Language and Globalization: A Critical Analysis of Global Economy in Strategic Texts during the Financial Crisis

Abstract

Free-market economists contend that global economy is a material process triggered by and gives rise to increasing transborder flows of capital, goods and services. This unprecedented phenomenon was intercepted by the global financial crisis emerging in 2008. During the financial turmoil, global economy is still discursively reconstructed and politically argued for. However, few studies have explores the dialectical relationship between discourse and global economy during the financial crisis. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways globalization, especially the global economy is discursively constructed in the strategic texts in the period of global financial crisis. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, this paper analyzes political economic speeches of George Bush and Wen Jiabao and Opinion-Editorial articles from the Washington Post and the China Daily. As a result of the interdisciplinary analysis, the paper reveals that values of global economy must be maintained and translated into reality even in the epoch of the financial crisis. The discourse of global economy is organized in problem-solution structure. The authors put forward their arguments on the basis of the selected topic on the current economic issue in a way that is easy to handle and most agreeable to participants. It discursively defends the ideology of capitalist globalization. The paper suggests that there be a need for public awareness of both the discursive and material processes of globalization.

Keywords: argumentation, critical discourse analysis, financial crisis, globalization, pragma-dialectical, strategic texts