A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The U.s. 2004 Presidential Electoral Campaigns Coverage:

Rasha Mostafa Abdel Kareem Muhammad

This thesis examines the language of the three debates between President George W. Bush and Democratic Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaigns.Adopting the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)approach, the analysis of the dataindicates that Bush, on the one side, has deliberately and successfully exploited the 11September incident to play on Americans’ increasing sense of fear in order to get themvote for him. Beside showing leadership abilities, likeability, and toughness, he isbetter than Kerry at articulating principles and morals. On the other side, SenatorKerry has used his rhetoric to show the points of weakness in Bush’s administration,e.g., the shameful war on Iraq and job losses. However, he lacks charisma andresoluteness. People feel that he has no strategy to win the war on terror. In addition,the analysis attempts to show relations of power and ideology and how the powerfuldominate the weak ones.