Proximization In Argumentative Discourse

In recent years,Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)has obtained some results in the field of language,especially these researches on relations of language,power and ideology.On the basis of "proximize" proposed by Chilton for the first time and his space theory,Professor Piotr Cap constructs Proximization Theory after researches and argumentations.As one of the emerging CDA theories,it is a pioneering theory with high originality.However,most of relevant researches on proximization theory focus on the discussion of independent statements,and there is few contrastive studies on argumentative discourses.This thesis takes the 2016 presidential election of the United States as data,which are regarded as the debates between two candidates.It involves two opposite discourse spaces and possesses a high research value.Considering the above and based on Professor Cap’s Proximization Theory,this thesis critically analyzes these three election debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election of the United States with the help of corpus searching tool AntConc.And it counts the frequency of three kinds of proximization strategies that are spatial proximization,temporal proximization and axiological proximization.Therefore,this thesis analyzes the characteristics and proximization effects embodied in their discourses respectively,and how these strategies legalize speeches of both two candidates.The research results indicate:1.Trump possesses a higher using frequency of spatial proximization than Hillary,and is more inclined to use those words that can represent outside-deictic-centre(ODC)entities,in which the words aiming at Hillary appear more frequently.However,Hillary prefers to use those words that can represent inside-deictic-center(IDC)entities,so she is easy to resonate with audience and close their distance.2.Trump also possesses a higher using frequency of temporal proximization than Hillary,and both two sides prefer using those words and grammatical structures indicating threats extending,suggesting that those threats from ODC territory may occur at any time in the future,thereby the responses to those threats are emergent.3.The use of axiological proximization of Hillary is more frequent than Trump,which can be seen as a reflection of the compensatory mechanism of axiological proximization.In other words,the axiological proximization is restored by an increase to make up for a decline in spatial-temporal strategies.Meanwhile,it is obvious that both the speakers have higher using frequency of words representing positive values of IDC than negative values of ODC.It indicates that the government and presidential candidates have to emphasize positive values and images for their people.4.During the debates,both two sides regard the other side as peripheral entity and element of ODC territory,therefore,the listeners will understand that upcoming threats are directly related to the opponent.So it strengthens the speaker’s legitimization and weakens the opponent’s credibility.In summary,Trump generally uses higher frequency of proximization strategies than Hillary,and they possess different characteristics as well as types of strategy using.Therefore,this thesis applies Proximization Theory to this argumentative discourse and makes a contrastive analysis,which further illuminates the explanatory power of this theory,and provides guidance for readers with strategies in debate competition,indicating the strong power of language.