Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama's campaign speech

Critical Discourse Analysis is the investigation of the social, political, cultural, ideological, racial, and gender-related aspects of the language used in a speech or a text. The main scope of CDA is the understanding of the relationship between a specific discourse and its unknown or overlooked meanings in relation to values, beliefs, opinions, and perspectives expressed by the speaker or orator. Analysis of a political speech is the study of the links between politics and language with regards to semantics, word choice, communicative style and techniques used to determine authority, share ideas, be persuasive, appear attractive and create consensus. The aim of this paper is to discuss the social, political, and ideological issues that are reflected in Barack Obama’s discourse during his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois in February 2007