1 Introduction

People use various methods when they want to win their fight. The most traditional one is the fight in its original sense, i.e. to overthrow a rival with the help of common tools such as sword, spear or knife in the past or various modern guns more recently. The other methods are sports or various competitions where competitors fight according to exact rules in order to win some kind of price or simply to be the first in a particular area of sports or competitions. However, a man could struggle and even win an imaginary fight just with the appropriate use of words. Human speech as a whole may become an instrument which could serve for various purposes.

Speech itself is the main element which distinguishes a man from other living beings. Though also the other animals use various kinds of signs or even sounds in order to convey information and come to an understanding, only the human beings are able to decode several codes as people speak different languages. This human ability depends on the knowledge of these particular languages. If people do not know some of them it follows that they would not be able to communicate in these languages. However, in order to understand what the speaker or writer wants really to tell the hearer or reader has to be able to decode the speaker's/writer's aim in particular speech. This ability is important especially in the field of political speeches. Political speeches are just the most evident case where the exact choice of words and expressions may influence the audience to think or even do what a political speaker wants them to think or do. In this sense, with the appropriate choice of words the politicians may win their political battles and fights.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to explore how political speeches can persuade different audiences that those words which are proclaimed are really truthful and the only correct. In other words, the work tries to trace the words and phrases that move the people to do what the politician wishes them to do in various situations and various environments.

The work itself is divided into four parts: introduction, theoretical part, practical part and conclusion. The theoretical one looks more deeply into theoretical background of political speeches, how they are formed, which principles and methods may be applied and also describes more deeply these methods. The main, third, practical part of this work analyzes the form of political speeches. As a corpus for the research serve speeches by U.S. president Barrack Obama delivered either for the audience inside the United States or the speeches which are determined mainly for the foreign audience. The purpose is to compare whether the methods, phrases and words which Obama uses are relatively the same or whether his approach to a domestic audience differs from his approach to a foreign one. The corpus is described more deeply inside the practical part. In the final part, the results from the practical part are summarized as a whole and compared with the findings from the theoretical part.

Finally, a short remark on the use of citations in this thesis should be made. The basic MLA format is generally used with its general rules. The cited item is followed by the name of cited work's author or by the name of particular title if the author is unknown; such entry is then usually followed by the putting the cited page(s). Unfortunately, this is not always possible. As some of the sources are just the electronic copies of printed sources where original pagination was not preserved and it is not possible to access these sources without registration which is restricted to the narrow group of users, as a specification of the cited item it is here put just the relevant chapter. This is especially the case of the majority of the sources retrieved from The Support Centre for Students with Special Needs at Masaryk University.