VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DINH VAN TIEN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FIRST ADDRESS TO US CONGRESS 2021 của Tổng thông Biden trước Quốc hội Hoa Kỳ năm 2021) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 Hanoi, 2024 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DINH VAN TIEN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FIRST ADDRESS TO US CONGRESS 2021 (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phan bài phát biểu dau tiên M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201. Nguyễn Hòa Hanoi, 2024 DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A critical discourse analysis of President Biden’s first address to US Congress 2021” 1s the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, and that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degrees. Hanoi, 2024 Student Dinh Van Tién Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Prof. Nguyễn Hòa ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Nguyễn Hòa for helping me complete this study.
This paper would not have been accomplished without his expert, constant and valuable guidance, and encouragement. His patience and helpful criticism helped me confidently express my ideas into this paper. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their valuable lectures which have helped me a great deal in gaining a lot of theoretical background as well as practical knowledge. My special thanks also go to my friends and colleagues for their enthusiastic help and support with my teaching schedule at school which gave me precious time to deal with my thesis.
Finally, I would also like to express my deep gratitude and love to my family who gave me time and encouragement to overcome all obstacles during the completion of this study. 1 ABSTRACT Critical Discourse Analysis is a powerful tool in linguistic studies for dissecting the intricate relationship between language, power, and ideology, particularly in presidential political speeches. Based on Fairclough’s three-dimension model, the research delves into President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress in 2021, uncovering the ideas embedded via transitivity and modality. The study analyzes the text, discursive practice, and social context to reveal distinct ideas or themes and their linguistic realizations.
Findings highlight Biden's emphasis on call for action and solidarity, American exceptionalism, social welfare, and economic optimism. He calls for political unity while subtly adhering to neoliberal principles. Environmental responsibility as a traditional American value, enhancing national competitiveness, and promoting fairness and equality, and creating Opportunity by comprehensive education investment policy emerge as prominent ideologies, realized through lexical choices, grammatical features, and rhetorical figures. Notably, Biden challenges the status quo with progressive values, expressing certainty and desirability regarding his plans.
In addition, modality which is used throughout the speech also reveals an underlying sense of obligation, confidence and beliefs and the enduring nature of consistency in Biden’s worldview. This research makes contributions to knowledge by examining Biden's power and ideological representation through his discourse. By unmasking the underlying ideologies and their linguistic expressions, this analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of Biden's political persona and serves as a valuable tool for critically examining the language of other political figures. ill TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION 0157.
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Key ideologies hố. American Families PÏan. Limitation and suggestion for further researCH. I LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DA : Discourse Analysis CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis SFL : Systemic Functional Linguistic DHA: Discourse Historical Approach SCA : Socio-cognitive Approach Pr.
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Frequency of modality by sub-category in the selected text. Frequency of personal DFOROUII. 42 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Classification of modality .-- --- -- c2 S123 E2 TH ng giết 12 Figure 2.2: Discourse as text, interaction, and COTIfCXÍ.- -- <5 1k kEsseeeeerssersse 20 VI CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION This chapter highlights the statement of the rationale, aims, the research questions, the scope as well as the significance of the study.
Rationale of the study The research uses the CDA theoretical framework of Fairclough to analyze the language use of politicians to extract the ideology and power hidden in the President Biden’s speech. According to Fairclough, political discourses are decision and action oriented (Fairclough, 1992). He also added that such decisions are made in the context of uncertainty and disagreement as can be seen in speeches where politicians not only use language to express their ideas, feelings, attitude, and power toward participants, hearers, and events but also to re-shape the opinions of the audience. In this paper, we make attempts to bring out the implied power and ideology of President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress 2021.
In addition, there are a variety of critical discourse analysis research about popular politicians in US like Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton but there is a dearth of CDA research on Biden’s power and ideology representation. Therefore, this study is conducted to reveal how Biden represents his ideologies through his discourse. In addition, the research can contribute to the knowledge of using CDA to unmask implications of power and ideology embedded in social interactions. Aim of the research The aim of this research is to utilize Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to uncover how ideology and power are represented in Biden's speech through language.
In addition, the Transitivity and Modality systems of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which convey experiential and interpersonal meanings respectively, are employed to further enhance the analysis of his language. Research Questions Based on the rationale and aim, the research shall focus on dealing with these questions. What ideologies are represented in Biden’s speech? 2. How are they realized discursively ? 1.
Scope of the Study The study primarily employs Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theoretical framework to investigate Biden's ideology and power as conveyed through his language use. Within qualitative analysis, CDA proves to be a valuable tool for delving into text and uncovering underlying meanings. Additionally, the study will incorporate the transitivity system and modality system from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as complementary theories to bolster the CDA approach in every analytical phase, including description, interpretation, and explanation. By integrating SFL, the research aims to shed light on the experiential and interpersonal meanings conveyed through choices of process types, participant roles, and the use of modal verbs evident in each ideology and its realization.
In this paper, by data familiarization, the research will concentrate on three main visible themes out of the five being present in the speech, as they stand out for their significant messages. These themes include the (1) American Rescue Plan, (2) American Job Plan, and (3) American Family Plan. The remaining two themes, (4) Global Issues and (5) Affordable Care Act, can serve for supplementary analysis to understand the entirety of the speech’s message. Significance of the Study This research in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) aims to reveal the underlying ideology and power dynamics within Biden’s discourse, employing Fairclough’s three-stage analytical model along with Halliday’s transitivity and modality system.
Given the limited existing CDA research on Biden, this study presents an opportunity to investigate how his ideology and power are conveyed through his political speeches. By doing so, it can expand the dataset for CDA analysis, providing a basis for further research and recommendations. Additionally, this research seeks to enhance our understanding of using CDA to uncover the implications of power and ideology inherent in socio-political interactions. Organization of the thesis The thesis comprises five chapters with different functions, but they are all linked together to make a unified body of work, a unified story.
Chapter 1, “Introduction”, includes the rationale, the aims and objectives, the research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study and organization of the study. Chapter 2, “Literature Review”, presents the previous study related to the paper, gives a statement of the importance of this thesis and some theoretical backgrounds of the study. Chapter 3 “Methodology” describes research design, the method, research procedure, data collection, and data analysis. This chapter is a foundation step to produce some findings in the chapter next to it.
Chapter 4 “Findings and discussions” will explain what we can discover after the analysis based on the theoretical framework. Chapter 5: “Conclusions”, is one important chapter to summarize main findings of the research upon the rationale, aims, and research questions. This chapter will also provide overall conclusions about the findings, about the approach. In addition, some limitations and suggestions shall be provided to help other researchers conduct a better new paper.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEOERY This chapter presents a comprehensive review of fundamental concepts related to CDA, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Fairclough’s CDA approach, related studies, and a chapter review. Political discourse Van Dijk (2006) supposes the easiest, and not altogether misguided, answer is that political discourse is identified by its actors or authors, politicians. Indeed, the vast bulk of studies of political discourse is about the text and talk of professional politicians or political institutions, such as president and prime ministers and other members of government, parliament, or political parties, both at the local, national, and international levels. Fairclough (1992) adds further nuance, noting that political discourses are fundamentally focused on decisions and actions.
He highlights that these decisions often emerge amidst uncertainty and disagreement, a theme evident in political speeches where language serves not only to express ideas, feelings, attitudes, and power dynamics among participants but also to influence and reshape the opinions of the audience. Critical discourse analysis Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an approach to studying language that goes beyond just understanding the meaning of words and sentences. It delves into the social and political context of language use, examining how it reflects and shapes power relations, ideologies, and social inequalities. Some key aspects of CDA can be considered.
The first aspect is CDA views language as a social practice. It does not see language as a neutral tool for communication. Instead, it argues that language is shaped by and helps to shape social structures and power dynamics. The second aspect is it focuses on power and inequality.
A central concern of CDA is how language is used to maintain or challenge existing power structures and social inequalities. It analyzes how certain groups or ideas are privileged or marginalized through language choices.