A Critical Discourse Analysis Of First Person Subject Pronouns In Political Discourse

The American Presidential inaugural address is an important channel to present the newly elected President's attitudes towards national and international affairs,and it's an essential strategy for Presidents to construct ideologies and power relations.The adoption of the first person subject pronouns is a frequently appeared linguistic phenomenon in inaugural addresses.This research has conducted a critical discourse analysis of the first person pronouns in inaugural addresses.Under the theoretical framework of transitivity analysis,this research has answered the following three questions:1)how are the transitivity clauses with the first person pronouns as participants realized and distributed in inaugural addresses?And what are the pragmatic functions of the first person pronouns?2)how are the social representations reconstructed in the concrete context models in inaugural addresses?3)How are power relations and ideologies reproduced in inaugural addresses by transitivity clauses?To resolve these three research questions,this research has collected 7 transcript versions of American Presidents' inaugural addresses from year 1993 to year 2017.This research has adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies.By adopting the quantitative methodology,the research has calculated the distributed data.The distribution features of the transitivity clauses are counted.And the calculation of the propositions constructing different topics in inaugural addresses are also done by the quantitative methodology.By adopting the qualitative methodology,the research has identified the types of the transitivity clauses with the first person pronouns as participants,as well as the topics construed by the propositions in the transitivity clauses.In this process,the research has described the situational usages of the social representations by adopting van Dijk's sociocognitive approach.Through the combination of transitivity analysis and sociocognitive approach,the research has conducted a critical discourse analysis of the first personal pronoun in American Presidents' inaugural addresses.This research has drawn three major findings.Firstly,as for the distribution feature of the transitivity clauses,the pronoun "I" has participated in four types of transitivity clauses:verbal clauses(51.3%),material clauses(23.1%),mental clauses(12.8%)and relational clauses(12.8%).The pronoun "I" serves to emphasize the Presidents,social status and abilities,which shows the Presidents' positive faces.The pronoun "we" has mainly participated in four types of transitivity clauses:material clauses(58.8%),mental clauses(23.1%),relational clauses(10.4%)and verbal clauses(5.7%).The pronoun "we"functions to identify the Presidents with different social groups in one aspect,and functions to share responsibilities with the audience in another.Secondly,as for the reproduction of shared social representations,the Presidents subjectively model such social cognition like religious beliefs,Anerican creeds,national conditions and national development road.These personal mental models are based on the Presidents' and their work teams' knowledge on the audience.In another word,the Presidents have selected the relevant topics eonnected to the audience,and the contents in inaugural addresses are correspond to the audience's social representations.Thirdly,as for the reproduction of ideologies and power relations,the research has found that the transitivity clauses with the first person pronouns as participants have reconstructed the shared cultural beliefs,like religious beliefs and American creeds,and other evaluative beliefs like national conditions and development road.The construction of power relations is dependent on the influence or even control of the audience's mental models.Contrast to ordinary Americans,the Presidents represent the social groups holding more knowledge on the national conditions and development road.The Presidents continuously activate and reconstruct the shared social beliefs,and by then they influence and regular the general social practices of the ordinary Americans.In some cases,the Presidents adopt the pronoun "we" to mean the whole nation.In terms of international relations,the Presidents construct the national image as the defender of the international orders.They also attempt to expand the America creeds to other nations.This is a strategy to impact other nation's social cognition,and manifest the America's national power.Under the theoretical framework of transitivity analysis,this research has conducted a critical discourse analysis of the first person subject pronouns.The combination of transitivity analysis at the micro-linguistic level and sociocognitive approach at the macro-discursive level will provide a new theoretical framework for political discourse analysis and the personal pronouns in them.