Obama’s Speech On Us Military Operation In Libya

Critical Discourse Analysis, also termed as Critical Linguistics, is a new branch derived from critical theory in modern linguistics. It absorbs the findings of scientific researches in many fields such as linguistics, psychology, sociology and etc and it attracts more and more attention from other different disciplines. It provides a kind of analytic method applicable to the analysis of a variety of discourses and its aim is to explore the relationship among language, the use of language and ideology. In this thesis, CDA is applied to the critical analysis of political discourse where the politician speaker tactically uses language to win the favorite responses of the audience. Political discourse is often employed by the politicians in political activities to persuade, control and induce the audience to accept their own ideologies. Thus, political discourse is well worth people’s attention and studies from different fields.Guided by the theories of Halliday’s Systemic-functional Grammar and Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Framework, taking into consideration the linguistic features of political speech and the historical-social background of a certain political event, this thesis conducts a critical analysis of the political speech addressed by US president Obama on March28th2011concerning the US military operation in Libya from the perspective of CDA. Attempting to explain the relationship among language, power and ideology from a macroscopic view, this thesis studies three research questions as follows:1. What ideology is imparted by the political speech addressed by Obama?2. In what way is the ideology of this political speech imparted to the audience?3. For what reason is the ideology imparted in that way?Framed by Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Framework, this study goes through three stages to answer the three questions. The first stage is description. At the first stage, the thesis mainly describes the linguistic features of the political speech in terms of three metafunctions in Systemic-functional Grammar, that is, experiential metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction. The second stage is interpretation. At this stage, the thesis is to interpret the presentation and production of these linguistic features based on the analytical results of the first stage. The third stage is explanation. At the third stage, the aim is to explain the way social context exerts its effect on the production of the speech by taking the historical, social, economical and political factors into consideration.Through the analysis of the speech, it is found that in spite of the truth that the military operation by U.S.A. in Libya is essentially aggressive and schemed from the perspective of America’s interests, Obama still manages to evade this truth and instill his ideology to the audience and win the supports of American people by arousing their hatred to Qaddafi and sympathy for the innocent people in Libya and reminding American people of the core interests and spirits of America. At the final part of the thesis, conclusions are reached as follows:1. Through the speech, Obama manages to instill into the audience the ideology that US military operation in Libya undertakes the justice and humanitarianism of the world and has gained great advance in stopping the humanitarian crisis and brutal repression by Qaddafi and his troops who has been tyranizing Libyan people and oppressing their fights for freedom for decades.2. A variety of language skills are wisely used by Obama to impart the ideology. For instances, lexical choices are made to describe the enemy and friends; different processes in transitivity system are adopted to describe different deeds and relationships; auxiliary verbs are carefully selected to evoke the audience sympathy and draw near the audience’s feeling; various styles of thematic progression are applied to guide the audience in his way of thinking.3. The reason why Obama delivers the speech in this way is to achieve his political purpose, that is, to gain the supports from American people. Delivering the speech in this way, Obama hides the aggressive nature of US military operation in Libya; delivering the speech in this way, Obama succeeds in arousing American people’s hatred to Qaddafi and sympathy for the innocent people in Libya; delivering the speech in this way, Obama covers up the true motivations of the military operation which are the political and economical interests of America.As to the co-relationship among Language, power and ideology, this thesis is a proof of the view, which is: Language itself is not powerful, but it is a crucial tool or method to express the ideology. Ideology expressed by language is used by the language users to grasp, maintain and control power. The source of power is not from language, however, language has its impact on power.To sum up, this thesis demonstrates that CDA is an effective method for critical analysis to conceal the ideology and power hidden in the discourse. It illustrates a wealth of advanced skills of language use and helps the reader to gain a better understanding of political discourse. In addition, this thesis can serve as an assistance to improve people’s ability of critical reading and thinking.