The Position of the US in Contemporary World

 

Finally, it would be beneficial to draw out briefly the role which recent United States represent in world politics; only so it would be possible to better understand the motives that lead the US president to use various persuasive techniques in his political speeches.

First of all, he is bound to the particular political culture. Understanding it means to find a key to the "doctrinal content and ideological bases of the political system - its portrayal of national interests, its discourse about national security, public perception of the national leadership, and the arguments that fuel foreign policy (Martнnez and Brena 48).

Historically, the US is based upon the deep conviction that actions that they make are supported by various ideals. For instance, since the last Reagan administration in 1980 the USA has tried to convince the rest of the world of the benefits and infallibility of liberal free market ideology. Consequently, the best model of society is portrayed as: free markets’ competition in capital, services and goods, corporations which aims to maximize shareholder value, stock markets for buying and selling corporate control and, especially, the government's minimal intervention in the markets, i.e. only in cases of its obvious failure (Wade 201-202).

Surely, although the US is among the world's political and economic leaders, it lost its former position, national consensus and alliances that were typical after the World War II. Moreover, it has even failed to maintain its military power that it holds at the time of Gulf War at the beginning of the 1990swhen it had overcome the crisis of the 1980s and tried to hold the leadership and control of the word order after the fall of the European socialist systems and the Soviet Union. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 caused various turbulences, conflicts and contradictions in the world's politics. The US had to readjust to the new situation and, logically, this new role of the US has affected its international position and behavior. To comment it briefly, the US consolidate a new ideological theory that, although it was directed against a new kind of enemy, simply renewed the elements deeply rooted in the US political culture - to legitimize domestic politics. Instead of communism a new enemy has appeared - terrorism (Martнnez and Brena 48). The US has been fighting against the terrorism and, furthermore, has been trying to persuade the others to join in the effort to overthrow it. Especially this aspect would be probably one of the most typical motives of persuasion in political speech.

 

Summary

 

The theoretical part has described the aspects of pragmatics; it has also listed some of the methods of discourse analysis. Beside this, the attention was especially devoted to the descriptions of features that constitute political speeches.

It is evident that political speeches are a type of discourse which is characterized by specific features. However, it has been found out that due to the pressure of media and its effort to catch the attention of their consumers the traditional view of political speeches has been changing and is now nearer to the everyday, colloquial speech. Political speeches should therefore be not only interesting but also entertaining so as to be attractive to media holders who have the privilege of what would be presented and how.

Such approach may also make political speeches to be more persuasive. Persuasion is namely among the main purposes of political speeches. Through persuasion politicians influence others and gain their attention or even win their sympathy. Mixing of the entertaining and persuasive elements is among the main features of political speeches. How this works in everyday practice tries to investigate the practical part of this thesis.

PRACTICAL PART

 

As it has been proposed in the introduction, the practical part of this thesis tries to compare political speeches that the contemporary president of the US Barrack Obama has delivered during his presidency primary either for the domestic or foreign audience. The work aims to find some common and different features that appear in the speeches, delivered in these two types of context. The main purpose is to investigate whether the main aim of political speeches, i.e. to persuade the audience, varies in these two types of speeches.

The hypothesis is that although the style of the domestic speeches tends towards more familiarity and colloquialisms the overall devices that accompany such kind of the discourse are more or less the same.