Syntax, semantics and pragmatics
MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Diploma thesis
Brno 2011
Author: Bc. Peter Adamec Supervisor: Mgr. Olga Dontcheva- Navrбtilovб, Ph.D.
MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Persuasion in Political Discourse
Diploma thesis
Brno 2011
Author: Bc. Peter Adamec
Supervisor: Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrбtilovб Ph.D.
Bibliography
ADAMEC, Peter. Persuasion in Political Discourse; diploma thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2011. 83 pages, The supervisor is Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrбtilovб Ph.D.
Annotation
The diploma thesis "Persuasion in Political Discourse"
investigates on the examples of Barack Obama's speeches which
methods are used in order to reach the main purpose of this
genre - to persuade the others about the validity of
politician's suggestions and make them willing to act according
to him. During the analysis, five speeches intended for the
domestic audience and five speeches devoted especially to the
foreign one are investigated. The speeches are evaluated either
by qualitative criteria when the main ideas and themes are
commented, as well as by quantitative approach when the content
of the speeches is evaluated in percentage on the ground of
particular paragraphs. The aim is to compare Obama's approach
to domestic and foreign audience and to find out possible
similarities or differences.
Keywords
political speeches, political rhetoric, domestic audience, foreign audience, persuasion, comparison
Declaration
I hereby declare that this diploma thesis was done by my own and I used only the materials that are stated in bibliography.
I agree with the placing of this thesis in the Masaryk University Brno Information system, in the library of the Department of English Language and Literature and with the access for studying purposes.
In Brno 9 December 2011 Bc. Peter Adamec
..............................................
Acknowledgement
I would like to express gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrбtilovб, Ph.D. for her valuable advice as well as for having been very kind and supportive throughout my work on this thesis.
CONTENT
CONTENT. 6
1 INTRODUCTION.. 8
2 THEORETICAL PART. 10
2.1 Pragmatics. 10
2.1.1 Syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 11
2.1.2 Reference, inference, presupposition and entailment 12
2.2. Discourse. 15
2.2.1 Discourse Analysis. 16
2.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis. 16
2.2.3 The Role of Cohesion. 17
2.2.3.1 Discourse, Context and Co-text 18
2.3 The Nature of Discourse and Political Speeches. 20
2.3.1 Politics and its Theoretical Bases. 20
2.3.2 Features of Political Participation. 21
2.3.3 The Features of Spoken Political Speeches and their Gradual Changes. 22
2.3.3.1 Changes of the Features of Political Speeches through the Time. 23
2.3.3.2 The Influence of Media on Changes in Political Speeches. 24
2.3.4 Problems of Analysis of Political Discourse. 26
2.3.4.1 Some Features of Analysis of Political Discourse. 27
2.3.4.2 Necessary Principles of Analysis of Political Discourse. 28
2.3.5 The Presence of Power, Ideology and Persuasion in Political Speeches. 30
2.3.5.1 Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion. 30
2.3.5.2 Tolerance and Opposition to Persuasive Argumentation. 32
2.4 The Position of the US in Contemporary World. 33
2.5 Summary. 34
3 PRACTICAL PART. 35
3.1 Corpus under Investigation. 35
3.2 Scrutiny of all speeches. 37
3.2.1 Obama's domestic speeches. 37
3.2.1.1 Victory Speech. 38
3.2.1.2 Inaugural Speech. 39
3.2.1.3 Address to the Congress on February 24, 2009. 41
3.2.1.4 State of the Union Address 2010. 43
3.2.1.5 State of the Union 2011. 46
3.2.2 Obama's Foreign Speeches. 48
3.2.2.1 Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall; 48
3.2.2.2 Remarks by President Obama at a New Start Treaty Signing Ceremony and Press Conference 50
3.2.2.3 Remarks at the Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders. 52
3.2.2.4 Remarks by President Obama at G20 Press Conference in Toronto, 54
3.2.2.5 Remarks by the President to Parliament in London. 56
3.3 Comparison of the speeches. 58
3.3.1 Comparison of Obama’s domestic speeches. 59
3.3.2 Comparison of Obama`s Foreign Speeches. 67
4 COMPARISON AND CONCLUSION.. 75
5 BIBLIOGRAPHY.. 79
5.1 Primary Sources. 79
5.2 Secondary Sources. 80
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.
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.
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.
Syntax, semantics and pragmatics
To distinguish and understand it more properly it would be helpful to put pragmatics among other branches of linguistics, such as syntax and semantics and try to show possible similarities and mainly the differences between these linguistic disciplines. Moreover, also the other two disciplines may be helpful in the process of decoding political speeches.
It has been stated in the previous chapter that an important aspect that has to be taken in consideration when applying pragmatics is the meaning related to concrete situation and the participants of communication. In other words, meaning in pragmatics relates to user of the language, while the meaning in semantics is engaged just with the expressions as the property of the particular language itself. Thus, dyadic relation, between the form of the word and its physical object, is applied in semantics; in pragmatics, beside this, also the relation to the situation and participants is accounted, thus this relationship is triadic (Leech 6).
Furthermore, semantics considers the relationship between forms and their equivalents in the world as unique and truthful regardless of who is speaking about them (Yule; ch. 1). It is clear from what has been already stated that this is not possible in pragmatics.
The third branch, syntax, for many laymen is sometimes confused with linguistics itself, or more often, with grammar. The situation is naturally more complex. Fairclough labels grammar as linguistics proper and distinguishes other sub-branches: phonology which studies the sound system of the language, morphology which focuses on the grammatical structures of words, and syntax dealing with the structures of whole sentences; moreover, Fairclough describes semantics as the analysis of more formal aspects of meaning (9).
And finally, how could be syntax compared with pragmatics and syntax? Syntax, unlike semantics, does not take into consideration any kind of reference to the real word and the real objects in it; nevertheless, syntax and semantics together do not consider as important the users of the utterances, unlike pragmatics which does. Or, in other words, from this triadic relationship only pragmatics admits that humans may be active agent in human analysis (Yule 9).