Language and ideology : a critical discourse analysis of the selected speeches on the representation of Iraqi's war against Barack Obama's Daesh

Abstract EN

As politics is considered to be a struggle for power in order to put certain political ideas into practice, language plays a crucial role for every political action is prepared, accompanied, influenced and played by language (Horvath, 2015:45).

The aim of a critical approach to discourse analysis is to reveal the hidden and out of sight values, positions and perspectives (Paltridge, 2012:186). Depending on Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this study attempts to investigate and analyze certain selected Barack Obama's speeches on the representation of Iraqi's war against Daesh.

It aims to reveal Obama's implicit meanings, and to make clear how he used language to persuade the audience with his policies. Specifically, from the point of nominalization, transitivity, modality, passivization and repetition, we can learn how language is used to serve ideology and power.

Consequently, we can unveil the political purposes of these speeches