A Critical Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Inaugural Speech from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

Abstract

As an interdicipline that studies the relation of language, power and ideology, critical discourse analysis has attracted more and more linguists’ attention, which can be applied to analyze language features under certain social and cultural background. Critical discourse analysis is based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar that is a practical method to analyze discourse. Political discourse as a kind of typical discourse which involves the speaker’s ideology and intention, can also be analyzed by critical discourse analysis. Therefore, this paper analyzes Donald Trump’s inaugural speech mainly from the perspectives of transitivity, modality, personal pronoun and coherence in order to reveal the speaker’s political intention, and help readers understand the meaning of discourse, cultivate their critical consciousness and analytical ability. The paper concludes that Trump uses different language forms to transmit, change and maintain audiences’ ideology subtly. At the same time, it has a positive effect on the development of the critical discourse analysis.