摘要:The study presented in this thesis is expected to be of both theoretical and practical significance.
Chapter One
Introduction
The present
thesis approaches American documentary Bowling for Colzrmbine from the perspective of critical discourse analysis which aims at exploring social ideology towards guns and characteristics of gun culture in the United States.
1.1 Background of the Study
In November 29, 2010, a student from a high school of Wisconsin, the United States, brought a gun to school taking 23 schoolmates and one teacher as hostages, and ended up by shooting himself. This is the latest school violence in the United
States by now, but it doesn't attract much attention of the international media. It seems that people are no longer caring about such tragedies for they happen too frequently. From 2006 to 2010, there are totally six school shootings happening in the United States. Six in five years!
According to the
statistics given by National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, in 2000, there were X2,447 deliberate cases and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States. Gun violence has long been an intensely debated issue in the States and it has also been an impoutant role in the life of the public. Why is American government unwilling to prohibit private gun possession when there are so many tragedies of gun violence in the United States? What kind of dun culture does the United States have?
1.1.1 Reasons for choosing Bowling for Columbine
To study the American gun culture, we need a medium which is the film Bowling fon Columbine. Bowling for Columbine is a documentary directed by Michael Moore, talking about a school shooting in the United States in 1999. This film brought
Moore international attention as a rising filmmaker. And it won numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature, a special SSth Anniversary prize at the 2002
Cannes Film Festival and the Cesar Award for Best Foreign Filrn. The high reputation is one of the reasons for the author to choose this film as my research text. The other reason is that this film covers almost every aspect of gun violence and people from different levels of society are interviewed in the film so it's quite persuasive.
1.2 Significance of the Study
The study presented in this thesis is expected to be of both theoretical and practical significance.
Theoretically speaking, this tentative study will enrich to practice and theory of CDA (critical discourse analysis). Since the appearance of CDA, it has generally been applied to the study of public discourse such as political discourse and journal discourse, for it is considered that public discourses are the products of certain ideology. However, every kind of discourse more or less embodies the brand of ideology. This is also true to film screenplays, thus, exploring ideology in film screenplays will extent the analytical scope of critical linguistics.
Practically speaking, this thesis tries to provide readers with a systematic frame of American gun culture. Although it has limitations because of the length of the thesis, it still has some referential values for further researchers to study American
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