Critical Discourse Analysis Of Speeches Delivered By U.S. Leaders In Chinese Universities

At present, there are more studies focusing on investigating U.S. officials’speeches delivered in Chinese universities. Most studies investigate U.S. officials’speeches from the perspective of interpersonal meaning, principle of politeness,stylistic analysis and metaphorical mechanism, but few conduct from the angle ofcritical discourse analysis (CDA). In fact, discourse is not a transparent medium but asystem encompasses ideology and power. In this way, investigating U.S. officials’speeches with the theory of CDA is effective to disclose the hidden ideology andpower.This study applies Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and Halliday’sfunctional grammar to conduct critical discourse analysis of the speeches given byU.S. leaders in Chinese universities with the aim to find out linguistic features andhow U.S. leaders achieve ideal effect of speeches through those carefully-chosenlinguistic forms. Besides, socio-historical context, ideologies and power in thediscourses are also discussed.Through the analysis in both qualitative and quantitative terms, the authorachieves the following research results:Firstly, in the stage of description, the author analyzes the linguistic propertiesof the speeches from the realization of ideational, interpersonal and textual function.In the realization of ideational function, the author finds that American leadersallocate the proportion of different transitivity processes appropriately. Relational,material and mental processes are mostly used by them to make the contentssubstantial and emotional. Different keywords that have been emphasized also showwhat message they are eager to stress. The use of nominalization and passivizationguarantees the objectiveness and modesty of the speeches. In the realization ofinterpersonal function, it has been found that modal auxiliary verbs of different valuescan achieve different expressive effect. The use of a large amount of first personpronouns makes the tone of the speech friendly and sincere. Besides, a wide variety ofrhetoric devices have been employed to make the speeches vivid and appealing. In therealization of textual function, American leaders employ marked themes to stresscertain information, like time, places and person. And also, conjunctions used inspeeches string together the whole speeches, making the context coherent. Secondly, in the stage of interpretation, it has been found that American leadersuse ideational function to depict ‘what’s going on’, namely the concrete description ofevents. Besides, American leaders realize different subject positions and play differentroles interchangeably in the speeches. The successful realization of interpersonalfunction makes the speeches impressive, convincing and acceptable.Thirdly, in the stage of explanation, it has been found that these speeches aredelivered in a specific socio-historical context. Besides, power relations andideologies do exist in the speeches. The author finds that participants in the samediscoursal event are not in an equal position. The U.S. leaders occupy a moresubjective position by acting as the authoritative speakers, while the students are morepassive. It also has been found that U.S leaders still have reservations about China incertain issues like human rights and free markets. Moreover, they bear unfavorablesentiments towards North Korea and the Middle East.The present study is endowed with practical significance. Firstly, the studyinvestigates U.S. top officials’ speeches in Chinese universities from the perspectiveof CDA, which is meaningful. Secondly, the thesis will help college students tocultivate critical consciousness and improve their skills of delivering speeches.