2.3.4.2 Necessary Principles of Analysis of Political Discourse

The question what an analyst must practically do in order to make sense of a whole discourse has still remained not satisfactorily explained; nevertheless, this knowledge or ability belongs to key competences in a task which aims at bringing coherent interpretation of discourse. The space for introduction in such a task is just here. The necessary presupposition is that the analyst already knows the meanings of its constituent parts. Then, he must try to work out how the parts of discourse are linked to each other. Consequently, he must also to find out how this particular discourse fits in with his previous experience of the world. In other words, he must be able to understand what approach to the world it represents or which aspects of the world are mostly related to. He thus investigates the relationship between the discourse and the world. The connection between text or discourse and world is also another meaning of the world coherence which primarily searches for connections between the sequential parts of a text (Fairclough 79).

Surely, to discover and, furthermore, to describe structure and coherence in any discourse genre is not an easy task. It is helpful to bear in the mind that argumentation should be viewed as a discourse genre in which the individual's efforts to persuade others about the correctness of his opinions and consequently to undermine his rival's ones. This leads in the permanent negotiation of meanings. Evidently, this is possible not only due to speaker's and hearer's cooperation, but also competition (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 35).

Another, as Fairclough points out, seemingly paradoxical situation lies in the fact that not only the interpretation of a text but also its production on its own poses interpretative characteristics. However, it is fairly logical because the speaker or, in other words, the producer of the text brings his speech as his interpretation of the world. It just follows that the interpretation of the speech is the listener`s interpretation of the speaker's interpretation. Thus, either the production of the speech or its interpretation should be considered to be creative and constructive interpretative processes (Fairclough 80-81).

2.3.5 The Presence of Power, Ideology and Persuasion in Political Speeches

In this sense, power may be considered as the human's ability to influence the environment of another person and to some degree available to both parties; the weaker one may consequently interrupt reciprocal relationship by withdrawal. Moreover, the use of words by a politician may be compared to a process through which he attempts to gain and also retain the sympathy and approval of his audience. Such speech aims at persuasion, i.e. to gain the authority through its establishment rather than its exercise. Persuasion and formalization can be then put at the two ends of a continuum (Borgstrom 313).

2.3.5.1 Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion

A very important aspect when presenting own power and in this sense representing also particular ideology is the fact that this effort should be done rather indirectly and not so openly because ideology is most effective when it is not so clear that to persuade others is a goal of one of the ideologies. Such indirectness could be reached when ideological cues are brought to the speech as background assumptions. They force, on one hand, the speaker to say something in a particular way and, on the other, the listener to interpret what has been said in a particular way. Obviously, presentation of ideological views is thus not among the components of the speech and it is, to the great extent, up to the hearer to recognize it behind the cues (Fairclough 86).

Generally, to end an argument means to persuade the others to accept a standpoint to which they have been opposing or at least to reach a particular compromise of mutual points of views; nevertheless, sometimes a confrontation ends up either without an evident winner and looser or without any resolution. Instead, the opponents just reaffirm the correctness of their arguments or even refocus their disagreements onto a new basis and reciprocal agreement is not reached as well (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 35). Whether such communication should be remarked as unsuccessful or not is hard to answer.

However, if the speaker is able to influence the attitudes, knowledge or even to undermine recipient's previous ideology, he is obviously able to control their future actions. He may be considered to be a winner because the so-called mentally mediated control of actions of people could be marked as the ultimate form of power. Such access is the feature of various manipulations which are successful in their effort especially due to the fact that it takes place without people's awareness that they are being manipulated to (Caldas-Coulthard 90).

From various approaches to definitions of power and arguments, it may be beneficial to explain the difference between the so-called rhetorical and oppositional argument. Firstly, it must be stressed out that this distinction cannot be guaranteed by serious empirical investigation in each case, yet in most cases it is possible. A rhetorical argument may be defined as a type of discourse in which a speaker uses an intact monologue in order to support his disputable opinion. An oppositional argument, on the contrary, is a type of discourse where participants (but it also may be even one participant) strive to support openly their position; nevertheless, despite of this distinction both types usually consist of some of the same principles of discourse organization and rely on some of the same crucial assumptions (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 38). Since political speeches in the majority of cases are a matter of individual's monologues - not considering occasional demonstration of agreement or disagreement (sometimes even prearranged by politician's supporters or opponents) - it seems then that Political speeches may be defined as a discourse using rhetorical argument.