小布什伊拉克战争演讲的批评语篇分析

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Chapter One Introduction

Contents

Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………….i

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii

摘要…………………………………………………………………………………......iii

Chapter One Introduction .............................................................................................. 1

1.1 Background of the Study .................................................................................. 1

1.1.1 Theoretical Background of the Study ..................................................... 1

1.1.2 Social Background of Study ................................................................... 2

1.2 Aims of the Study ............................................................................................. 3

1.3 Organization of the Thesis ................................................................................5

Chapter Two Literature Review .................................................................................... 6

2.1 General Description .......................................................................................... 6

2.2 The Development of Critical Discourse Analysis ............................................ 8

2.3 Theoretical Foundations of CDA ....................................................................1 0

2.4 Key Notions in Critical Discourse Analysis ................................................... 1 2

2.4.1 The Notion of “Language” in CDA ......................................................1 2

2.4.2 The Notion of “Literacy” in CDA ........................................................ 1 3

Chapter Three Theoretical Framework of the Thesis .................................................. 1 5

3.1 The Concept of Power .................................................................................... 1 5

3.2 The Concept of Ideology ................................................................................ 1 7

3.3 Readers’ Role in CDA Theory ........................................................................ 1 8

Chapter Four A Critical Discourse Analysis of George W. Bush’s Iraq War Speeches2 1

4.1The Reason of Choosing the Two Speeches of George W. Bush .................... 2 1

4.2 The Intentional Blur of Power ........................................................................ 2 2

4.3 The Delimitation of “We” and “They” ........................................................... 2 4

4.3.1 Delimitation by Means of Lexical Choices .......................................... 2 4

4.3.2 The Use of Political Pronouns .............................................................. 2 9

4.4 The Use of Hidden Presuppositions ............................................................... 3 1

4.5 The Control of the Information .......................................................................3 4

Chapter Five Conclusion ............................................................................................. 3 9

5.1 Major Findings of the Study ........................................................................... 3 9

5.2 Limitations of this Thesis ............................................................................... 3 9

5.3 Suggestions for Future Research .................................................................... 4 0

Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 4 1

A Critical Discourse Analysis of President Bush’s Iraq War Speeches

Appendices .................................................................................................................. 4 4

Appendix A. George W. Bush’s March 19, 2003 Speech ........................……….44

Appendix B. George W. Bush’s July 17, 2006 Speech .........................................48

在读期间公开发表的论文 ......................................................................................... 50

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

1.1.1 Theoretical Background of the Study

Nowadays people realize that language is not as simple as some people understand

it as a tool of communication. Its appearance, development and change are far more

complicated and deeply rooted in the social background. And in return, language is an

important factor that shapes the society by shaping people’s ways of thinking and

learning about the world. The research of language is inseparable from the study of

social rules. Traditional linguists observe languages as self-contained, self-regulating,

and quite arbitrary in its origin and its relations with the non-linguistic world. Since

1970s, the critical linguistics has become a new perspective for language researchers to

observe the relationship between social factors, especially social power, social ideology

and language use. Just as Roger Fowler (1979) puts it, language is not neutral, but a

highly constructive mediator. Language is a powerful tool of social influence, and

political language is usually essential in the carrying out of power in the organizations

of all types. We understand things as they are described in conversations and debates.

This is why it is said that Confucius, when asked what he will do if he were appointed

to govern a country, replies, “The first thing I would do is to fix the language.” Morris

(1949: 214) noted, “Sharing a language with other persons provides the subtlest and

most powerful of all tools for controlling the behavior of these other persons to one’s

advantage.” The advocators of critical linguistics or critical discourse analysis claim that

the researching method of general linguistics which concentrates on the internal

structure of languages themselves is far from enough. They insist that languages study

be put in the wider social environment. Then many linguists accept the point of view

and make unremitting efforts to develop the newly-born theory into a systematic study.

As for critical linguistic research in China, it is relatively lagged behind and so far

Chinese linguists have been devoted to introducing the theory to Chinese readers and

applying the theory to some research areas. In addition, traditional linguistics often

ignores the important role that the readers play. We must realize that being a reader or

an audience is an active and creative practice. Different readers may understand the

same discourse differently.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of President Bush’s Iraq War Speeches

1.1.2 Social Background of Study

The American war against Iraq starts in the year 2003, two years after the 9/11

terrorist attack. Merely analyzing the speeches released by President George W. Bush

during the Iraq war and believing what he says, we will find ourselves quite convinced

that the military attack of Iraq is not only justified but also necessary and we will show

great sympathy for the American government and American people who are forced to

fight against the threat from the terrorist Iraq. But when we reflect on the problem, we

will find that it’s not the least that simple.

Some argue that the evil of terrorism is absolute and deserves a reciprocally

absolute treatment in response. That might appear to mean cruel military attack

according to the W. Bush’s doctrine, who claims that if you harbor terrorists, you’re a

terrorist; if you aid and instigate terrorists, you’re a terrorist—and you will be treated

like one. But in fact, it will be hard to find anyone who accepts the doctrine that massive

bombing is the appropriate response to terrorist crimes—whether those of September 11,

or even worse ones. And unfortunately, we can find many such crimes. Moreover, there

is a principle of universality that we tend to adopt: if an action is right (or wrong) for

others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not follow the minimal moral level of

applying to themselves the standards they apply to others—more strictly, in

fact—plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response;

or of right and wrong, good and evil.

President George W. Bush wants his nation to vote for the war decision; the only

problem with making claims is that to some degree he must be backed up with evidence

in order to make his claims more convincing. As the Financial Times (2002) has

observed, “Members of parliament are uneasy about the lack of evidence supporting

statements that Iraq threatens the security of the west.” The Guardian and its sister

newspaper the Observer, on the liberal wing of mainstream politics, have cautioned that

the United States has “fail to show why yet another American war should be supported”,

stating, “Any action against Saddam Hussein must be justified by evidence.” In March

2002, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov speaks to much of the world when he says

there was “still no evidence that Iraq has, or may have, weapons of mass destruction.”

Although President W. Bush has no adequate evidence that the 9/11 terrorist attack

directly has something to do with Iraq, he keeps describing the Saddam government as

Chapter One Introduction

terrorists or the backup force who trained the terrorists for the al Qaeda1. If we read the

book Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American

Perspectives written by Joseph V. Hughes, Jr. and Holly O. Hughes (2008), in which the

authors do a comparative study on how the American and British government justify

their decision to go to war with Iraq. In that book, the authors reveal the self-serving

intelligence faked up to link Saddam Hussein with the terrorist attacks. Regardless of

the truth and falsehood of the facts presented in this book, we can hear different sounds

from the speeches of President W. Bush. And this reminds us to keep cautious when

receiving information from the mass media of the policy made by the political authority

and to seek relatively objective conclusion by comparing different sources.

1.2 Aims of the Study

CDA aims at increasing our awareness of the social relations that are forged,

maintained, and reinforced by language use in order to change them, as is evident from

Fairclough’s (1989:1) statement of the goals of CDA as to “correct a widespread

underestimation of the significance of language in the production, maintenance, and

change of social relations of power and increase consciousness of how language

contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the

first step to emancipation.” In order to attain these goals, CDA proponents take a broad

interdisciplinary approach that combines linguistic methods with approaches form other

human science disciplines, such as sociology, politics, history and psychology.

As we all know, language used by politicians are obviously different from that of

common people as they have greater desire to maintain a particular social relation that is

to keep their audiences supporting them. They use a lot of trifle tricks to achieve their

objectives of influencing their audiences. Language use, especially political language, is

not as neutral as we ever think it to be because most people get known to some

politicians’ opinions through the mass media discourses such as newspapers and

television but these opinions delivered are subjectively processed. In a traditional way,

people regard language used in mass media as reporting things as they really are. As a

journalist, he or she collects facts, reports them objectively, and the newspaper presents

them fairly and without bias, in language which is designed to be unambiguous,

undistorting and agreeable to readers. This professional ethos is shared by all the news

media, press, radio and television, and it is certainly what the journalist claims in any

1al Qaeda: the base

A Critical Discourse Analysis of President Bush’s Iraq War Speeches

general statement on the matter. For example, the following statement by Andrew Neil,

the editor of the Sunday Times, introducing a book on the 1984-5 miners’ strike written

by that paper’s journalists, asserts that though a newspaper may have a clear editorial

position on some topic reported, that is reserved for the leader column, while the news

reporting itself, on other pages, is factual and unbiased. However, is it the real case? The

news reported by newspapers are not newsworthy themselves and newspapers do not

simply and transparently report these events. “News” is the end-product of a complex

process which begins with a systematic selecting and sorting of events and topics

according to a socially shaped set of standards. At a certain level, that is of course a

realistic assumption: real events do occur and are reported such as a coach crashes on

the autobahn or a cabinet minister resigns. But real events are subject to conventional

processes of selection: they are not intrinsically newsworthy, but only become “news”

when selected for inclusion in news reports. The vast majority of events are not

mentioned, and so selection certainly gives us a partial view of the world. We know also

that different newspapers report differently, in both content and presentation. The vote

win is more likely to be reported in the Mirror than in The Times, whereas a crop failure

in Meghalaya may be reported in The Times but almost certainly, differential treatment

in presentation according to numerous political, economic and social factors. As far as

differences in presentation are concerned, most people would admit the possibility of

“bias”: the Sun is known to be consistently hostile in its treatment of trades unions, and

of what it calls “the loony Left”; the Guardian is generous in its reporting of the affairs

of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Such disaffections and affiliations are

obvious when one starts reading carefully, and discussing the news media with other

people. The world of the Press is not the real world, but a world processed, skewed and

judged.

From the above analysis we can see that the public discourses contain their bias

when organized, which is seldom observed by general audience. In addition to that,

what the author or organizer of the discourses wants to let the audiences know, and how

they will transform the information are also determined by the powerful side. And it is

who have certain power that can have the convenience to conduct the discourse.

In this paper, the author wants to make use of the analysis of the relationship

between social power and the language users to analyze two political discourses uttered

by President George W. Bush about the Iraq war. By making use of the methods of

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摘要：

ChapterOneIntroductionContentsAcknowledgement……………………………………………………………………….iAbstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii摘要…………………………………………………………………………………......iiiChapterOneIntroduction..............................................................................................11.1BackgroundoftheStudy......

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