A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Political Speeches By The Former U.S. President Bill Clinton

Critical Discourse Analysis(shortened as CDA)first proposed by critical linguist Fairclough(1989)stems from Critical linguistics.CDA focuses on the relation between language and ideology as well as language and power.Discourses are social practices in the first place.Besides,they are the carriers of language in specific social contexts and they convey information from particular angles.Political discourses win critical linguists,affection because they contain unequal power relation and ideological conflicts in nature.Political speeches are typical political discourses through which statesmen convey specific political ideologies and achieve political goals.Political speeches by US presidents have always been taking the center stage and their linguistic features and figures of speech such as metaphor are the most commonly examined aspects.Generally speaking,CDA-oriented studies of Clinton’s speeches are rather limited.So the present study,based on Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Model of CDA and Halliday’s three metafunctions of SFG,chooses his Democratic Nomination Speech(1992),First Inaugural Address(1993),Second Inaugural Address(1997)and Farewell Speech(2001)as the source of data to analyze the ideational,interpersonal and textual metafunctions whichare realized through the transitivity processes,mood,pronoun use,modality,theme/rheme pattern and thematization.Besides,the contents,subjects and their relations as well as the role of language in the production of the speeches are interpreted to uncover the ideologies and power relations.Through relating the speeches to their contexts,the roots of the ideologies and power relations are explained too.The SFG-based analysis discovers the following features.In the transitivity processes,material and relational processes enjoy the highest rate.Mental and verbal processes occur occasionally,and behavioral and existential processes are hardly used.Material processes mainly describe the harsh situations America and Americans are confronted with and the actions that have been taken or should be taken.Relational processes directly express Clinton’s beliefs and political stands,and mental processes indicate Clinton’s attitudes,emotions and so on.Verbal processes are direct or indirect citations which aim at deepening the influence on the audiences.According to the mood distribution,declaratives occur most frequently,imperatives and interrogatives rank second and third respectively,and exclamation is off Clinton’s choice.Such choices highlight Clinton’s role of information-giver.Generally speaking,these speeches show great affection for the first person pronouns.The first person singulars help to construct a strong sense of self existence and authority,while the first person plurals intend to weaken and even cover the unequal power relation.The modality use indicates that high and medium value modal auxiliaries are favored by Clinton.High value modal auxiliaries reflect strong subjectivity,coerciveness and indubitability,which further highlight his higher social position and stronger power.Low value modal auxiliaries are relatively objective and can make the commitments and appeals acknowledged and accepted more easily.In the theme/rheme pattern,vocatives appear frequently as the interpersonal themes.Textual themes are mostly conjunctions used to achieve cohesion and coherence.Circumstances are always chosen by Clinton as the marked topical themes.The thematization shows that parallel,derived and juxtaposed patterns are utilized frequently.The choices of theme/rheme pattern and thematization make the speeches cohesive in their form and meaning to influence and control the audiences powerfully.With respect to the ideologies and power relations,these speeches show Clinton’s attitudes and stance on America’s economic stagnation,low income,high unemployment and poverty rates,declining education quality,massive fiscal deficit,racism,social unrest,medical issue,social welfare problems and so on.Besides,these speeches also reveal the hegemony that America is the leading power around the world and its ideas of freedom and liberty should be accepted and copied.The power relation between Clinton and the audiences constructed in these speeches is unequal.It’s the relation between information-giver and information-receivers and between the governor and the governed.The expressed ideologies and constructed power relation are socially,historically and politically rooted.The almost half-century Cold War greatly consumed America.Most of its attention and energy were poured into national defense,which slackened the social and economical development.As a result,various problems occurred and worsened gradually.The unequal power relation is the result of social and political factors.The current study has its significance.First and foremost,it proves the feasibility and effectiveness of CDA in the analysis of ideology and power relation in political discourses,and enriches the analysis of political discourses as well.Additionally,it is meaningful to improve people’s understanding of US society to a certain extent and to remind discourse consumers to critically accept them because they carry America color and represent the interests of specific social groups.Moreover,it can also enlighten discourse consumers to improve the capability of expressing themselves through appropriate language choices.