A critical discourse analysis of president biden’s speech before the 76th session of the united nations general assembly 2021

A critical discourse analysis of president biden’s speech before the 76th session of the united nations general assembly 2021

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES

GRADUATION PAPER

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT BIDEN’S SPEECH BEFORE THE 76TH SESSION OF THE

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2021

Supervisor: Vũ Minh Huyền (M.A.) Student: Nguyễn Hà My

Course: QH2018.F1.E1

HA NOI - 2022

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG BIDEN TRƯỚC KHÓA HỌP LẦN THỨ 76 CỦA ĐẠI HỘI ĐỒNG LIÊN HỢP QUỐC

DECLARATION

I hereby state that I: Nguyen Ha My, class QH2018.E1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English Language Teacher Education, accept the requirements of the University of Languages and Education relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan, or reproduction of the paper

In addition, I certify that this paper is the result of my own research except for quotations and citations, which have been duly acknowledged Furthermore, this thesis has not been submitted elsewhere for any other purposes

Signature

Date

Moreover, I would like to show my appreciation towards my family and friends

I am blessed by their endless support, encouragement, and understanding, and that this

accomplishment would not have been possible without them

ABSTRACT

From a Critical Discourse Analysis viewpoint, this thesis attempted to examine the underlying ideologies in President Biden’s remarks before the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly 2021 and the realizations of these ideologies through the lexical, grammatical, and textual structure The research was conducted following Fairclough’s (2001) Dialectical-relational approach, based on his three-staged framework of textual description, interpretation, and explanation, and Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistics Specifically, linguistic features regarding vocabulary (overwording, antonyms, metaphors), grammar (pronouns, voices, modalities), and textual structure (large-scale structure) were analyzed The findings of the study suggested President Biden’s concerns about certain worldwide issues, as well as his beliefs in the necessity for international cooperation to tackle such matters The ideologies were conveyed through his use of language, specifically linguistic features regarding vocabulary (overwording, antonyms, metaphors), grammar (pronouns, voices, modalities), and textual structure (large-scale structure)

Keywords: CDA, Fairclough’s Dialectical-relational approach, Halliday’s SFL,

President Biden, UNGA 2021

Word count: 11294 words

TABLE OF CONTENT

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES, FIGURES, AND DIRECT QUOTES vi

4.1 The realization of President Biden’s ideologies through the lexical features in his

4.2 The realization of President Biden’s ideologies through the grammatical features

4.3 The realization of President Biden’s ideologies through the textual structure in

5.3 Limitations and recommendations for further research 43

Table 5: The 10-question model of the Description stage (Fairclough, 2001) 65

Table 6: The use of Overwording and Repetition of Vocabulary in President Biden’s

Table 7: The use of Antonymous Phrases and Clauses in President Biden’s speech 68 Table 8: The use of Metaphors in President Biden’s speech 71

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES, FIGURES, AND DIRECT QUOTES

List of abbreviations

CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis

MR: member resources

SFL: Systemic Functional Linguistics

U.N.: The United Nations

UNGA: The United Nations General Assembly

U.S.: The United States

List of tables

Table 1 The use of Pronouns in President’s Biden speech 29-30

Table 2 The use of Voices in President’s Biden speech 32-33

Table 3 The use of Modality in President’s Biden speech 34

Table 4 The larger-scale structure of President’s Biden speech 36-37

Table 5 The 10-question model of the Description stage (Fairclough, 2001) 63-64

Table 6 The use of Overwording and Repetition of Vocabulary in President

Table 8 The use of Metaphors in President Biden’s speech 69-74

List of figures

Figure 1 The procedure of the stage of interpretation 14

Figure 2 The procedure of the stage of explanation 15

List of direct quotes

CDA not only sees language as “a form of social practice” but also focuses

on the idea that social and political domination is reproduced by “text and

talk” (Fairclough, 1989)

2

The definition aligns with Fairclough’s listed aims of CDA “to systematically

explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a)

discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural

structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events,

and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and

struggles over power” (Wodak & Kendall, 2007)

6

Thus, CDA analysts attempt to discover the “discursive sources of power,

dominance, inequality and bias” and how they are utilized within specific

contexts (van Dijk, 1998)

6

“Power involves control, namely by (members of) one group over (those of)

Furthermore, SFL “theorizes language in a way which harmonizes far more

with the perspective of critical social science than other theories of language”

(Fairclough & Chouliaraki, 1999)

15

In Fairclough’s (2001) words, metaphor is a “means of representing one

The term modality, as defined by Fairclough (1989) is “a lexico-grammatical

category featuring the speaker’s relationship with their utterance and the

relationship between proposition and objective reality”

35

is his remarks made before the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (henceforth UNGA)

There are several reasons why this discourse was chosen to be analyzed in this paper First, the President delivered this speech on September 21st, 2021, which made this a relatively new source of critical analysis, providing the gap for more study Second, this was the first speech that President Biden delivered at the UNGA, marking his debut

as the President of the United States to the world through the exclusive conference to discuss Charter-covered worldwide problems with U.N country members (General Assembly of the United Nations, n.d.) It was also the opportunity for President Biden to make his remarks about the relationship between the U.N and the U.S and convey his perspectives as a Democrat on different fields, e.g., Covid-19, climate change, foreign

policy (democracy, human rights, internationalism), aiding the prediction of his making Third, the result of this study would be beneficial in examining the consistency

policy-in ideologies of President Biden compared to his previous remarks, especially his inauguration speech, which was delivered eight months prior

As for the reason why Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) was selected, CDA helps make clear the relationship between the use of language and the exercise of power relations on the content and structure of discourse (Fairclough, 2001), making it an important methodology for linguists and social analysts to explore underlying ideologies as well as hidden ideas and meanings behind rhetoric discourses

In addition, according to van Dijk (1993), language is a communication tool to express people’s wills, feelings, and attitudes towards the world; thus, it can be taken advantage of as weapons by specialists in many fields to achieve their specific purposes

In fact, political speeches are examples of the application of linguistic practice to exercise power, as they deliver messages and embed ideologies and power of speakers behind the textual surface As CDA analysts describe language and offer critical sources

to resist power, they can discern the relationship between language and power in many contexts; they can also uncover social inequality and show the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of dominance The last reason for selecting the CDA approach for the study stemmed from the researcher’s expectation that this study would contribute to Fairclough’s opinion that CDA not only sees language as “a form of social practice” but also focuses on the idea that social and political domination is reproduced

by “text and talk” (Fairclough, 1989)

1.2 Research aims and research questions

The primary objective of the study is to provide a critical analysis based on Fairclough’s framework of President Biden’s discourse before the 76th session of the UNGA to explore his underlying ideologies concerning certain global challenges such

as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, human rights, and the solutions to tackle such issues Next, the research aims to support the belief that CDA can be used as a tool to investigate the relationship between language and ideology, in other words, how ideas are conveyed beneath the surface of language In order to achieve these goals, the answers to the following questions would be discovered:

● How are President Biden’s ideologies expressed in the speech?

● What ideologies regarding some prominent global issues and their solutions

are conveyed by President Biden in his speech at the 76th session of the UNGA 2021?

1.3 Significance of the study

This study would analyze President Biden’s speech before the 76th session of the UNGA 2021, and the results of such analysis would reveal his hidden ideologies regarding the unity of countries around the world as the solution to current issues embedded in the discourse of the liberal politician Since ideologies affect actions, this study would be of significance in predicting potential diplomacy policies regarding some global problems such as COVID-19 or climate change under Biden’s presidential administration

1.4 Scope of the study

The research was limited to the textual aspects of the discourse The focus of the study would be on lexico-grammar aspects, including wording, antonyms and synonyms, pronouns, modality, voices, and textual structure The transcript of the speech would be the exclusive source of analysis in this research; as a result, other non-verbal aspects such as intonation or body language would not be included despite their significant support in the overall comprehension of the discourse

While the political and social purposes are integrated into the nature of CDA, the primary focus of this study is on linguistics Thus, relevant situational contexts would only be introduced as background knowledge, and the political view of the researcher would not be mentioned in order to retain the objectivity of the paper Finally, although the CDA approach focuses on those with power and how they utilize rhetoric techniques

to sustain inequality (van Dijk, 1993); in other words, CDA aims to uncover the power and dominance of the speaker, this paper only aims to discover hidden ideologies of President Biden embedded in his speech on utilizing diplomacy in solving global challenges in a few global issues, namely the Covid pandemic and the healthcare, climate change, technology emergence, terrorism, and human rights

1.5 Research design

1.6 Organization of the study

The content of the research is organized into five following parts:

- Chapter 1 (Introduction) includes the rationale, the research aims and research questions, the significance and the scope of the study, as well as the research design

- Chapter 2 (Literature Review) presents an introduction to a theoretical overview of Critical Discourse Analysis and some concepts in CDA, along with some popular CDA approaches and methods (focusing on Fairclough’s framework for CDA and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics); and a review of previous studies on President Biden’s political discourse

- Chapter 3 (Methodology) once again restates the study approach and sheds light on the data collection and data analysis procedures

- Chapter 4 (Findings and Discussion) provides the context of the analyzed speech and answers the two research questions

- Chapter 5 (Conclusion) recapitulates the results of the research, imposes the limitations, and offers suggestions for future study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides information about CDA and some concepts, CDA

approaches and methods, as well as previous studies on President Biden’s ideologies

2.1 An overview of CDA

Owing to the contributions to the study of CDA of several theorists such as Fairclough, van Dijk, and Yule, there are a number of definitions of this approach According to Wodak and Meyer (2009), CDA is considered to be a qualitative approach where discourses are critically and analytically described, interpreted, and explained to reveal how social inequalities are constructed, maintained, and legitimized through the use of language The definition aligns with Fairclough’s listed aims of CDA “to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events, and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power” (Wodak & Kendall, 2007)

From the aforementioned perspectives, we could conclude that CDA is regarded

as an approach in which language is viewed as a form of social practice; and the focus

is on how social and political dominance is conveyed in texts and talks Thus, CDA analysts attempt to discover the “discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias” and how they are utilized within specific contexts (van Dijk, 1998) In other words, the aim of CDA is to study how discourse constructs power, how privileged groups take advantage of the power of language, and how dominated groups oppose such abuse Furthermore, CDA makes an effort to address and solve social issues through the analysis of the accompanying social and political action (Roger, 2004)

2.2 Concepts in CDA

2.2.1 Discourse in CDA

The term “discourse” is used in several ways within the broad field of discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1993) In CDA, “discourse” is defined as a form of social practice that involves both written and spoken language (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997) In saying discourse is a social practice, Fairclough (2001) meant that language is a socially-conditioned process by other (non-linguistic) parts of the society, and that a CDA researcher needs to analyze not only texts for comprehension but also the relationships between texts, processes of producing and interpreting texts, and their social conditions (Fairclough, 1989) The last is due to the fact that discourse and social settings have a bidirectional shaping relationship (Wodak, 2007) It also implies the properties of discourse are anything but arbitrary: how and what we say is purposeful, whether consciously intended or not (Fairclough, 1989)

In short, discourse is connected to our social and cognitive growth and our identity building Whatever we say always carries specific meanings and reflects our perception

of a particular object or concept Since any discourse stems from our cultural, social, or power backgrounds, how we use language indicates our beliefs about any political or social issue

2.2.2 Ideology in CDA

While “ideology” is a central concept of CDA, it does not have a fixed definition Some of the meanings of ideology include one by the linguists Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge (1993) as a “systematic body of ideas” established from a viewpoint, or a set of beliefs, a world view in simpler terms

Van Dijk (2006) declared that there are no private or personal ideologies, as they need to be socially shared between the group members According to Renaldo (2021),

political speeches are one of the most effective vehicles to share an ideology, which is generally associated with beliefs about how society should be constructed as well as ways to achieve and maintain such desired organization (Mooney & Evans, 2019) Van Dijk (2006) also mentioned that ideologies are fundamental and axiomatic as they control and organize other social beliefs Hence, they indirectly control the way people plan and understand their social practices, leading to the structures of text and talk (van Dijk, 1995)

Ideologies and discourse are two interrelated terms, as the former is the ultimate basis of the latter At the same time, ideologies can be acquired, confirmed, changed, and perpetuated through discourse (van Dijk, 2006) Abbas (2021) stated that people, groups, societies, and countries have their own ideological beliefs and actions which cannot be expressed without discourse; thus, they use discourse to spread and reaffirm their ideologies Similarly, politicians need discourse to convey their ideological beliefs and actions

In summary, it has been considered that a person's ideologies are mainly expressed and acquired through their use of language, whether spoken or written The ideological discourse dimension describes how ideologies impact our daily texts and talks, how we comprehend ideological discourse, and how speech is implicated in the reproduction of ideology in society

2.2.3 Power in CDA

“Power involves control, namely by (members of) one group over (those of) other groups” (van Dijk, 1993) Such control includes both action and cognition: not only the dominant groups can restrict others’ freedom of action but also influence their thoughts The correlation between power and language is significant, as Fairclough (1989) mentioned that no language use is “neutral” or “objective”; hence, no discourse can be free of power or the exercise of power Although language itself is not powerful, it is a

tool to demonstrate, achieve, exercise, or challenge power, as well as display the difference in power of social hierarchies The power of language comes from the way powerful people wield language, per Cameron’s (2001) belief in the inseparable link between the institutional authority to classify individuals and the authority to do things

to them

In a democratic society, power and social control do not come from brute physical force or economic coercion but from the “experts” who are licensed to define, describe and classify things and people (Muralikrishnan, 2011) Hence, in order to gain more power, politicians must utilize the language of politics by persuading the citizens to follow their ideologies, or in Fairclough’s (1989) words, language allows them to exercise power through “the manufacture of consent”, or at worst through the manufacture of acquiescence To achieve this goal, a set of beliefs has to be established beforehand for the people to act on what they believe to be their “common sense” and to internalize the ideologies as “norms”

The central role of CDA here is to assist the clarification of the how the use of language and the exercise of power are interconnected (Thompson, 2002), and to find an explanation to the links between discourse and social power (van Dijk, 1996) In simpler terms, CDA critics analyze the evident or embedded hierarchical social systems in language use to identify discrimination, inequality, power, dominance, and control, and that was also the task of this study when analyzing President Biden’s address

2.3 CDA approaches and Norman Fairclough’s Dialectic-relational approach

As CDA is a broad and interdisciplinary field, many theorists have contributed to the development of appropriate directions or frameworks for CDA Some of the more prominent approaches include the discourse-historical approach by Ruth Wodak, the socio-cognitive approach by Teun van Dijk, and the dialectical-relational approach by Norman Fairclough Among all CDA representations and methods, Fairclough’s

dialectical-relational approach (2001) was chosen, not only for a different perspective compared to the study applying van Dijk’s model but also for its practicality and simplicity in analyzing text Dialectical-relational approach is the study of the dialectical relationship between semiosis and other elements of social practice, and this approach oscillates between a focus on structure and a focus on action Fairclough also introduced

a three-step model, i.e., description, interpretation, and explanation, whose details would

be discussed in the following sections

2.4 CDA methods

2.4.1 Norman Fairclough’s framework for CDA

Fairclough (2001) identified three elements: text, interaction (the process of production and interpretation of text), context (social conditions of production and interpretation of text) as three dimensions of discourse Correspondingly, Fairclough (2001) introduced a three-stage approach to critical discourse analysis: description of text, interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context The framework would be further elaborated in the next parts

2.4.1.1 Description

Description is the first stage of analysis, which is concerned with the formal properties of the text (Fairclough, 2001) In order to carry out the description stage of text, Fairclough (2001) proposed a model of 10 questions (and some sub-questions divided into analytical categories) analyzing three formal features of text: vocabulary,

grammar, and textual structures as can be seen in Table 5, Appendix II

In the model, three alternate values that may be expressed through the choice of text features were also introduced The first is experiential value, which is related to contents, knowledge, and beliefs, and is a cue to perform the text producer’s experience

of the world The second is relational value, which is to do with the relations and social relationships presented in the text The last is expressive value, which concerns subjects

and social identities, in other words, to depict the text producer’s evaluation of the world

Returning to Fairclough’s model, in terms of vocabulary, to discover the experiential, relational, and expressive values, he broke down each question into sub-questions Experiential values of lexical features are expressed through the classification schemes, ideologically contested words, rewording or overwording, and ideological significant meaning relations (synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy) As for relational values, cues namely euphemistic expressions and markedly formal or informal words should be taken into consideration Furthermore, CDA analysts should observe expressive values of words, as well as examine metaphors in the text of the discourse

Similarly, Fairclough also divided questions regarding grammar into a more detailed guide for CDA analysts Experiential values are realized through types of process and participant predominance, agency, nominalizations, active or passive, and positive or negative sentences Regarding relational values, modes (declarative, grammatical question, imperative), features of relational modality, and the use of pronouns “I”, “we”, and “you” should be examined Moreover, expressive values can be explored through expressive modality The last question of grammatical features is the link of sentences, which is split into the use of logical connectors, coordination or subordination, and means are used for referring inside and outside the text Finally, in terms of textual structures, Fairclough focused on the use of interactional conventions and larger-scale structures of the text

In short, the first three questions in Fairclough’s model correspond to the three values of vocabulary in the text, while the fourth question is to do with metaphors Likewise, the next three questions correspond to the three values of grammar, whereas question 8 deals with the grammatical relations coherence and cohesion The last two questions concern the textual structures rather than the meanings behind texts Due to

the limitation of the study, only some of the more relevant questions or sub-questions would be applied and analyzed

2.4.1.2 Interpretation

The second stage in the analysis is interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction, with texts being seen as the product of a process as well as a resource in the interpretation process (Fairclough, 2001) The interpretation stage is concerned with the discourse processes and their dependence on background assumptions, and it is formed through two sections: interpretation of context and interpretation of texts, as shown in the following figure

Figure 1: The procedure of the stage of interpretation (Fairclough, 2001)

In the upper section, interpretation of context comprises of situational and intertextual context For the situational context, it can be interpreted based on external cues (e.g., physical situation, participants, what has previously been said) or on MR, or

“member’s resources” In Fairclough’s (2001) words, MR are the prototypes representing the experience in one’s memory, e.g., shapes of words, grammatical forms,

a narrative’s structure, etc As for the interpretation of the situation, some main questions were suggested by Fairclough as a guide for CDA analysts: what’s going on, who’s involved, what relationships are at issue, and what’s the role of language in what’s going

on In addition, presupposition should be considered when interpreting the intertextual context

Meanwhile, the lower section, or the interpretation of text, includes the four remaining aspects (phonology, grammar, and vocabulary; semantics, pragmatics; cohesion, pragmatics; schemata) corresponding to four levels of interpretation: surface

of utterance; meaning of utterance; local coherence; text structure and “point” respectively

2.4.1.3 Explanation

The final stage in Fairclough’s framework is the explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context In other words, the explanation stage concerns the relationship of discourses to processes of struggle and to power relations (Fairclough, 2001), as shown in the following figure This stage aims to display discourse - a type of social practice, as part of a social process through the bidirectional relationship of social structures and discourses: how such structures construct discourses, and how discourses weaken or reinforce such structures (Fairclough, 1989)

Figure 2: The procedure of the stage of explanation (Fairclough, 2001)

Since social determinants and effects undergo three levels of social organization, they can be examined as situational, institutional, or societal practices In fact, Fairclough proposed three questions with some main cues to assist CDA analysts to explain a discourse: what power relations at situational, institutional, and societal levels help shape this discourse (to uncover social determinants); what elements of MR are drawn upon have an ideological character (to state ideologies); how this discourse is positioned in relation to struggles at the situational, institutional and societal levels (to understand the effects of those determinants in discourse)

2.4.2 Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was seen by Fairclough (2003)

as a valuable resource for CDA; and he also certified its major contributions to CDA Furthermore, SFL “theorizes language in a way which harmonizes far more with the perspective of critical social science than other theories of language” (Fairclough & Chouliaraki, 1999) In SFL, language is organized around three meta-functions: interpersonal, ideational, and textual, which are realized through the choices in the Mood and Modality, Transitivity, and Theme systems of the language The three lines of meaning are compatible with Fairclough’s three-stage framework, as further discussed

as follows

According to Halliday (1994), the interpersonal function of the language is to allow people to communicate with each other, take on roles, and express and understand feelings, attitudes, and judgments Clauses are concerned with the interpersonal function

as exchanges It deals with the question “What is going on in the discourse?” which is realized through the transitivity system with a set of six processes

The ideational function of the language is concerned with clauses as representations It can be subdivided into two smaller functions: the experiential meaning and the logical meaning; the former is concerned with content or ideas (intra-clausal),

while the latter is concerned with the relationship between ideas (inter-clausal) Moreover, it deals with the questions “Who is involved in the discourse? What relations exist between the participants?” which is realized through the system of mood and modality

Finally, the textual function of the language is to relate the text to the real world and/ or other linguistic occurrences, involving the use of language to organize the text

It is concerned with clauses as messages; and it helps text analysts find the answers to the question “What is the role of language?/ How is the content of the text organized?” which is realized through the thematic structure (the configuration Theme + Rheme) As

a result, for its compatibility with Norman’s Fairclough framework, Michael Halliday’s SFL was chosen as the method to aid the study

2.5 Research on President Biden’s ideologies in his other addresses

During his election campaign, Joe Biden’s remarks were subjected to the scrutinization of CDA analysts, for the results of such study might prove to be useful in discovering the presidential candidate’s ideologies and potential policies regarding the issues that America and the world were facing The conclusion of those analyses, including the investigation of the Democratic National Convention Speech (Vianica & Tanto, 2021), or that of The 2020 United States Presidential Debates (Sartika, 2021) and some other campaign speeches (Abbas, 2021), was that Biden believed he would be the one to bring hope to the country, as opposed to his running mate Donald Trump This was proven through his skillful use of van Dijk’s ideological square: positive “us” versus negative “them”, or the propaganda of describing himself as the better option compared

to his rival was a successful tactic to ensure his position in the president’s office

After the start of his presidency, despite having delivered a significant number of discourses, President’s Biden inauguration speech remained the most studied remark in terms of linguistics Henceforth, most of the findings regarding President Biden’s

ideologies were drawn from the same address, with unity being the recurring theme In addition, Siregar (2021) included his beliefs for equality and freedom for the Americans, while others claimed that the primary cornerstone of his speech was unity and democracy, presenting his liberal ideologies (Pramadya & Rahmanhadi, 2021; Pedrini, 2021) Moreover, President Biden was also considered to be a “true democrat” who is not only opposed to racial injustice but also concerned with the issue of healthcare and climate change (Renaldo, 2021) Therefore, this research, being the first to study President Biden’s remarks before the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly 2021, would be of importance in examining whether his ideologies remain consistent compared to the speech he delivered eight months ago

As for the methodologies applied, many of which made use of van Dijk’s cognitive approach of micro-macro level by examining macrostructure, microstructure, and superstructures with the analysis of his ideological square Other methods were Van Leeuwen’s model of social actor theory, hostility discourse analysis, and Fairclough’s three-stage model of CDA Thus, Fairclough’s framework, being a less common approach, would be applied to provide another perspective into the investigation of President Biden’s ideology Another notable aspect was that some of the more focused linguistic features included repetition, antithesis/contrast, metaphor, and pronouns, which prompted this study to investigate similar features of President Biden’s speech

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The following sections describe the research methodology of the present study The data was analyzed using Fairclough’s (2001) analytical framework in order to find answers to the research questions

3.1 Approach of the study

In this study, the CDA approach would be applied in order to analyze President Biden’s speech before the 76th session of the UNGA and to reveal his hidden ideologies embedded in the discourse The study was based on the framework proposed by Fairclough (2001) with three stages: textual description, interpretation, and explanation

3.2 Data collection procedure

3.2.1 Scope of the study

President Biden’s remark before the 76th session of the UNGA was chosen to be the main subject for the study As only textual features would be analyzed, the transcript

of the speech was retrieved at the following link:

president-biden-before-the-76th-session-of-the-united-nations-general-assembly/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/21/remarks-by-3.2.2 Context of the discourse

The United Nations (U.N.) is the largest and most popular international organization in the world aiming for the promotion of international peace and security, the cordial relations among nations, the international collaboration, and the harmonization of the actions of nations worldwide (United Nations, n.d.) As for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), it is the only universally representative body of the United Nations (Council on Foreign Relations, 2021), whose goal is to

provide a forum for the members to discuss, debate, and make recommendations on global concerns and make key decisions for the U.N (General Assembly of the United Nations, n.d.) In 2021, the UNGA marked the return to the in-person gathering (albeit with limited capacity), and the main focus was post-pandemic resilience, while other issues along with the suggested course of actions were also reviewed in the meeting

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr (born on November 20th, 1942) is the 46th and current President of the United States With over 50 years of political experience, his discourses reflected the ideology of liberalism and democracy For his debut at UNGA as the President of the United States, Joe Biden’s goal was to invite support and collaboration from other countries for his “Build Back Better plan”, which aimed to tackle existing problems, including Covid-19, climate change, terrorism, human rights and democracy

in U.S foreign policy (Council on Foreign Relations, 2021) Since President Biden was

an internationalist whose goal was to build and follow multilateral institutions and the international rule of law, his direction was likely to be appreciated by the vast majority

of U.N members as well as most of his citizens However, the challenges the President would face remained, as not only must he persuade his global audience of America’s enduring commitment to multilateralism, but he also must convince his domestic audience of the capability of the United Nations in dealing with current global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, the global retreat of democracy, and the fallout from the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan (Patrick, 2021)

3.3 Data analysis procedure

As few resources are available to guide the application of CDA (Mullet, 2018), there is an urgent need for establishing a detailed CDA theoretical framework for the study Among different CDA approaches, the one by Norman Fairclough stands out thanks to its comprehensiveness and simplicity, which aid CDA researchers in analyzing discourse This framework is also less common compared to van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach when analyzing political remarks, allowing it to provide a different perspective

in the study of political discourse analysis Thus, this study would strictly follow Fairclough’s (2001) model of three stages of CDA, namely textual description, interpretation, and explanation, all of which would be conducted concurrently

In the first stage of textual description, the transcript of President Biden’s speech would be analyzed using three linguistic features which are vocabulary, grammar, and textual structure Due to the limitation of the study, only the use of overwording, antonyms, and metaphors would be exploited in terms of vocabulary As for grammar, the focus would be on the use of pronouns, voices, and modality; and in terms of textual structures, Fairclough’s last question in his 10-question model would be applied to discover the large-scale structure of President Biden’s speech (Appendix II, Table 5) All of the chosen aspects in the three linguistic features were based on some of the more commonly examined ones in other studies on President Biden’s remarks

The second stage of interpretation would clarify the relationship between texts and contexts by finding the answers to the questions by Fairclough (2001): what’s going

on in the text (inter-textual), who’s involved (inter-actional), what relationships are at issue (inter-relational), and what’s the role of language for the situational context The final step would be the explanation of the relationship between those processes and social context (the way discourse alters or upholds specific social relationships in social structure), after having studied how the discourse was influenced by social structure and how it might change or maintain certain social relationships in social structure; in order

to clarify the speaker’s ideologies and how they were expressed in the discourse The finding of this paper would then be the underlying ideologies of President Biden embedded in his speech

The qualitative and quantitative data gathered in President Biden’s discourse could then be used to identify certain common features in his use of language The qualitative method would be employed to investigate the ideology of the critical analysis

of President Biden’s political remark Meanwhile, the quantitative method allowed the

study to assess the frequency of linguistic features in the speech, including repetition of lexical items, pronouns, modality, and voices through the discovery of the absolute frequencies of all words in the data source with the aid of AntCont, a word frequency count tool developed by Lawrence Anthony Having identified and categorized his use

of linguistic tools, the researcher could apply this methodology to recount President Biden’s ideologies on international issues and corresponding problems and how he expressed such ideologies based on Fairclough’s CDA framework and Halliday’s SFL approach

3.4 Chapter summary

This chapter has presented the approach of the study, in addition to stating the data collection (including the scope and the context of the data) as well as data analysis

procedures

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the results and the discussion of the study are carefully presented and analyzed Tables are made use of for better presentation and elaboration

4.1 The realization of President Biden’s ideologies through the lexical features in his speech

4.1.1 In terms of using Overwording

Rewording or overwording is any term or phrase that is frequently repeated with the production and usage of multiple words and lexical items for a single entity or concept to stress any idea clearer Fairclough (2001) defined overwording as the occurrence of abnormal level of wording involving near-synonyms and may imply a highlight of ideological focus Instead of using the phrase “overwording”, Fowler and Gunther (1979) called it “over-lexicalization”, which they described as a pragmatic strategy to encode ideology in a discourse They believed that over-lexicalization in CDA is crucial since it is the language tool that identifies idiosyncrasies in the ideology

of the group that generates the discourse by emphasizing strong preoccupations in the experience and values of that group Over-lexicalization or overwording occurs when a surplus of quasi-synonymous repetition is woven into the discourse, resulting in the sense of “overcompleteness” (van Dijk, 1991) Therefore, overwording is a linguistic device involving the repetition of a word, a phrase, or a whole sentence to underline its importance throughout the text In this part, the author was going to discover how Biden’s world views were mainly encoded in the repetition of some keywords or phrases

in his speech at the 76th session of the UNGA 2021 (See Appendix II, Table 6: The use

of Overwording and Repetition of Vocabulary in President Biden’s speech)

When taking notice of Table 6 in Appendix II, it could be assumed that President Biden effectively exploited the overwording technique in his speech in a clever and

repetition, which served to convey his ideologies First, words such as “challenges” and

“threats” occurred 15 and 8 times respectively, with the aim to shift the audience’s focus

on the problems the world was facing

The vocabulary items related to such issues were also repeated for the same purpose For instance, Covid-19 and near-synonyms (i.e., Covid, pandemic, health) were brought up throughout the speech to emphasize the severity of the epidemic, as well as the need for a counter plan Another example was when the word “climate” appeared 14 times throughout the speech, highlighting the importance of dealing with extreme weather and climate change Similarly, some other current concerns were also mentioned through the repetition of words such as “technologies, human/humanity, rights, terrorism/terrorist, power, security”, all of which pointed out the main issues that the President wished to address and tackle

In addition, by combining “world” (39 times) and other synonyms (i.e., global, universal, international) with the possessive adjectives “our”, the President invoked the common sense of “collective” responsibility “to spur global action on shared challenges” for the sake of the “future” (23 times) Furthermore, the necessity of immediate action was amplified through the repeated use of “now” and “today”

Finally, President Biden asserted the role of the United States, not only by mentioning the country 29 times through the achievements of his government but also

by repeating the vision of the U.S that would “lead” (10 times) the world, and “together” (11 times) countries would cooperate to work towards a better future From his point of view, this was an investment that all nations in the partnerships joined in for the lives of their people

In brief, with the discussion of using overwording in the speech above, it could

be affirmed that repetition and density of these near-synonyms is a typical linguistic feature that truly carries the values and conveys the focus of their speech Overwording

helped to unearth President Biden’s view of what he considered the most important global issues, as well as the need for the world’s immediate cooperation under the lead

of the United States to deal with such matters

4.1.2 In terms of using Antonyms

Nothing brings an idea or a concept sharply into focus like presenting what it is not or placing two contrary viewpoints close to each other Indeed, antonymy, or the usage of lexical words from the same lexical set but with opposite or contrasting meanings, is a typical language trait used by President Biden to stress and sharpen his points Hence, the major goal of this section was to reveal President Biden’s ideologies

by decoding his deliberate use of antonyms in his address before the 76th session of the UNGA in 2021 (See Appendix II, Table 7: The use of Antonymous Phrases and Clauses

in President Biden’s speech)

In this speech, the effective use of contrast allowed President Biden to express his attitudes toward current issues: He viewed them as crises that provide opportunities for the advancement of the future, where pain and possibility were intertwined; and while

“urgent and looming crises” challenged the group, they also provided “enormous opportunities” The optimism in his lexical choice ignited the spark of hope for the audience, encouraging them to be willing to “seize the opportunities.” The ongoing global matters were also contrasted to those of the past When claiming that “the world today” had changed compared to that of 2001, saying that the United States was not “the same country” suffering from the terrorism of 9/11, President Biden not only reminded the audience of the pain that the U.S had been grieving from to gain sympathy, but also emphasized the change in the alertness and preparation of his nation to face off terrorist threats

The future, which was the focus of President Biden’s discourse, was put in contrast to the past, attracting the attention of the audience by drawing an optimistic

vision For instance, in order to urge the audience to take action, he encouraged all of them to allot the resources to the issues that “hold the keys to our collective future” instead of focusing on “the wars of the past” Another example was when he expressed his wish that their nations would pay attention to “what’s ahead of us, not what was behind” In addition, to emphasize the reason why they should work together, President Biden provided contrasting pictures of the two futures of the two courses of action: whether they cooperate or go separate ways The following examples best illustrated that point of his, as President Biden combined both contrast and repetition of sentence structures as persuasive strategies: All of the antonymous phrases (“work together to save lives” versus “fail to harness the tools”, “meet the threat” versus “suffer the merciless march”, “apply and strengthen the core tenets” versus “allow those universal principles to be trampled and twisted”) helped President Biden demonstrate two visions: one of the victorious fights against current problems and to protect what mattered, and the other of the consequences should they keep staying idle and not intervene Along with the use of repeated clause structure “Will we”, he created a rhyme in his speech, making it more poetic and affecting the audience more emotionally, easily persuading them to stand his ideas and take action

Furthermore, the contrast aided President Biden in displaying his ideas on what his audience - leaders of nations around the world - should do For instance, in terms of new technologies, he emphasized that it was their power to decide whether new technologies were to “empower people or to deepen repression”, to ensure they would

be used to help people, instead of a source to “suppress dissent or target minority communities; of greater strife and repression” He also brought attention to equality, the rights and the opportunities for fair competition, as in striving “to level the playing field”

to avoid it being “artificially tipped”, causing imbalance President Biden also promoted political negotiations and security as opposed to violence as tools to resort to current issues, hence promoting diplomacy He emphasized the ideological stance of a leader, as their duty must be to answer the call, the cry for dignity instead of silencing it And once

again, with the combination of sentence structure repetition, he depicted the sense of belonging of the future to those worthy leaders as opposed to unworthy: “embrace” versus “trample” dignity, “unleash” versus “stifle” the potential, and allowing people to

“breathe free” versus “suffocate” them

His idea of leading together was, once again, contrasted to “going alone” The contrast between advancing alone and cooperating was displayed through his comparison of small, particular regions versus the entire world No such place should be sacrificed for the sake of all, but all should join hands with the rest of the world for the sake of each and every Justice was stressed, as no country should be taking advantage

of others, and stronger countries must be stopped from their attempts to dominate weaker ones, showing his stance of siding with fairness and the less advantaged His willingness

to cooperate despite “intense disagreements” was further illustrated with the contrast, for the alternative was the consequences of urgent threats

Another worth-mentioning contrast was his use of the “Us” versus “Them” strategies, in which “Us” were the allies and partners who joined hands for the sake of the future, while “Them” were the evil who opposed the peace and prosperity of the world And for “Us”, The United States would be willing to “defend” against “attack”,

“stand up for” their side to “oppose attempts” of domination Additionally, by hinting that “the wealthy and well-connected” are contrary to “citizens” or “the vast majority of the people”, he was playing the humble card, raising the collective enemy out of the rich Lastly, his choice of antonyms perpetuated his belief that democracy was the solution to all problems, as all other forces are villainized: “authoritarianism”, “violence and insurrection”, “violence and oppression” which people had to face against “to defend their democratic progress”

In short, President Biden effectively exploited antonyms and contrasting phrases

to paint a positive picture of a future where nations around the world united for mutual

alternate future should conflicts continue to arise and all cooperations fail Thus, it could

be concluded that antonyms are useful tools in conveying one’s ideologies, as indicating the contrast can highlight the speaker’s ideas

4.1.3 In terms of using Metaphors

In Fairclough’s (2001) words, metaphor is a “means of representing one aspect of experience in terms of another”, and its use is not necessarily restricted to literary discourse For different metaphors might suggest different ideological associations, Fairclough’s point of interest was on the relationship between alternate metaphors In this study, however, the focus was the common themes in President Biden’s use of specific metaphorical expressions Further notable metaphors used in his speeches were listed in detail in Appendix II, Table 8: The use of Metaphors in President Biden’s speech

First, the metaphorical representation of social problems as “battles” was favorably used in this speech By insinuating each global matter as a fight, President Biden expressed his ideological approach to tackle such issues: the world had to come together to defeat the common enemies This view of his was displayed through his repeated use of metaphors such as “fight for our shared future”, “fight the wars of the past”, or “defending democracy” An example of the challenge-turned-foe that the President pointed out was COVID-19, as he referred to it as “the devastating pandemic”, and its variants might “take hold” should they not “defeat” it Throughout his speech, phrases such as “defense against COVID-19”, “fight this pandemic”, or “fight against COVID-19” affirmed this concept Similarly, other international problems were also implied as evil forces that people needed to be protected from: the climate change as the threat the world would face in the form of a “merciless march”, the cyberattacks “that threaten”, “the threat of terrorism as it stands”, “the bitter sting of terrorism”, “raging civil conflicts”, corruption that “fuels”, “siphons off”, and “spreads” At the end of this

fight, the United States would come out as the winner, who would “champion the democratic values”

The world issues were not the only abstract concepts that President Biden transformed into concrete ones In his speech, “our collective strength and speed” was concretized to be “amplified”, “universal principles” exhibited as materials that could be

“trampled and twisted”, and “human dignity” could be embraced instead of being trampled Other cases were his use of metaphors such as “core tenets”, “naked political power”, “lock in progress”, “bedrock commitments”, “concrete progress”, “tangible commitments”, all of which served to make his speech more corporate and easier for the audience to digest the speaker’s ideas

Another commonly used metaphorical expression was the “construction” concept, as it referred to the positive connotations of creation and building, especially from collective efforts Words and phrases relating to this metaphor were repeated during the speech, e.g., “building (effective partnerships, a future, a better future, a more inclusive economy)”, “rebuilding (our alliances)”, “shape (the emergence of new technologies, the rules of the world)”, “reshape (every aspect of human existence)”, and

“form (the guardrails of international engagement)” This was in line with President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, where he pushed the agenda of forming partnerships worldwide to create a peaceful world It was an effective method to illustrate his notion

of cooperation among countries in the United Nations

In President Biden’s address, there were other metaphorical uses implying different ideological meanings For instance, to illustrate his objective of fair competition, he compared global trade to “the playing field” that needed to be leveled so

as not to be “artificially tipped” To present his view of the duty of the leaders, he referred

to the demand for human rights and dignity as “a common cry” which governments had

to “answer that call, not to silence it”, and not to “suffocate their people”

In general, President Biden has successfully exploited metaphors in his persuasion Through the use of metaphorical expressions, his views of how the world had to work together to “fight” against the shared “enemies”, as well as to “build” a better “collective future” were described and indicated Hence, it proved that discourse

is a powerful tool through which one’s ideologies are explored The language of the President’s speech was not only a reflection of social beliefs and practices but also maintained and developed those practices effectively

4.2 The realization of President Biden’s ideologies through the grammatical features in his speech

4.2.1 In terms of using Pronouns

Table 1: The use of Pronouns in President’s Biden speech