Critical Discourse Analysis of Obama's Political Discourse
1. Introduction
Politics is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice. In this process, language plays a crucial role, for every political action is prepared, accompanied, influenced and played by language. This project analyzes discourse of political speaking, namely the inaugural address of President Barack Obama. Given the enormous domestic and global significance of the said speech in times of international economic turmoil it is crucial to decipher ideological traits typical for Barack Obama’s enshrined in his inaugural address. Inaugural address predestines policies of the newly inaugurated president and its overall significance is enhanced in the case of Obama’s policy of change. The aim of this project is to examine persuasive strategies of President Barack Obama and its ideological component.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Concept of Discourse
Until the first half of the 20th century, traditional linguists had been working under the orientational point of view that sentences are the largest complete units to be studied. It has, however, gradually been realized to be a mistaken one. Many problems concerning with both linguistic theories and practices appeared to be unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint. This fact eventually led to the appearance of a new subject in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level. Discourse Analysis (as the new subject was termed), as Michael McCarthy (1991: 5) puts it, ‘is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used’, under the assistance of traditional linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology.
Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term ‘discourse’ has been defined in different ways. A discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his... [continues]
1. Introduction
Politics is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice. In this process, language plays a crucial role, for every political action is prepared, accompanied, influenced and played by language. This project analyzes discourse of political speaking, namely the inaugural address of President Barack Obama. Given the enormous domestic and global significance of the said speech in times of international economic turmoil it is crucial to decipher ideological traits typical for Barack Obama’s enshrined in his inaugural address. Inaugural address predestines policies of the newly inaugurated president and its overall significance is enhanced in the case of Obama’s policy of change. The aim of this project is to examine persuasive strategies of President Barack Obama and its ideological component.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Concept of Discourse
Until the first half of the 20th century, traditional linguists had been working under the orientational point of view that sentences are the largest complete units to be studied. It has, however, gradually been realized to be a mistaken one. Many problems concerning with both linguistic theories and practices appeared to be unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint. This fact eventually led to the appearance of a new subject in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level. Discourse Analysis (as the new subject was termed), as Michael McCarthy (1991: 5) puts it, ‘is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used’, under the assistance of traditional linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology.
Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term ‘discourse’ has been defined in different ways. A discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his... [continues]
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