Ideology through Trade Policy: Corpus- Assisted CDA of Biden's Discourse الأيدولوجيا عبر السياسة التجارية: تحليل الخطاب النقدي المساعد بالمدونات اللغوية في خطاب بايدن

Abstract

This paper examines the discursive construction of U.S. trade policy during Biden administration by applying corpus assisted tools with Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) approach. This study analyses the official document of United States Trade Representative (USTR) and President's trade policy agenda. For methodological considerations, the study adopts a mixed methods explanatory sequential design in which the quantitative corpus data are accumulated and analyzed first by AntConcsofware, then followed with qualitative analysis for deeper understanding to the quantitative results. Because of the limitation of scholarly attention to provide sufficient understanding for the ideological constructions in American trade policy, this study is directed by the following research questions: what lexical patterns describe Biden's trade policies in USTR? How the framings of trade policies are justified? whatare the key ideologies identifiedfrom the qualitative analysis and guidedby corpus results?. The qualitative CDA analysis is drawn on eclectic model of van Dijk's (1998) ideological square, Reisigl and Wodak' (2009) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) argumentative topoi, and Entman's (1993) framing model. The study reveals that American trade policy during Biden administration is constructed with the ideologies of trade liberalism, moderate protectionism, competitive authoritarianism, interconnected institutionalism, and inclusivism. These ideological representations are reflected from Biden's political slogan “worker- centered” for diplomatic strategies, based rule frame, and multilateralism to face the global challenges.The contributions in this study can be addressed by the role of corpus analysis within CDA studies to guide the qualitative questions and providing systematic analysis for the ideological transformation under Biden discourse.