As one of the most common and essential ways through which messages orinformation about one nation is released and disseminated to the whole world,political speeches delivered by top leaders of a nation virtually play an important partin international communication.With the aim of investigating the dialectical relations existed between language andideology, this thesis makes a tentative qualitative study of six speeches delivered byU.S. political leaders within a time span of15years since1997in interculturalcontext by applying the framework of Halliday’ Systemic Functional Grammar andFairclough’s three-dimensional model. The main purpose is to uncover the underlyingideology in selected speeches and expound the way how these political leadersachieve the goal of persuading the audience into believing their political ideas.The research finds that political speeches delivered in intercultural context is notfree from ideology and value. A relatively positive impression of the United Statesand negative impression of China are created by U.S. political leaders with delicatelanguage use. America takes great pride in the achievements of its own country, whileChina, seen as a potential threat to its supremacy around the world, is still on its wayto become a well-off, freer and more open country. Meanwhile, with the rapiddevelopment of China, the U.S. government also intends to foster a better andbeneficial relationship with China.The findings of the research will be of certain help for the audiences and readers toidentify the embedded ideologies and power relations and judge the political stance ofthe speakers themselves. Besides, this thesis is also helpful for the teaching andlearning of English discourses by ways of enhancing the learners’ understanding ofthe discourses, thus improving their reading and writing ability. |