Barrack Obama's Speeches

ISSN 1798-4769
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 254-261, May 2010
© 2010 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.1.3.254-261 A Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama‟s
Speeches
Junling Wang
School of Foreign Languages, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China
Email: [e-mail]
Abstract—The Critical Discourse Analysis is often applied to analyze political discourse including the public speech, in which the speaker wins favorite response from the audience. This paper, based on Critical Discourse
Analysis theory and Systematic Functional Linguistics, analyzes Barack Obama’s presidential speeches mainly from the point of transitivity and modality, in which we can learn the language how to serve the ideology and power. Moreover, we can have a better understanding of the political purpose of these speeches.
Index Terms— Critical Discourse Analysis, transitivity, modalit y

I. INTRODUCTION
Critical linguistic is also called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It first originated in Britain in 1980s when the work Language and Control was published.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse a nalytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social equality (Van Dijk, 1985).
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M.A.K. Halliday), an Australian linguist, developed an internationally influential grammar model－the Systemic Functional Grammar (also called Systemic Functional Linguistics). It is the main foundation of Critical Discourse Analysis as well as other theories in pragmatics.
The object of CDA is public speech, such as advertisement, newspaper, politic al propagandas, official documents,

References: Halliday, M. A. K.( 1979). Linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of William Golding‟s The Inheritors [2] Van Dijk, (1985). A Handbook of Discourse Analysis London Academic Press Limited. Volumn 4. [3] Cheng Yumin.(2007).An Analysis of Style Features of Inaugural Speeches Given by American Presidents Based on the Functional Theory of Han Lide [4] Dai Weihua, Gao Jun.(2002). A Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory Comment and Examples Analysis. Foreign Language Issue 6.P 85-88. [5] Hu Zhuanglin.(1988). A Course of Linguistics. Peking: Peking University Press. [6] Lin Wei,Yang Yuchen.(2007). English Discourse Analysis. Shanghai：Fu Dan University Press. [7] Luo Li.(2007).A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Political Speech. Science and Education Collection P193-194。 [8] Wei Fang.(2005).Language Feature Analysis and Translation Method of Political Speeches [9] Xiong Li.(2004).A Study of Kennedy‟s Writing Style from Words of His Inaugural Speech. Journal of Southwest National University, Issue 6 [10] Xu Xiaoxia.(2008).A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sino-American Political News Report. From the thesis of a master. Shan Dong Normal University.