A Comparative Study Of The Inaugural Addresses Of President Trump And Obama From CDA Perspective

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)holds that ideology is universally present in language,thus language serves as an important means to achieve social control and power relations.President Obama and Trump have been widely regarded as two most contrasting presidents in the modern American history.The former is a political star who has a natural gift for public speaking and has a very high support rate,while the latter is a successful businessman who has a strong sense of entertainment and came to power amid controversy.The personalities and speaking styles are quite different between them.Obama’s first inaugural address in 2009,widely regarded as one of the most successful presidential inaugural speeches in American history,is a masterpiece of energy,confidence and power.By contrast,Trump’s inaugural speech in 2017 was described as "one of the most ominous inaugural addresses ever" by historians and speechwriters.This short and defiant inaugural address provoked an international public outcry.From the perspective of CDA,this thesis conducts a comparative analysis of the two inaugural addresses in different styles so as to sum up the similarities and differences of their linguistic features and language strategies,and further explore the ideology behind the language,so that readers can clearly grasp how they ingeniously use language to convey political intentions.This thesis combines Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Theoretical Framework with Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar,and makes a detailed comparative analysis from the three dimensions of text,discursive practice and social practice:(1)In the dimension of text,summarize the distribution and characteristics of the three metafunctions in the inaugural speeches,with a view to discovering the similarities and differences of the linguistic features and language strategies adopted by the speakers.(2)Explore the functions of these language strategies and linguistic features in discursive practice,and reveal the political intentions and missions behind them.(3)As language comes from the context,the social and historical background will be taken into account in the dimension of social practice to explore the relationship between language,ideology and power behind the two speeches.The major findings are as follows:in terms of ideational function,the distributions of various transitivity processes in the two inaugural speeches are roughly the same.Both Obama and Trump make extensive use of material processes,relational processes and mental processes to strengthen the objectivity and persuasiveness of speeches.From the perspective of interpersonal function,first,the distribution of the three modal auxiliaries with high value,median value and low value in Obama’s speech is relatively uniform,which is an effective language strategy to use both hard and soft tactics,showing the government’s friendliness and affinity and emphasizing the government’s authority.However,Trump makes more use of median-value modal auxiliaries than high-value and low-value ones,as a way to make the speech content more neutral and avoid controversy.Second,Obama and Trump mainly use declarative sentences to show the authority of what the speakers say.The quite different part is the use of imperatives in the two speeches.Obama is more adept at using imperative sentences to unite people and unite the world.However,only one imperative appears in Trump’s address,which reveals his willingness to unite the community is not as strong as Obama’s,indicating Trump’s robust attitude.Third,as for personal pronouns,both Obama and Trump frequently use the first-person plural pronouns such as "we","us","our" to represent America,the American government and the American people to narrow the distance between the president and the public.In addition,Trump uses the second personal pronouns in his speech much more frequently than Obama,declaring the populism of "American first".As far as textual function is concerned,both Obama and Trump use marked themes for emphasis.Obama chooses marked themes to emphasize the strength of the American spirit,while Trump employs marked themes to emphasize the current gloomy of the United States and the changes that will take place under his leadership.To sum up,Obama’s inaugural address is very cautious and consistent with the general characteristics of political speeches.His speech is more optimistic and ideologically deeper with the theme of hope and happiness,establishing a positive political and social image.While Trump delivers the speech relying more on his intuition,which is the epitome of his non-politician preaching.The ideology behind his address is consistent with his rebellious argument during the campaign,consolidating his bold and brave image.This thesis verifies the application value of CDA in discourse analysis and plays a guiding role in the language teaching practice.It enhances readers’ language awareness and improves their ability to appreciate and criticize language use.At the same time,this thesis contributes to understanding the essence of the presidential speeches in depth,which has important social and historical significance for understanding the current situation in the United States,thus providing a reference for readers to explore Chinese and foreign political discourses with a critical thinking.