The Ideology In Anglo-American Courtroom Discourse

Ideology consists of a series of ideas and thoughts which are closely related with our daily life. Critical Discourse Analysis analyzes discourse and aims to reveal ideology embodied in discourse. Analyzing discourse is analyzing the ideological meaning of language. According to Teun A.van Dijk, an ideology is the fundamental cognitive beliefs which are social representations shared by social members. He analyzes ideology from the aspects involved in the study of cognition, society and discourse. This is socio-cognitive approach (SCA) to Critical Discourse Analysis.The present paper uses Teun A.van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach (SCA) to analyze ideology in Anglo-American courtroom discourse. The paper first gives a brief overview of studies of ideology in discourse abroad and at home and then simply introduces the origins, development of Critical Discourse Analysis and main approaches to Critical Discourse Analysis. Teun A.van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach will be elaborated specifically. The main body of this paper is Chapter four and Chapter five. Chapter four talks about the ideology according to four aspects:the schema of ideology, ideology as social cognition, social functions of ideology and ideology in the society. It focuses on the manifestations of ideology in discourse, which are explored from five aspects:surface structure, semantic level, rhetoric level, pragmatic level and dialogical interaction level. Chapter five is a case study. It will analyze ideology in the courtroom discourse of a labor dispute lawsuit in the light of Teun A.van Dijk’s socio-cognitive. The last part is the conclusion. After the analysis, the author gets the conclusion that ideologies of trial participants are different because of their social position, education level and identity.