A Socio-Cognitive Analysis of the Self/other Representation in Bush’s Speech

It is known that political speeches are important as a communicative tool for politicians to maintain the power, which is essential to express political opinions and views as well as ideologies, though not always explicitly. Ideology is regarded as one of the primary objectives of text analysis in linguistic studies, particularly critical discourse analysis(henceforth CDA) , which consists of shared values, beliefs and attitudes within a group .In this way, discourse reflects the values of these ideological held by those groups who create it. The present study focuses on investigating the discursive ideological strategies of the self/other in Bush’s speech after September 11 attacks based on Van Dijk's (2006) model of ideological square. The data are collected qualitatively and a mixed method is used to analyze the results of this study. The major findings show that Bush used more ideological strategies to represent the image of “US” (selves) positively, than the image of “THEM” (others) negatively. In particular, the lexicalization is the most common strategy used by Bush’s speech, which showed that Bush emphasized on reflecting that Americans are (good, innocent, peaceful, victims, targeted, respectful, strong, great, powerful and sympathetic), while Arabs, particularly Muslims are (bad, terrorists, evil, violent, peace- haters, spiteful, murderers, vengeful, dangerous, destructive, violence and enemy). It is hoped that this study can improve the understanding of EFL learners about the importance of clarifying the hidden ideologies in politician’s speech and all kinds of discourse.