Obama’s Speech On Bin Laden’s Death: From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical linguists believe that language is not something neutral, but a vehicleembedded with certain ideologies and asymmetric power relations. As a new branchof discourse analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis aims at exploring the relationshipsbetween language, ideology and power. Recent decades witnesses a rapiddevelopment in the study of CDA which has been applied to the analysis of variousdiscourses, especially news and political ones.The killing of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of global terrorism, is a strikingevent of the world in2011. According to CNN television in America, soon after thisevent, Obama delivered a speech to American audiences announcing the death ofOsama Bin Laden. It is not difficult to observe that there are a great number oflinguistic devices employed as well as certain ideologies embedded in the speech.With Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as its analytical framework and Halliday’sSFG as its operating instrument the thesis strives to conduct a Critical DiscourseAnalysis of Obama’s speech on bin Laden’s death. In practical analysis, Halliday’stheory of three metafunctions (namely ideational, interpersonal, and textual function)is employed as analytic tools to analyze the formal features of the speech, so as toprobe into what linguistic devices are adopted by Obama and what persuasive effectsdoes he obtain. And meanwhile, under the Fairclough’s framework, the present studyalso focuses on the relationship between discourse and discourse producer as well asthe social factors influencing the production of text.Based on the analysis, the present study reaches the following conclusions:1. In order to achieve his political target and to convey his ideology to theaudiences, Obama uses a tremendous amount of linguistic devices in the speech,which are respectively manifest in the three metafunctions (more specifically,presented by the choices of transitivity, modality, personal pronouns and thematicstructures). 2. Obama’s discourse substantially does ideological work, and conveys powerrelations. As is shown in the analysis, the discourse of the speech serves for thepolitical purpose, and language plays an important role in persuading and controllingaudiences, as well as in having an impact upon the public’s ideologies.3. CDA should primarily be positioned in a social-cultural milieu, which caneffectively explore the power relations and power struggle hidden behind thelanguage. According to the analysis, for instance, the struggle between the DemocraticParty and the Republican Party in America for political power and for public supportis one of the most crucial social factors which determine the production of thisspeech.