Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address: Metaphor and Values as Captivating Strategies to Celebrate a Presidency

Escudero, Ma Pilar Guitart

doi:10.25267/pragmalinguistica.2011.i19.03

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…This happened because, on the one hand, at the time of President Obama's coming into power -January, 2009the powerful America was in her darkest days in history. The country was being gripped by huge crises, including serious economic challenges, war, and a dark future (Hu, 2010;Escudero, 2011;Naeem, 2013;Lodhi et. al.…”

Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…al., 2021), where researchers mainly investigate the utilization of linguistic devices that reflect ideology and power in inaugural speeches; Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (see, Nur, 2012;Kondowe, 2014;Enyi & Chitulu, 2015;Sameer, 2017;Chanturidze, 2018), where inquirers mostly focus on linguistic elements of Interpersonal Metafunction as employed by the speakers. Other categories of researchers taking inaugural speeches seriously operate within the frameworks of Pragmatics (see, for example, Abuya, 2012;Boakye, 2014;Teng, 2015), where studies mostly examine the categories of Speech Actsillocutionary forcesperformed in the speeches; Cognitive Linguistics (see, for example, Hu, 2010;Escudero, 2011;Xue et al, 2013;Pasaribu, 2016;Malah & Taiwo, 2020), where researchers analyse how Conceptual Metaphors are used by new presidents to make abstract political concepts concrete for the purposes of simplification and persuasion. Finally, drawing on the analytic tools of Genre Studies, other researchers explore genre-specific features such as Move Structure of the Presidential Inaugural Speeches (see, Liu, 2012;Naeem, 2013).…”

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Cross-Cultural Pragmatics on Lexical Cohesion in President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches

Malah

2021

IJLLS

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Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders’ persuasion intention in their rhetoric. The purpose of this study was to cross-culturally explore President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches to examine the impact of culture on the persuasive functions of Lexical Cohesion in their rhetoric. Therefore, while drawing on Pragmatics, the study adopted a qualitative discourse analysis approach, utilised an eclectic framework of Lexical Cohesion based on Hoey (1991), Martin (1992) and Eggins (2004) to analyse Obama’s and Buhari’s first inaugural speeches. The findings indicate, on one hand, that although Obama deployed more categories and more frequencies of Lexical Cohesion than Buhari did, ‘Repetition’ (50%) was the most dominant source of Lexical Cohesion in each of the two speeches. Moreover, the most reiterated item in the two speeches were personal pronouns, where Obama mostly repeated the pronoun ‘we’, which had inclusive function, and Buhari mostly repeated ‘I’ and the exclusive ‘we’. On the other hand, the findings suggest that Obama utilised Lexical Cohesion mainly for ‘emotional appeals’, ‘audience involvement’, and ‘credibility-building strategies’; while Buhari used Lexical Cohesion for ‘emphasizing his (and his team’s) personal commitment’, ‘building his credibility’, and ‘demonizing past administrations’. Finally, in the light of these findings, the study has drawn two major conclusions: (1) that on the preponderance of repetition of personal pronouns in both the two speeches, the findings suggest that the generic conventions of the use of personalised English in the inaugural address outweigh any culture-specific discourse practices of the two communities; (2) that Obama’s strategies of emotional appeals and audience involvement that enabled him to ‘speak along with his audience’, which contrast with Buhari’s strategies of emphasizing personal commitment and audience-exclusive tone that made him to ‘speak alone’, seem to have rendered Obama’s speech more interactional and more audience-engaging than Buhari’s speech.

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Section: Cross-cultural Comparison Of the Persuasive Functions Of Lexical Cohesion Across President Obama's And President Buhari's Inaugumentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics on Lexical Cohesion in President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches

Malah

2021

IJLLS

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“…Discussions of persuasion, whether academically or practically oriented, commonly focus on how speech or text has been or is to be formulated so as to exert a desired persuasive effect (e.g. Guitart Escudero ; Rabe ; Pittsburg University ). Speaker‐audience (or writer‐reader) interaction is often considered in terms of the preparation of a speech or text and its anticipated or hypothetical effect (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Following instructions and attempting to persuade: Performing an oral assignment in a seminar in Matvung

Fast

2018

Australian J of Anthropology

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This article is about instructing and persuading talk in social interaction. Two interactions are examined which revolved around an oral assignment delivered in a seminar session in Matvung, Papua New Guinea. I show how the interaction is achieved collaboratively by the seminar cohort, and how the cohort members assume event-specific roles in doing so. At the same time they are drawing upon knowledge and practice already learned in the socio-cultural setting of Matvung day-to-day life, resulting in an interplay between longer-term roles on the one hand and the roles specific to the seminar session on the other.

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“…Thus, metaphors are widely used in political speech as one strategy to reach wider audience. For example, studies have documented that Obama has exploited metaphors in his speeches (Xu, 2010;Escudero, 2011). Xu (2010) argued that Obama used source domains people could emotionally relate to, which helped him influence his people.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domains of Political Metaphors in Presidential Speeches

Pasaribu

2017

LLT Journal

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Speeches are products of human minds reflecting ideas and opinions of the speakers. Crystal (1987) mentions that the way people use language does not only give us information about their geographical, ethnic and social background, but it also reflects the type of context in which they are communicating. As an interesting feature of a language, metaphors in political speeches can be powerful and persuasive. This research aimed at finding the source domains of political metaphors in Joko Widodos speeches, namely: his victory speech and his inaugural speech. These speeches were chosen to be analyzed due to their distinct context and setting. To achieve the goal of the study, the paper explicated Lakoff and Johnsons Contemporary Theory of Conceptual Metaphor (1980, 1992). The findings and discussion argue that the speeches use more positive metaphors of unity rather than metaphors of battle or competition. Furthermore, the texts also conceptualize Indonesian political realm as a journey and navigation, which give the audience a sense of progress. The maritime metaphors in particular are abundant in the two speeches because they reflect one of Widodos visions to strengthen Indonesian maritime.DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2016.190204

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Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address: Metaphor and Values as Captivating Strategies to Celebrate a Presidency

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics on Lexical Cohesion in President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics on Lexical Cohesion in President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches

Following instructions and attempting to persuade: Performing an oral assignment in a seminar in Matvung

Domains of Political Metaphors in Presidential Speeches

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