Critical Discourse Analysis of President George W. Bush’s 20th September 2001 Speech By Means of Fairclough’s Model for Analysis of Discourse.

Abstract

This study presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of U.S. President George W. Bush’s historic speech delivered on September 20, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Utilizing Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, the paper examines the discourse across three interrelated levels: textual description, discursive interpretation, and social explanation. Textually, the analysis demonstrates how the speech relies on stark binary oppositions (e.g., good vs. evil, freedom vs. fear), strategic pronoun usage ("we" vs. "they"), high-modality verbs, religious undertones, and powerful metaphors to build absolute narrative certainty. Discursively, it highlights the use of historical intertextuality—drawing parallels to Pearl Harbor, Cold War dichotomies, and the American frontier myth—to ground the crisis within established national narratives of resilience and exceptionalism. Sociophysically, the study explains how these rhetorical devices successfully naturalized the "War on Terror," manufactured national unity, and reinforced American global hegemony. Ultimately, the paper underscores how the speech effectively precluded diplomatic alternatives, laid the ideological groundwork for major domestic and foreign policies (such as the USA Patriot Act and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), and established a simplistic, enduring framework for post-9/11 global relations.