Original scientific paper
POLITICAL DISCOURSE – IDEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF G.W. BUSH’S SPEECHES
Marijana Sivrić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar
Željana Mihaljević
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar
Abstract
The paper deals with the ideological analysis of G.W. Bush’s political speeches
delivered during the war in Iraq. The speeches were analyzed as a
sort of political discourse with the purpose of recognizing lexical, semantic,
rhetorical and grammatical structures used in the strategy of polarization
when representing the actions of two confronted parties – Iraqi
regime and American military.
Polarization strategy is one of the basic principles of the T.van Dijk’s Critical
discourse analysis, which is expressed through ideological square.
This means that in a kind of political discourse, as these speeches are, in
which the interests of two confronted states, ideologies, nations etc. are
presented, we can expect good actions of in-group to be emphasized and
bad ones to be mitigated, whereas the good actions of out-group will be
mitigated and bad ones will be emphasized.
Critical discourse analysis offers the basic tools for recognizing such structures
in different discourses, but in these political speeches it questions
the function and influence which these structures have on Bush’s political
plan and on society as a whole.
Keywords
critical discourse analysis; ideological analysis; ideological square; in-group; out-group; political discourse.
Hrčak ID:
229952
URI
Publication date:
14.12.2010.
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