Abstract

The current president of United States is Barack Hussein Obama, who is the first African American to be in power. He is not only a politician, but also a remarkable orator. His success in the two presidential election is mainly attributed to his extraordinary oratory. During the eight years, Obama faced with a large number of issues. Thus, the author tries to use Critical discourse analysis to analyze Obama’s speech.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a kind of interdisciplinary research method to the study of discourse, which views language as a form of social practice. This paper firstly introduces Barack Obama and the meaning of delivering the weekly radio address. Then the author did a brief introduction of critical discourse analysis and the weekly radio address. And analyzed the language strategy used in weekly radio address by some examples. Moreover, the author used critical discourse analysis to conduct an ideology analysis by examining the language strategy used in Obama’s speech including lexical choice, relational process, modality and the art of language. Through the analysis, it is found that Obama uses plenty of language strategy to win the public’s trust and support and show values of Obama’s government.

Key words: critical discourse analysis; weekly radio address;

          Obama; language strategy

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1.Introduction-1

1.1 Research background-1

1.2 The aim of the paper-2

1.3The structure of the paper.3

2.Previous Study on Obama’s Address-3

2.1 Studies abroad-4

2.2 Studies at home-4

3. Theoretical Basis-5

4. Weekly Radio Address-6

4.1 Introduction of weekly radio address-6

4.2 The language strategy used in Obama’s weekly radio address-9

5. The Analysis of the President Obama’s Weekly Radio Address-12

5.1 Lexical choice-13

5.2 Relational process-14

5.3 Modality-17

5.4 The art of language-19

6. Conclusion-20

Reference-23