Abstract—Critical discourse analysis is a linguistic trend
developed from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Its source is
critical linguistics. Representatives include mainly
anti-mainstream linguistics and sociolinguists in the UK,
France, and Germany, such as M. Fourcault, N. Fairchlugh, G.
Kress, R. Fowler, and others. It is a socially oriented discourse
analysis method based on Halliday's systemic functional
linguistics. They see society as an organic whole, and all its
components are a reflection of some kind of power.
This paper is devoted to study the interpersonal function of
Donald Trump’s and Teresa May’s speeches from the
perspective of critical discourse analysis by
Systematic-Functional Grammar (SFG) established by M.A.K
Halliday. The study reveals that political speakers tend to
employ far more modal operators of medium value to realize
interpersonal functions for political and power needs.
The critical discourse analysis of political speech not only
contributes to the establishment of a different perspective of the
discourse analysis but also helps to the cultivation of the critical
thinking ability, which can shed light on the further studying
and research.
Index Terms—Critical discourse analysis, modality, personal
pronoun, political speech.
Tianqi Li and Yi Zhang are with the School of Foreign Studies,
Northwestern Polytechnical University, China (e-mail: litianqi1221@
163.com, 2192941516@ qq.com).
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Cite: Tianqi Li and Yi Zhang, "Language and Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Political Speech," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 259-262, 2019.