A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sadiq Khan’s Acceptance Speech as the Mayor of London

Abstract

The Critical Discourse Analysis explores the connection between the use of language and the social and political contexts in which it occurs. It is often applied to analyze political discourse including the public speech, This paper, based on Critical Discourse Analysis theory and Systematic Functional Linguistics, analyzes Sadiq Khan’s Acceptance Speech as The Mayor of London. This research employed a qualitative research method and content analysis approach. The data was obtained from the trusted website and the data itself was analyzed by using Halliday’s theory, mainly from the point of transitivity, modality and textual analysis, in which we can learn the language how to serve the ideology and power. As a result of the analysis, it was discovered that; 1) material processes is the dominant process used in Khan’s speech, 2) two types of modalities can be found in Khan's speech, namely the high modality type, the word “always”, and medium modality type, the word “will”, 3) a unity of idea of the  text is built (cohesive and coherence) both in internal paragraphs and the unity of ideas among paragraphs and it is chronologically stated.