A discourse analytic investigation into politicians’ use of rhetorical and persuasive strategies: The case of US election speeches

Abstract

The current study investigated the ways in which two major U.S. political arena social actors, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, presented themselves to capture the audience’s attention in the 2012 election campaign speeches. The data consisted of 30 speeches delivered by Obama as the representative of the Democratic Party and Romney as the Republican Party representative from 2011 to 2012. Through the resources of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), common strategies in the speeches, most notably positive self-representation, others’ negative representation, legitimization, delegitimization, and persuasion which are commonly used in political discourse to win voters’ attention, were identified.The findings revealed that Obama frequently focused on evoking the myth of the “American dream”, whereas Romney mostly used the others’ negative representation strategy. In conclusion, it seems that Obama was successful in implementing and conveying his message through rhetorical devices. However, Romney’s excessive use of others’ negative representation seemed to be unsuccessful in attaining his goals.

Keywords

• discourse analysis
• cda
• campaign speeches
• persuasive strategies
• us election