TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents vi
Abstract ix
CHAPTER ONE
General Introduction
1.0 Introduction 1
1.1 Purpose of the Study 2
1.2 Scope of the Study 2
1.3 Justification 3
1.4 Methodology 3
CHAPTER TWO
Literature Review
2.0 Introduction 4
2.1 Conceptualization of Discourse 4
2.2 An Overview of Discourse 6
2.3 Versions of CDA 8
2.3.1 Van Dijk’s Version of CDA: Social Cognition 8
2.3.2 Halliday’s Version of CDA: Language 9
2.3.3 Fairclough’s Version of CDA: Social Practices 11
2.4 Fairclough’s Trinocular Dimension for CDA 12
2.4.1 Explanation: Social Analysis 12
2.4.2 Interpretation: Process Analysis 13
2.4.3 Description: Text Analysis 14
2.5 Conclusion 16
CHAPTER THREE
Data Analysis
3.0 Introduction 17
3.1 Description: Text Analysis 17
3.1.1 Overwording 17
3.1.2. Metaphors 20
3.1.3 Thematization 21
3.1.4 Transitivity 24
3.1.5 Modality 28
3.1.6. Mood Choices 30
3.1.7 Connectives and Argumentation 33
3.2 Interpretation: Process Analysis 38
3.2.1 Intertextuality 38
3.2.2 Interdiscursivity 40
3.3 Explanation: Social Analysis 41
3.4 Conclusion 44
CHAPTER FOUR
4.1 Summary 45
4.2 Findings 45
4.3 Conclusion 49
BIBLIOGRAPHY 50
APPENDIX 53
ABSTRACT
There is a growing faith in critical discourse analysis as a critical theory of language to liberate the oppressed in societies by deconstructing the divergent ideologies in social, political and cultural texts. The study has set out to investigate I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr. as a socio-political discourse using Fairclough’s (1989) trinocular dimension for CDA (Description, Interpretation and Explanation). It has been discovered (across the levels of the analysis) that the text (speech) is a socio-political and counter-hegemonic discourse — an implication that it was resisting whites’ dominance over the blacks and other minorities in the USA at the time. In this way, CDA assumes an important place in investigating discourses by focusing on the meta-functions performed by them: that is, discourses do not just describe the social phenomena and happenings, they also bring other social phenomena and happenings into reality.
