| Critical discourse analysis(short for CDA)is a discipline in the field of discourse analysis and originates in the 1970s.It not only attaches great importance to the surface features and meanings of language,but also focuses on exploring the relationships among language,power and ideology behind discourse.CDA is often used to analyze official documents,news,public speeches,etc.Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ’s Christmas speech is one of the public speeches.This thesis selects a series of Christmas speeches broadcast by Queen Elizabeth II from 2000 to 2019 as research corpus and combines qualitative and quantitative analysis together.Based on Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Framework(text,discourse practice and social practice),taking Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar(short for SFG)as an analytical tool,this thesis aims to explore how does Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ use language to convey ideology and to further explain the relationships among language,power and ideology.The results reveal that the language features of the Queen’s Christmas speeches mainly reflect in three aspects.Firstly,the Queen uses a lot of material processes and passive sentences to enhance the objectivity of the discourses.Secondly,the use of indicative mood and the first personal pronouns shortens the distance between the Queen and the British people and then builds an intimate relationship between them.Finally,the Queen employs marked themes and lexical repetitions to emphasize important information and express her positive attitudes toward the future.Besides,political,historical and cultural factors also influence the Queen’s language usage.As for the political factor,the Queen never talks about politics in her Christmas speeches as she is the symbol of national unity.One of her duties is to ensure the stability of the political situation.In the cultural aspect,the Queen often mentions the doctrine of Christianity because Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birth and the most important festival in a year.In the historical aspect,Britain is a country with a long history and suffers wars since ancient time.The Queen reminds the British people to remember history in speeches,which can stimulate people’s patriotic emotions and make her speeches more contagious.Based on the above results,this thesis finds that discourse features like transitivity,mood,modality,passive voice,thematic structures and many other factors are all influenced by language function and the ideology of speakers.The social function of language and the purpose of language users determine how language should be used.And the speakers’attitudes,thoughts and views can also be explored through language.What’s more,speakers can sublimate their thoughts through language,they can also impress the audience and gain more support from them. |
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