Critical Discourse Analysis Of Remarks On Wikileaks In American Press Conferences

Speeches on press conferences, combining the features of both media discourse and political discourse, are certain channels through which ideology is communicated and promoted. The speeches that this paper deals with as a specific type of discourse are the remarks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. And they were made by the White House spokespersons in the press conferences during the period when WikiLeaks was the hot topic. Based on the previous researches, this paper adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, namely text, discursive practice and social practice, as the overall guidance, in combination with Peccei’s Pragmatics and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, to analyze the relationship between speeches on the press conferences and ideology. It is found that in the dimension of text and discursive practice, what the spokespersons tried to embed in people’s mind was the ideology that the actions taken by WikiLeaks were disgraceful, irresponsible and illegal, while the actions taken by the US government were meritorious and at the service of worldwide people. And the reasons for doing so are analyzed in the dimension of social practice. And these reasons include protecting the interests of American ruling classes, satisfying American people’s desire to pursue heroism, and meeting the needs of the diplomatic strategies of the United States.