TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Pagei
Certificationii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgementsiv
Table of Contentsvi
Abstractix
CHAPTER ONE
General Introduction
1.0 Introduction1
1.1 Purpose of the Study2
1.2 Scope of the Study2
1.3 Justification3
1.4 Methodology3
CHAPTER TWO
Literature Review
2.0 Introduction4
2.1 Conceptualization of Discourse4
2.2 An Overview of Discourse6
2.3 Versions of CDA8
2.3.1 Van Dijk’s Version of CDA: Social Cognition8
2.3.2 Halliday’s Version of CDA: Language9
2.3.3 Fairclough’s Version of CDA: Social Practices11
2.4 Fairclough’s Trinocular Dimension for CDA12
2.4.1 Explanation: Social Analysis12
2.4.2 Interpretation: Process Analysis13
2.4.3 Description: Text Analysis14
2.5 Conclusion16
CHAPTER THREE
Data Analysis
3.0 Introduction17
3.1 Description: Text Analysis17
3.1.1 Overwording17
3.1.2. Metaphors20
3.1.3 Thematization21
3.1.4 Transitivity24
3.1.5 Modality28
3.1.6. Mood Choices30
3.1.7 Connectives and Argumentation33
3.2 Interpretation: Process Analysis38
3.2.1 Intertextuality38
3.2.2 Interdiscursivity40
3.3 Explanation: Social Analysis41
3.4 Conclusion44
CHAPTER FOUR
4.1 Summary45
4.2 Findings45
4.3 Conclusion49
BIBLIOGRAPHY50
APPENDIX53
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.