The aim of this paper is to show the methodological possibilities offered by linguistics for the analysis of documentary sources, with historical character, taking as an example the discourse in favor of the war against Saddam Hussein.
Organized in three sections, the first chapter, called "Critical analysis of speech: a documentary analysis model," details the theoretical and methodological framework on which the work is sustained.
Specifically, the characteristics of the Critical Discourse Analysis (ACD) that arose in the late 1990s as a discipline of linguistic analysis, with a clear social commitment, on the part of the authors, are explained and detailed, to explain to the society what are the linguistic strategies that make up the discourse of power. The neo-Marxist influence of the Frankfurt School, with Adorno and Habermas, must be taken into account; the influence of the thoughts of Foucault, Pêcheux and Althusser; the contributions of critical sociolinguistics; the basis of Halliday's functional linguistics for the analysis of texts; as well as work at various multidisciplinary cultural studies centers such as The Glasgow University Group and the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham.
The Critical Discourse Analysis starts from the idea of Kress that "all discourses are ideological" and that the elite that seizes the channels of opinion is the one that perpetuates social inequalities, delegitimizing dissidence. It is for this reason that the mass media, widely analyzed by Fairclough and Chouliariki, show a great variety of examples in which the media play a constructive role in public opinion, assuming the language of power.
The objective of the work is the analysis of the language behavior of the elite responsible for the war against Saddam Hussein, the means used to access public opinion, the persuasion of the recipients and the consolidation of the "Bush Administration" group in the power
This work has taken into account the methodological contributions of Teun A. Van Dijk, and Siegfried Jäger. Van Dijk makes a proposal for the classification of the groups in interaction in a conflict or situation of inequality, the activities that excerp individually and as a group, the norms and values of action, the personal relationships and the resources that they have, in In order to establish the group that holds and maintains power. Methodologically, once the context of analysis has been determined, the investigator can proceed to analyze the texts or global discourse produced by this group. The categorization of linguistic structures such as actors (subjects or objects), modes (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative), syntax (focalizations), rhetorical and argumentative resources (arguments and deceit) allows to discover the true meaning, the effect on the receiver and the semiotic relationships that are established between texts and in a certain discursive context.
