A Critical Discourse Analysis on Martin Luther King's Speech "I Have a Dream"

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used in language study, it is a technique used to examine and analyse different speech patterns and dialects. CDA’s approaches are thematic analysis, which focusses on categories and themes, oral analysis, which focusses on the spoken form’s pitch and tone and the print test analysis, which is the analysis of cohesion of text. The present article focusses on applying CDA’s techniques on the historical speech “I Have a Dream”, delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, in order to examine how word power influences and contributes on common causes in a community. The application of CDA made it understand how the speech “I Have a Dream” ignited and inspired the black American freedom fight movement. Through examining the speech, it was identified that word power behind speech and how it was a great inspiration during the civil rights movement period. Further, it also supported the idea of the language, and its connection with the society.