A Study Of The Relationship Between Language And Ideology From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis aims to reveal the ideological information hidden in publicdiscourse as well as to explore the dialectical relationship between language and ideology.With the fast development of globalization, political speeches have drawn people’s muchattention. When we appreciate the passionate political speeches, people also start to calmlythink about the ideological information hidden in the magnificent language. Linguists havefound that the political speech has provided us an ideal material in which all kinds oflinguistic devices are subtly used by the speaker so as to influence or manipulate the ideologyof the audience. As a wise president as well as an excellent speaker, it never lacks ofhighlights in the American President Barack Obama’s political speeches. Beneath themeticulously chosen words, there is buried a wealth of information on ideology. This thesiswill conduct a thorough analysis of Obama’s victory speech from the perspective of criticaldiscourse analysis, in an attempt to unveil the ideological information hidden in the discourseand thus explore the dialectical interrelationship between language and ideology.As to the theoretical foundation, we regard Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as themainline, with Halliay’s systemic-functional grammar as the main analytical tool to developour analysis. According to Fairclough, discourse analysis composes of three stages:description, interpretation and explanation. In the first stage, Halliday’s systemic-functionalgrammar, especially the three metafunctions are served as the most effective tools. We have athorough analysis of President Obama’s victory speech from the perspective of threefunctional components—ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.Necessary data and typical examples are collected in this process, and the number as well asproportions of each functional component is well illustrated through tables. In theinterpretation stage, we match the specific linguistic features with the correspondingAmerican ideology to have a deep analysis of the relation between discourse, power andideology. In the last stage, we set the speech into the current American social-historicalbackground, and then we find two themes throughout Obama’s victory speech—solidarity andhope, thus reconfirm our subject that language is used to serve for its corresponding ideology.Through the analysis of Obama’s victory speech, we come to realize the dialecticalinterrelationship between language and ideology—language is the carrier of ideology andideology constructs through language. Hopefully through this thesis readers can cultivate thecritical awareness and also take a critical view to public discourses as well as politicalspeeches.