Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Racial Issues In Trump’s Speeches

Since running for the presidency of the United States in 2016 to take office,when Trump talked about the related issues of race in many public speeches,he always consciously or unconsciously revealed his political tendency of exclusivism.Therefore,this thesis focuses on the historical development and the evolution trend of racial issues of the United States,then selects ten political speeches with racial issues as the main content from Trump’s presidential election in 2016 to the election in 2020 as the research data.On this basis,according to the discourse theory and with the help of Corpus,this thesis will analyze what language strategies Trump uses for constructing racial discourse,and reveals the ideological and power behind the discourse.Under the guidance of Critical Discourse Analysis,this thesis attempts to analyze the text practice、discourse practice and social practice of Trump’s speech based on Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Framework and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar.As a theory of discourse analysis,Critical Discourse Analysis(CD A)is based on linguistic analysis and tries to reveal the hidden ideology and power behind the discourse.Critical Discourse Analysis is developed from the concept of "critical linguistics" put forward by Fowler and other scholars in the 1970s.Then in 1989,Fairclough put forward the Three-dimensional Framework of discourse analysis,including text,discourse practice and social practice.In the political discourse,Critical Discourse Analysis mainly uses Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics as a linguistic tool to explore the language strategies adopted by political actors to interpret their political statements and propositions to influence the audience’s choices as much as possible from three functions:ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function.Firstly,start from the text to clarify the content and the features of the speech by refining the keywords and then exploring how Trump establishes the relationship with other people by analyzing the use of modal verbs and personal pronouns in the speech so as to promote the realization of his political intention.From the beginning of the election campaign to take office,Trump’s speeches on race always focus on border security and economic recovery.Trump constantly stresses the importance of immigration reform and the border wall for maintaining the border security,and promises to create employment opportunities for the American people,especially the white people of lower and middle class.At the same time,Trump also uses different modal verbs and personal pronouns to express his attitude towards different audiences:On the one hand,to win the support of American people for his policies by elaborating the concerns of Americans.On the other hand,regarding illegal immigrants as the main source of violent crimes in the United States,and excluding them from "American people".It reveals Trump’s strong racial exclusion and his determination to implement the plan of immigration reform.Second is to explore how Trump,as an important subject in political speeches,uses discourse strategies to maintain the legitimacy of his policy from the perspective of discourse practice during different periods,and to explore Trump ’s political stance of racial discrimination and racial prejudice on race issues.No matter when Trump is in the election or after taking office,he always shows a great interest and concern in racial issues.In the speech,Trump promotes his policy implementation by playing different subjects.He is not only as president of the United States to exert his authority,but also as a member of the American people to shorten the distance from the audience.At the same time,Trump uses different language strategies to achieve his political intention in different stages of his speech,showing his political position of racial discrimination and prejudice.Lastly,from the perspective of social practice,it reveals the relationship between power and ideology about race behind Trump’s discourse.Trump uses discourse to show his authority as president of the United States,which forms the power relationship with the people and makes people accept the implementation of his policies.Meanwhile,he uses discourse to show his ideology of xenophobic and racist on racial issues and to exert influence and control on the audience.