A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Hillary Clinton's Race Speeches For The 2016 Presidential Election

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)is a new but influential branch of discourse analysis.CDA is interdisciplinary.It mainly analyzes mass discourses such as news reports,public speeches and other non-literature discourses.CDA attaches importance to the analysis of production,distribution and consumption of discourse through its social context and historical background and aims to explore the relationship among language,power and ideology.By analyzing the surface structure of language,CDA aims to figure out the hidden ideology and the way in which it influences people.So far,there are many researches on news discourses from the perspective of CDA.However,the analysis of political speech is relatively little.Actually,applying CDA to the research of political speech could unveil power abuse,mind control,inequality,sexism and other social problemsunder the elaborately organized language.Hillary Clinton,the former Secretary of the State and the former first lady,declaimed that she would run for the 2016 American presidential election on April 12 th,2015.This is her second run at the White House after 2008 and she becomes the first female presidential candidate in American history.It casts a great impact on both the United States and the whole world.Therefore,Hillary's speeches are undoubtedly worth analyzing.Based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar and Fariclough's ThreeDimensional Model,this thesis will take Hillary Clinton's race speeches for 2016 presidential campaign as the examples to conduct a critical discourse analysis.Since these two theories are complementary and compatible with each other,the author will integrate them together to analyze Hillary's race speeches from the perspectives of text,discursive practice and social practice.This thesis shows that language is an effective tool for the speaker to convey his ideology.Language used in political speeches appears to be objective and impartial.However,the unequal power relation is beneath the language.So political speeches are inevitably persuasive and provocative.Besides,the analysis of political speeches is needed to take social context and historical background into consideration.By revealing the implicit political intentions and the hidden ideology,this thesis will enable the audience to understand how speakersdeliberately employ all kinds of linguistic devices to influence the audience's minds and to accomplish their political purposes.Therefore,this thesis is helpful to improve English learners' sensitivity of language,evoke the consciousness of critical thinking and cultivate the ability of linguistic judgement.