- •Masaryk university brno
- •Content
- •1 Introduction
- •2 Theoretical part
- •2.1 Pragmatics
- •2.1.1 Syntax, semantics and pragmatics
- •2.1.2 Reference, inference, presupposition and entailment
- •2.2. Discourse
- •2.2.1 Discourse Analysis
- •2.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis
- •2.2.3 The Role of Cohesion
- •2.2.3.1 Discourse, Context and Co-text
- •2.3 The Nature of Discourse and Political Speeches
- •2.3.1 Politics and its Theoretical Bases
- •2.3.2 Features of Political Participation
- •2.3.3 The Features of Spoken Political Speeches and their Gradual Changes
- •2.3.3.1 Changes of the Features of Political Speeches through the Time
- •2.3.3.2 The Influence of Media on Changes in Political Speeches
- •2.3.4 Problems of Analysis of Political Discourse
- •2.3.4.1 Some Features of Analysis of Political Discourse
- •2.3.4.2 Necessary Principles of Analysis of Political Discourse
- •2.3.5 The Presence of Power, Ideology and Persuasion in Political Speeches
- •2.3.5.1 Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion
- •2.3.5.2 Tolerance and Opposition to Persuasive Argumentation
- •2.4 The Position of the us in Contemporary World
- •2.5 Summary
- •3 Practical part
- •3.1 Corpus under Investigation
- •3.2 Scrutiny of all speeches
- •3.2.1 Obama's domestic speeches
- •3.2.1.1 Victory Speech
- •3.2.1.2 Inaugural Speech
- •3.2.1.3 Address to the Congress on February 24, 2009
- •3.2.1.4 State of the Union Address 2010
- •3.2.1.5 State of the Union 2011
- •3.2.2 Obama's Foreign Speeches
- •3.2.2.1 Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall;
- •3.2.2.2 Remarks by President Obama at a New Start Treaty Signing Ceremony and Press Conference
- •3.2.2.3 Remarks at the Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders
- •3.2.2.4 Remarks by President Obama at g20 Press Conference in Toronto,
- •3.2.2.5 Remarks by the President to Parliament in London
- •3.3 Comparison of the speeches
- •3.3.1 Comparison of Obama’s domestic speeches
- •3.3.2 Comparison of Obama`s Foreign Speeches
- •4 Comparison and conclusion
- •5 Bibliography
- •5.1 Primary Sources
- •5.2 Secondary Sources
2 Theoretical part
This part tries to introduce and describe briefly and simply the key terms that are important with regard to the practical part of this thesis. The first sub-chapter deals with the explanation of the term pragmatics. Here pragmatics is compared with other branches of linguistics; in the second sub-chapter, approaches of discourse analysis, such as critical discourse analysis, are presented and explained. The attention of the third sub-chapter is devoted to political speeches. The aim is to investigate the key principles of such speeches, their motives and main strategies that are necessary for everybody who wants to be a skilful political speaker. Consequently, the focus is shifted to the persuasion in political speeches. The purpose is to briefly introduce the methods of persuasion in the speeches of politicians and the principle that makes a political speaker also a political leader, or, at least, to scrutinize his effort to militate as such. And finally, in the fourth sub-chapter©, a few remarks of the current position of the United States are made. Only after examination of these terms it would be possible to approach responsibly to practical analysis of the corpus of this work.
2.1 Pragmatics
The term pragmatics may involve various meanings when uttered for the first time. Most people would probably connect it with human behavior, i.e. such behavior which enables someone to gain what he/she wants to gain. Nevertheless, the situation with pragmatics as part of the linguistics is more complex, though some similarities may be seen.
Yule defines pragmatics as the branch of linguistics which "is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or a reader)" (ch. 1). Leech is maybe more abstract as pragmatics for him is "the study of how utterances have meanings in situations" (10). And thirdly, Fairclough connected it with the analytical philosophy of Austin and Searle of so-called speech acts and adds that "spoken or writer utterances constitute the performance of speech acts such as promising or asking or asserting or warning (10). Such more or less complex definitions exist in a quite abundant amount so it would be probably more useful to ask: what does it mean for our purpose for the analysis of political speeches?
In all three cited definitions (and also in many others) it is stressed that not only what is said but also when and to whom it is said is important when dealing with pragmatics. Each participant in communication, even passive listeners, is taken into account because even him/her is expected to decode the message that active speaker is offering. This aspect should be remembered even more precisely by politicians when they write and lecture their speeches. Such speeches should be clear and appealing; however, the politicians should be even rather careful in their expressions as these expressions may be interpreted differently according the audience to which the politician is speaking to. Pragmatics thus would be a helpful discipline in our attempt to decode the effect of political speeches.