INTRODUCTION
Rationale
Political discourse has been the prolific research land on account of their great significance According to van Dijk (1997), political discourse analysis could potentially make much contribution to political science in giving genuine answers to political questions Prominently, Fairclough (1995) demonstrated an approach to considering political discourse as a contribution to the development of critical discourse analysis, highlighting political discourse as essentially a form of argumentation to come up with eventual political decisions In politics, although both argumentation and persuasion are defined as a “non-violent linguistic tool to perform as a cognitive pattern of problem-solving” (Wodak, 2018) or any attempt that uses logic to incite a person to take action or to change an opinion or belief, the study targets at persuasion spreading persuasive strategies instead of argumentation only The root cause for such a choice was the fact that persuasion is considered to be a call to action that is also based on appealing to emotion and feeling (Fernandez- Ulloa, 2019), which also matches the study’s focus of touching all three rhetorical pillars in persuasion (logic, credibility and emotions) (Aristotle, 1984).
Besides, among various approaches to political discourse analysis, the study is grounded on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the primary approach to reach its ultimate aim of investigating into the use of persuasive strategies employed in political discourse More specifically, the discourses in the 2016 U.S presidential campaign are chosen to be under discussion at length since this particular campaign sparked considerably intense speeches and strong divided political ideologies from the two candidates: Donald Trump, a political outsider and businessman with no prior experience in government, representing the Republican Party, and Hillary Clinton, a former Secretary of State, representing the Democratic Party Accordingly, their hidden ideologies and power being used as a way to win the listeners’ votes and endorsement are expected to be displayed eventually, entailing the employed persuasive strategies to achieve their ultimate goal of becoming the president of America To comprehensively uncover the persuasive techniques and its lexico- grammatical features employed in political speeches, such primary research approaches as CDA (Fairclough, 1995, 2010) utilizing the exploration of ideologies disguised underneath political discourse, along with the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) (Halliday, 2004, 2014) to unveil the metafunctions in the persuasive strategies and Aristotle (1984)’s theory of persuasion to assist the classification of the persuasive strategies found, are necessarily taken into consideration In fact, many scholars have delved into various research areas on the election speeches delivered by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from different angles of CDA, Discourse Analysis to Functional Grammar However, most of the studies are merely restricted within the feature analysis of wordings and structures of the speeches, but hardly have they developed a comparison between the speeches given by different candidates from the facet of metafunctions and rhetoric strategies highlighting strategies of persuasion from the light of CDA or hardly dug into the reasoning or argumentation between the two politicians This makes the study on these features in their political speeches given by presidential candidates Clinton and Trump in their 2016 election campaign even more vital In a word, the rationale for this piece of research on the persuasive strategies of election speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could be presented as follows.
Firstly, although there is a range of theoretical approaches to persuasive strategies, the study concerns the metafunctions of SFG by Halliday (2004, 2014) that comprises of textual, interpersonal and ideational meaning reflected in the presidential election speeches of the two politicians Especially, what makes the distinctiveness and differentiation of the research over others is the employment ofCDA and SFG as the umbrella research approach, assisted by Aristotle’s theory of persuasion With the insightful progression in CDA, niches in languages use are no longer a far-reaching goal In this research, CDA as an interdisciplinary approach viewing language as a form of social practice allows the combination of various approaches so as to exhume many different layers of political discourse, as well as the ideologies and power embedded in the speeches, feeding up completing the total discourse picture of persuasive strategies Secondly, there are primary reasons leading to the choices of English political speeches being selected as the data sources of the research First, these political speeches are among the major variables of native English which can be seen as representatives of authentic data of the study Second, political speeches are associated with one party communication, acting out the role of the addressee, descending power and influence (Kenzhekanova, 2015) by using specific strategies which may affect the audience’s ideology autonomy In the seeking of power predomination in a large population, the speaker has to resort to specific language devices and persuasive strategies to add in his utterance Interestingly, in this research, the comparison reaching for the similarities and differences in the two politicians’ ideologies and persuasive strategies are expected to generate intriguing findings Third, the research on the persuasive strategies of these two politicians’ speeches are expected to concurrently portray the American ongoing political context at that time wherein different political positions and concerns were addressed by different political parties and the process of verbal persuasion implemented by these two politicians to gain support from potential voters.
All in all, the aim of political discourse is primarily to create consensus among citizens as to which course of action can be adopted to solve problems such as poverty, crime, social inequality and racism Without much understanding of these messages, the politicians’ ideologies could hardly be communicated, and ultimate political goals be achieved, urging the necessity of a research to provide relevant knowledge in terms of political persuasion via ideologies and power as well as persuasive strategies employed Reservedly, persuasion is considered to play a significant role in targeting successful communication, arousing the hearers’ interest in receiving the information while avoiding awareness gaps between the speakers and listeners as well as possible violence and coercion in message delivery Persuasion used by politicians not only reveals potential distinctive language features that need discovering to reach an in-depth insight into language functions and meanings in the field of politics but is also treated as prolific authentic discourse resources for learners in general and language learners in particular to study and draw useful lessons Besides, much as there have been some studies touching areas of the research, neither has their analysis covered the discovery of types of persuasion strategies employed by politicians nor unearthed the metafunctions highlighting political ideologies as manifested in the persuasive strategies in political discourse Besides, the comprehensive three- dimensional model of CDA is prominently employed in providing analysis for political speeches was absent from many researches, giving space for the researcher to conduct thorough research to fill the gaps of previous studies Seeing the importance and benefits of the study both in terms of language and communication as well as contribution to future studies, the researcher thrives for pursuing the study on
Persuasive Strategies in English Political Speeches from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis On the ground of the established theories and methodologies, the study attempts to build up a comprehensive and adequate picture of persuasion strategies in political speeches delivered by HillaryClinton and Donald Trump during their 2016 Presidential campaign.
Aims and Objectives of the Study
The study aims to investigate the employment of persuasive strategies in presidential election speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their 2016 presidential campaign based on Fairclough’s CDA model (1995, 2010) as the research approach The desired outcomes of the thesis are as follows First, the thesis attempts to unfold the types of persuasive strategies, together with their embedded the metafunctions in the two politicians’ presidential election speeches Secondly, the contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies and the distinctive metafunctions employed by the two politicians are targeted Finally, the thesis intends to reach the sociocultural practice analysis of the persuasive strategies to unveil the relationship of persuasion strategies, power and ideologies, intertextuality employed by the two politicians.
To achieve the aims of the study, the following objectives are intended
- to identify the persuasive strategies utilized in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches and the lexico-grammatical resources realizing the metafunctions of these strategies (Description Stage)
- to point out the similarities and differences of lexico-grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions in Clinton’s and Trump’s persuasive strategies to reflect the two politician’s distinctive ideology and power (The Interpretation Stage)
- to shed light on the relationship of persuasion strategies, power and ideologies employed by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by relating the textual constructions to the socio-political context (The Explanation Stage).
Research Question
The study aims to answer the following research questions:
(1) What lexico-grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions are manifested in persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches?
(2) What lexico-grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions are manifested in persuasive strategies in Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches?
(3) What are the similarities and differences in political speeches delivered byHillary Clinton and Donald Trump in terms of persuasive strategies, lexico- grammatical features, intertextuality employed to convey the two politicians’ ideologies and power in political discourse concerning discursive practice and social practice of CDA?
Scope of the Study
The study focuses on and analyzes political discourse in Hillary Clinton andDonald Trump’s 2016 presidential election speeches consisting of persuasive strategies which were collected on January 20 th, 2021, covering a wide range of topics such as immigration policies, health care, terrorism, gun control, economy, to name only a few As the 2016 presidential campaign significantly marked the American presidential election history thanks to the nomination of the first female candidate to be the president of the U.S which had not been recorded before, the focus on political speeches between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would yield interesting findings Particularly, the thesis focuses on the two politicians’ speeches during their presidential campaign to the White House and provides the contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies employed by two different politicians to highlight their metafunctions and subsequently uncover their power and ideology in discourse thanks to sociocultural practice analysis Utilizing Fairclough’s CDA model (1995) and SFG proposed by Halliday (2014) as the grounding theories of the research, assisted by rhetoric theory by Aristotle (1984) for the classification of persuasive strategies, the thesis firstly conducts the Description Stage taking into account the analysis of modality, vocatives, appraisal for the realization of interpersonal meaning Although mood also contributes to generate interpersonal meaning, it would not be the thesis’s focus of analysis for this stage, so as to pave way for more dimensional exploration in terms of interpersonal meaning.
Description Stage also includes the analysis of processes in transitivity system to uncover the ideational meaning, and finally the relationship of theme and rheme to reveal the textual meaning of the persuasive strategies employed Interpretation and
Explanation Stages are the follow-up stages which help to unveil the relationship of persuasive strategies, power and ideologies employed by Clinton and Trump.
Since political speeches are oral pieces of presentation, there are various levels or dimensions of discourse such as voice, sounds and gestures… contributing to the oral quality and impact of the speech that could have been taken into account.However, in considering discourse features and uncovering metafunctions manifested the persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches, such factors would be excluded from the research.
Research Significance
The study gives both theoretical and practical contributions Theoretically, the result of this study is expected to provide knowledge in the areas of SFG (Halliday,
2004, 2014) when touching the area of metafunctions covering the textual, interpersonal and ideational meaning demonstrating persuasion hidden underneath the speakers’ utterances Besides, in assisting the sorting out as well as investigating the reference of persuasive strategies in question, theory related to Ethos, Pathos, Logos within Aristotle’s rhetoric (1984) is also reached to the full Such a combination of theoretical areas definitely fosters an in-depth study of persuasive strategies in political discourse.
Ultimately, the study entails much contribution to CDA study in a way that it serves as an example of a CDA study by employing the Fairclough’s CDA three- layered model (1995, 2010) utilizing all the mentioned theoretical areas as countable linguistic tools for revealing a certain ideology which is constructed through discourse in serving the purpose of persuasion.
Specifically, such a study unveiling metafunctions of the persuasive strategies in question under the light of CDA would be a favorable reference for language learners and future researchers.
Key Terms of the Study
Persuasion : the action of persuading someone or of being persuaded.
Persuasion is also a form of speech that uses argument or emotion to make the listeners believe what the author is saying (Online Cambridge Dictionary)
Persuasive strategies: are techniques used to convince listeners to adopt a particular point of view or take a specific action Ethos, Logos, Pathos were Aristotle’s three forms of persuasive strategies.
Ideology: a set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party or organization is based (Online Cambridge Dictionary)
Power: the ability to control people and events or the amount of political control a person or a group has in a country (Online Cambridge Dictionary)
Lexico-grammar: In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), "lexico-grammar" refers to the correlation between vocabulary and grammar in language It observes that words contain both semantic and grammatical features which are closely interconnected and cannot be studied separately (Halliday, 2004, 2014).
Organization of the Thesis
The study is organized into 7 chapters.
Chapter 1- Introduction – briefly introduces what would be done in the thesis, giving readers an overview of the study in stating the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, research questions, significance and organization of the study.
Chapter 2 - Literature review - highlights the related studies to the research, giving a deep insight into the areas of research that have been reached conducted and identifying the gaps to be filled This Chapter also provides theoretical background relating to the theory of CDA consisting of an overview of discourse- to-discourse analysis Besides, theory regarding SFG, Rhetoric theory and Appraisal will also be discussed Particularly, as one of the spotlights of this research, political discourse and its relation to power and ideologies are analyzed in detail with a view to providing an adequate picture of political speeches with their features and functions In short, chapter two paves the way for the following chapters to effectively unfold the features of the strategies in question and
Chapter 3 - Research Methodology – presents the methodology for data collection and the research procedures of the current study Finally, a Description of data analysis is fully presented.
Chapter 4 - Persuasive Strategies in Hillary Clinton’s Political Speeches – discovers the persuasive strategies utilized in the Democrat presidential candidate s’ political speeches during her 2016 presidential campaign and provides the description of the lexico-grammatical features highlighting metafunctions as manifested in Clinton’s persuasive strategies The Description Stage according to Fairclough’s CDA three-layered model begins with this chapter, setting preliminary findings for the later stages with further research discoveries.
Chapter 5 - Persuasive Strategies in Donald Trump’s Political Speeches – discovers the persuasive strategies utilized in the Republican candidate s’ presidential election speeches during his 2016 presidential campaign and provides the description of the lexico-grammatical features highlighting metafunctions as manifested in Trump’s persuasive strategies The findings were grounded for the Interpretation Stage which elaborates the contrastive analysis between the persuasive strategies deployed by the two politicians and the revelation of their distinctive ideologies communicated to eventually reach the advocacy and persuasion from the audience.
Chapter 6 – A Contrastive Analysis of Persuasive strategies in Hillary
Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s Political Speeches – provides the Interpretation
Stage and proceeds with Explanation Stage according to Fairclough’s CDA three- layered model Accordingly, the Interpretation Stage which embroiders a contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies employed in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is provided Subsequently, the text production of in terms of comparison will be placed in relation with the related contextual factors to facilitate further sociocultural practice analysis in the following stage Finally, Explanation Stage arrives to highlight the ideologies and power embedded in these broader structures and reversely offers an insight into the ways in which language is utilized to maintain or challenge power relations.
Chapter7 – Conclusion – synthesizes the findings of the study and gives implications for further research Furthermore, the limitations of the research and suggestions for further studies are also emphasized in this section.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Critical Discourse Analysis
2.1.1 Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis
Being one of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic Discourse analysis, CDA is characterized not merely as a particular research method, but as a way of approaching and thinking about a problem critically.However, the significant difference between discourse analysis and CDA lies in the constructive problem-oriented, interdisciplinary and multi-methodical of the latter So far, the discussion on the similarities and differences between discourse analysis andCDA have been conducted for a clearer understanding of this critical linguistic approach Squire (2002) points out that non–critical discourse analysis tends to look at and exchange with a focus on the immediate context, rather than the larger socio- historical context While concerned about social relations, a discourse analysis approach is likely to use language categories as given rather than to examine how they circulate and who benefits In contrast, CDA not only looks at the available discourse but asks how and why ideologies are circulating in the workplace discussion, what is being naturalized and who benefits (Nguyễn Hòa, 2006) CDA is characterized not merely as a particular research method, but a way of approaching and thinking about a problem critically CDA moves between broad social formations and micro-textual analytic work… to a critical and socially motivated rather than merely descriptive analysis Given that, a CDA approach is ideal for a study on the persuasive strategies in political speeches.
2.1.2 Critical Discourse Analysis – a Research Approach
The use of CDA as a research method is not necessarily synonymous with given methodological steps for gathering, transcribing and analyzing data As CDA has made the study of language interdisciplinary, many different approaches to analyzing the social, critical effects of language can fall under its rubric Some forms of CDA are deeply influenced by linguistics and analyze a text’s “syntactic and lexicon, its grammar, morphology phonology” Such a focus does not mean that all linguistically influenced CDA looks alike Such analyses can focus on a detailed look at multiple linguistic features, or highlight one or two, such as transitivity or active or passive voice Some such approaches involve transcribing to include markers of emphasis, rising or falling pitch, pauses and other language patterns so that they are available for analysis This approach theorizes that language patterns, when brought to bear on social and historical constructs, can reveal power relations and the working of ideology There are a variety of critical discourse analysts with highlighted areas of analysis and viewpoints.
Fairclough (1995, 1996, 2001, 2010) considers CDA a transdisciplinary (italic in original) form of analysis featuring language as a mode of social practice.
In that sense, CDA assumes the responsibility of analyzing texts in their social contexts (Fairclough, 1995) Besides, the theoretical relationship between language and ideology is also articulated in Fairclough’s theory He emphasizes, “the merits of locating ideology in language structures or language events” (Fairclough, 1995). Inheriting and developing from the concepts of discourse and discourse analysis, Fairclough (1995) contents CDA as “a more diverse range of linguistic features and levels may be ideologically invested than is usually assumed, including aspects of linguistic form and style as well as content” He then argues that language/ ideology issues should be placed into a more general framework of theories and analysis of power.
According to Locke (2004), CDA is characterized as follows:
• analytical because we have conducted a detailed systematic examination of a particular object to arrive at one or more underlying principles.
• discourse oriented in this analysis has been concerned with language in use and with the way in which patterns of meaning are socially constructed.
• critical because a central outcome of the act of analysis is to enable consideration of the social effects of the meanings which a reader is being positioned or called upon to subscribe to in the act of reading and the discussion of these meanings.
Locke (2004) stresses that interpretation arose from an act of reading or analysis which makes meaning of a text In the broader sphere of this definition, Fairclough argues that in respect of discourse analysis, interpretation focuses on three dimensions of discursive practice: (i) its manifestation in linguistic form (“texts” form); (ii) its instantiation of social practice (political, ideological and so on); and (iii) a third dimension which focuses on socially constructed processes of production, distribution and consumption which determine how texts are produced and circulated As Fairclough asserts, analysis could not be separated from interpretation and analysts need to be sensitive to their interpretative tendencies and social reasons for them” (1992, p.35) Such ability to interpret discourse can be defined as literacy meaning the individual cognition to the social construction In other words, literacy is considered the ability to read and write texts – to decode writing (as a reader) and to code language in graphic form (as a writer) In this view, textual interpretation is psychological process which occur in a reader’s head. Literacy can be viewed not as a single thing but as a set of socially constructed practices Not only do different types of texts require different ways of reading, but the same text can also be read in different ways to generate different meanings. Textual meaning becomes multiple and therefore determinate (Locke, 2004).
In other words, to gain the full understanding of the discourse one must fully understand the reference in the context Finally, the critical discourse analysts are responsible for determining the amount of contextual knowledge needed for interpretation, meaning that the understanding of discourse is always dependent on context and recipients The research in this thesis especially takes advantage of the theory regarding CDA by Fairclough (1995) utilizing his three-layered model to relate text construction to socio-political context Further reasons for choosing Fairclough’s CDA could be explained in the following part.
Fairclough’s Three-layered CDA Model
What is useful about Fairclough’s CDA approach is that it allows the researcher to target the signifiers constituting the text, the specific linguistic selections, their juxta-positioning, sequencing, layout and more However, it expects the researcher to be cognizant of the fact that historical determination of these selections and the link between these choices and the conditions in which utterances are produced Fairclough’s approach to CDA is thus considered an appropriate approach as it provides a plethora of options for analytic entry No matter what kinds of analysis to be started in the research, the eventual outcome would arrive with the combination of these analyses expected to be mutually explanatory That is the interconnections that build up the interesting patterns and disjunctions that need describing, interpreting and explaining.
When carrying out the analysis it is important to keep in mind that the analysis points should not be seen as separated elements, but as contributing factors to later analysis as a whole Combining the points allows the analyst to conduct an analysis both on a micro and macro level To specify, while a micro-level analysis focuses on grammatical aspects, such as lexemes, phrases and sentences, the macro-level analysis places the discourse in a social and cultural context This idea has been conceptualized by Fairclough in his three-layered model (Fairclough, 1975, p 21) (Figure 2.1)
Figure 2.1 Fairclough’s framework for analyzing a communicative event
A) Text (Micro-level: the Description Stage)
The first analytical focus of Fairclough's three-part model is text At the first level, represented by the inner box, the analyst conducts a syntactic analysis of the discourse focusing on grammatical aspects or other points that can be read directly from the text, which ultimately requires as much objectivity as the analyst can master Analysis of text involves linguistic analysis in terms of vocabulary, grammar, semantics, the sound system and cohesion-organization above the sentence level (Fairclough, 1995, p 57) In this sense, it can be stated that linguistic analysis is applied to text's lexical-grammatical and semantic properties, two aspects that have a mutual impact on each other (p 57-58) Therefore, as Fairclough writes, the first level is a description of the object of analysis (Fairclough, 2001, p 91). Fairclough also views text from a multifunctional perspective In his description, any sentence in a text is analyzable in terms of the articulation of these functions, which he has relabeled representations, relations and identities:
• Particular representations and recontextualizations of social practice
(ideational function) - perhaps carrying particular ideologies.
• Particular constructions of writer and reader identities (for example, in terms of what is highlighted - whether status and role aspects of identity or individual and personality aspects of identity)
• A particular construction of the relationship between writer and reader (as, for instance, formal or informal, close or distant) (Fairclough, 1995, p 58)
According to Fairclough (1995), linguistic analysis is concerned with presences as well as absences in texts that could include "representations, categories of participant, constructions of participant identity or participant relations" (p 58).
B ) Discourse practice (Meso level – The Interpretation Stage)
Meso level is characterized as the interpretation stage representing the semantic part of the discourse analysis and entails interpreting the meaning of the text in its communicative context In other words, the discourse is seen as a communicative action from this perspective where the focus is on the sender and the receiver (Fairclough, 2001, p 91) According to Fairclough (1995, p 58-59), this dimension has two facets: institutional process (e.g., editorial procedures) and discourse processes (changes the text goes through in production and consumption) In his position, "discourse practice straddles the division between society and culture on the one hand and discourse, language and text on the other" (p 60) (Figure 2.2).
C) Sociocultural Practice (Macro Level – The Explanation Stage)
The third level, represented by the outer box, focuses on placing the text in a sociocultural context This is done by combining the analytical data from the two previous levels and explaining their significance contextually (Fairclough, 2001, p 91). For Fairclough (1995b, p 62), analysis in this dimension pertains to three aspects of the sociocultural context of a communicative event: economic (i.e economy of the media), political (i.e power and ideology of the media) and cultural (i.e issues of values).
According to Fairclough, one does not have to carry out analysis at all levels but any level that might "be relevant to understanding the particular event" (p 62).
Discourse processes can reach the best explanation thanks to the discussion of a core concept in his approach: intertextuality Such an explanation of the intertextuality as follows is necessary Apart from the linguistic analysis at the text level, there also exists linguistic analysis at the discourse practice level that is called "intertextual analysis" (Fairclough, 1995, p 61) Accordingly, in the analytical framework, intertextual analysis focuses on the borderline between text and discourse practice, looking at text from the perspective of discourse practice, considering the traces of the discourse practice in the text For Fairclough, "linguistic analysis is descriptive in nature, whereas intertextual analysis is more interpretative" (p 16) Fairclough (1992, p 84) defines intertextuality as the emergence of many different pieces of texts,making the texts to be mutually echoed, assimilated, or contradicted Though intertextual properties of a text are realized “in its linguistic features”, linguistic analysis is asserted to be descriptive in nature, whereas interpretative analysis is more interpretative Linguistic features of texts entail evidence which can be employed in intertextual analysis, and intertextual analysis is a particular sort of interpretation of that evidence (Fairclough,1995, p 61) In view of Fairclough's three-layer model of CDA, intertextuality plays a significant role in each of the three layers, namely, the textual, discursive, and social practices layers (Figure 2.2).
To conclude, Fairclough’s three-dimensional model offers a simplified overview of how to carry out CDA These three dimensions will be analyzed in three processes of analysis which are: the Description Stage (the layer of text analysis), the Interpretation Stage (the layer of processing analysis) and the
Explanation Stage (the layer of social analysis) As the research attempts to unveil the interrelation of discourse structures and ideological structures, meaning the relationship of persuasion strategies, power and ideologies employed by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their presidential election speeches and particularly, how they reflect their power and communicate their ideologies by means of persuasive strategies, Fairclough’s CDA three-layered model (1995, 2010) seems to be the most appropriate research approach Particularly, such linguistic highlights of political discourse, which are characterized as the Description Stage, are unearthed by in-depth analyses focusing on the metafunctions highlighting interpersonal, textual and ideational meaning in persuasive strategies Meanwhile, the divulgation of text meaning in its communicative situation by placing the discourse within the particular socio-cultural background entails features of the discourse practice (the
Interpretation Stage), simultaneously interpreting aspects of distinctive political ideologies of each individual politician being embedded in the socio-cultural practice of the target speeches (the Explanation Stage) (Figure 2.2) Besides, the analysis of intertextuality in Trump’s and Clinton’s discourse is also essential in understanding how political speeches are influenced by and embedded within broader discursive practices and social contexts and how power relations and ideologies are reinforced through language use.
Figure 2.2 Applying Fairclough (1995, 2010)’s three-layered model to the research
2.1.3 Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Grammar
Political Discourse
What makes language more attractive and interesting if it is not to mention the existence of power reflected in its daily use With the power embedded in language, words magically manifest their ability to regulate, influence, direct, to stimulate people or things And language is the key to the thrive for power of whatever dimension apart from the utilization of physical force (Fairclough, 1989) Fairclough (1989) attempts to spread a mindset correction of a widespread underestimation of the importance of language in the production, maintenance and alteration of social relations of power;particularly and more practically, boost the consciousness of language contribution into the domination of some people to others; giving deep insights into the rich and complex interrelationships of language and power However, though language can execute power in various ways, it is not powerful on its own; instead, the subject that facilitates language matters Language eventually achieves ultimate power by the way powerful people make use of it Deborah
Cameron (2001) (as in Muralikrishnan 2011, p 23) emphasizes that “words can be powerful: the institutional authority to categorize people is frequently inseparable from the authority to do things to them” In this perspective, Fairclough (1989) argues that individuals were the vehicles of power, not its point of application He also believed that power could be conceptualized in terms of asymmetries between participants in discourse events and unequal capacity to govern how texts are produced, distributed and consumed in certain social contexts.
Fairclough (1989) introduces many dimensions of power-language relations in discourse, including the power in discourse (power in “face-to-face spoken discourse, power in “cross-cultural” discourse, or the hidden power reflected in the discourse of the mass media) and power behind discourse, in which the whole society of discourse is put together and held together as a hidden effect of power. Interestingly, in both dimensions, power is held and lost in social struggles In terms of power in discourse, discourse is the site of power struggles and in terms of power behind discourse, it is the stake in power struggles – for control over orders of discourse is a powerful mechanism for sustaining power (Fairclough, 1989).
In conclusion, power in discourse is evident as some speakers are inclined to exercise control over other participants of discourse While discourse is often seen as a venue whereby speakers exercise relation of power, the power behind discourse showcases how relations of power constitute discourse order in society Meanwhile,power cannot be held by defining persons forever but is won or lost through social struggle Accordingly, there is always power in discourse, the power behind discourse and social struggle in discourse In this regard, the political discourse released by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their presidential campaign is no exception Evidently, to manipulate people, persuade the audience to vote for them and exercise dominance over the audience, the politicians undoubtedly demonstrate power through their discourse In other words, the way language is put into operation can be deemed as a powerful political tool manipulated to enable them to reach their ultimate political purposes.
Every discourse carries in its multiple discursive relations of power that communicate the ideologies of the author and the group/institution he represents (Nyako, 2013) Van Dijk (1998a) also accentuates the relation of text and talk in (re)production of ideologies, specifically aiming at the process of how ideology shapes text and talk and conversely, how it is formed, acquired, or changed by discourse and communication Ideologies are employed by the author so that the intended messages will be delivered to the intended audience The ideologies situated in discourse and distributed its functions are capable of controlling the actions or hypnotizing the thoughts of their audience In this sense, this implies that language or discourse is neither neutral nor straightforward nor regarded as an innocent medium merely to send and receive messages In fact, ideology plays a key role in deliberately leading and guiding the audience’s thoughts and actions by establishing and maintaining relations of power, domination and exploitation (Fairclough, 2003) To foster further analysis of ideology in the research, facilitating the research process of exhuming persuasive strategies applied in political discourse, some distinctive features and highlights of
“ideology” would be necessarily emphasized.
Being firstly introduced by the French philosopher Debutt de Tracy in the 18 th century and since then, the term “ideology” has attracted excessive attention from scholars from diverse disciplines such as social and cognitive psychology or discourse analysis Bourdieu (1980, p.55) defines ideology as “generative schemes” which meant practical logics that effectively organized responses to situations and experiences Ideologies is also considered as “cognitive and motivating structures” which by no means exist as an external system of relations but are generated when individuals transform “past effect into an expected objective” (1980, p.53) (1986, p.135), meaning that ideologies are shaped and also entail a range of possibilities
(1972, p.76, 77) Ideologies, in short, acquire durability as products of historically transmitted schemes of perception (1980, p.54).
Eagleton (1991, p.1) presents sixteen different definitions for ideology at his time, mostly explaining social dominance and political power From his angles, ideology is viewed in six different ways: first, ideology is defined as “the general material process of production of ideas, beliefs and values in social life” (Eagleton,
1991, p 28) and more specifically, as “ideas and beliefs (whether true or false) which symbolize the conditions and life experiences of a specific, socially significant group or class” In this sense, ideology is a demonstration of social practices and experiences. Furthermore, Eagleton (1991, p 29) also characterizes ideology as a “discursive field” wherein self-promoting social powers trigger conflict over matters central to the reproduction of social power To enrich the understanding about ideology, he further emphasized it as the dominance of social power in the fourth definition and assumed that “dominant ideologies help to unify a social formation in ways convenient for its rulers (p 30); instead of simply imposing ideas dictatorially from above but of ensuring security and relief for the subordinated classes and groups and so on Not only as such, ideology conveys ideas and beliefs to serve the interests of a ruling group or class specifically by “distortion and dissimulation” (p 30), states Eagleton in his fifth definition Finally, Eagleton argues that ideology placed its focus on “false or deceptive beliefs” (p 30), however, these beliefs are produced by controlling class, rather and are released in accordance with the whole society.
Therefore, in order to locate ideologies’ function in discourse, it is essential to thoroughly unveil this disciplinary triangle and discover such “social mind in its social (political, cultural) context” (van Dijk, 1998, p.6) Similarly, as the research attempts to describe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s ideological components highlighting different political positions and concerns displayed in the two politicians’ presidential election speeches and bring to light the use of power through their political discourse, such knowledge regarding ideologies worth presenting to provide an in-depth understanding about ideology, its definitions as well as functions and how to locate it in political discourse.
Persuasion
Persuasion could be accomplished by the art of rhetoric and the use of persuasive strategies This segment provides understanding regarding the theory of rhetoric in general and persuasive strategies by Aristotle (1984) in particular.
Recent research regarding social psychology and public opinion entails a plethora of empirical regularities on how beliefs are formed in the political and social context First, while beliefs are flexible and can be easily influenced, people are prone to be persuaded particularly in areas where people barely have much personal involvement (Graber, 1984; Zaller, 1992) Second, social interference shapes perception and direct decision, meaning that people are likely to be convinced by their close acquaintances (Grasnovetter, 1973; Cialdini, 1984) Third, in the political sphere, voter awareness of specific issues is supposed to be limited, leading to their high likelihood of persuasion (Zaller, 1992) Persuasion means
“urging” and “advising” (Bloom, 2004) the audience and in politics, the voters, without violence or coercion Simon (2001) states the useful way to construct a definition of persuasion was to look for common characteristics which are referred to as paradigm cases including the following factors (Figure 2.5).
(i)Human communication : Persuasion relates to acts of human communication and exchanges of messages between human beings.
(ii) Attempted influence: Persuasion can make changes and create influence.
Simon (2001) defines the act of influencing others as making a difference in the way they think, feel, or act and those are attempted influence However, there are many cases it may be appropriate to refer to persuasion as an effect already produced by messages, whether intend or not In these contexts, the perception of persuasion remains unchanged.
(iii)Modifying judgments: The target audience, receivers, or the persuadees are called message recipients In most cases, they are the ones who are open to the persuading input, process and generate possible judgments which are the echo of their thinking about the persuader and his persuasion.
With the explanation presented above, persuasion can be defined as human communication designed to influence the autonomous judgments and actions of others (Simon, 2001) so that they can alter their way of thinking, feeling, or acting but it differs from other forms of influence.
Figure 2.5 Features of persuasion (Simon, 2001)
In this thesis, the paradigm case concerned is the one within political contexts wherein political speeches are put in focus Particularly, the speeches in the presidential campaign of the two politicians Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the prolific sources for the research in giving an insightful view of persuasion in politics In this particular context, persuasion is launched as a human communication coined with political purposes, with an attempt to influence the audience’s perception toward particular issues and direct their actions, that is election voting The findings of the studies will help us sharpen our knowledge of how politicians use persuasion as a reliable tool in winning people’s support and confidence.
The power of rhetoric lies in the fact that it can be an effective analytical tool giving guidance for producing persuasive discourse (Eyman, 2015) The rhetorical approach initially involved that could be used to build successful persuasions, these methods were simplified and compiled by Aristotle (1984) Among many theories of persuasion, the researcher adopted Aristotle’s theory of persuasion which touches the three rhetorical pillars in persuasion, facilitation the study’s classification and analysis of persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches Accordingly, Ethos, Logos, Pathos were Aristotle’s three forms of rhetorical proof, meaning they were primary to his theories of persuasion. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s character when the speech is spoken so as to make us think him credible (Aristotle 1356, p.2,3)
The Ethos of the speaker is transmitted via his self-portrayal Ethos draws attention to the speaker and invites an audience to bestow authority on a speaker (Green, 2004) as well as and it highlights the persuasiveness of the speaker’s character (Aho, 1985; Conrad & Malphurs, 2008) In rhetoric, Ethos can be classified into three sub-divisions highlighting the speaker’s high credibility: intelligence, virtuous character and good intentions (Griffin, 2012).
• Perceived intelligence: The speaker’s perceived intelligence reflects his capability and competence or experiences To strongly enforce these pieces of information, proofs from actual information are added to make the utterances more persuasive Audiences highly appreciate intelligence reflecting the speaker’s credibility through the common sense and sound proofs of their motivations (Griffin,
2012, p 293) An example of perceived intelligence could be shown as follows: “I created companies worth billions and billions of dollars and created tens of thousands of jobs Our company, and our employees, remade skylines, revitalized neighborhoods, rejuvenated communities, and hired thousands of workers.” (T22-Ethos-PIn) Donald
Trump gave the actual information enclosing his actual figures regarding his successful accomplishments with an attempt to build a robust economy for America In that way, he could show his competence to the audience.
• Virtuous character relates to the speaker’s image as a trustworthy person with good motives and intentions for his actions to build trust among the listeners(Verderber, Sellnow & Verderber, 2012, p 11) The audiences are persuaded by speakers who could reflect themselves to the one upholding values which the audiences consider worth practicing, for example, their motives to show a set of characters which are the testimony for their trustworthiness and good heart.(Verderber, Sellnow & Verderber, 2012, p 11) The virtuous character could be clearly illustrated thanks to the following example: “I will fight for every neglected part of this nation – and I will fight to bring us all together as Americans I always look forward to coming back to Iowa, a state where I have so many friends – including your incredible governor, Terry Branstad A Trump Administration will bring prosperity to all of our people” (T26-Ethos-Vch) These are the good intentions and motives reflected in Trump’s utterance, aiming to build trust among the audience.
• Goodwill is considered to be a positive judgment of the speaker’s intention toward the audience Goodwill means that the audiences are really moved and fired by the good heart of the speakers who always think for the sake of the audience and put the needs of the audience ahead of the speakers’ interest (Aristotle, 1984). According to Verderber, Sellnow and Verderber (2012), goodwill is also the audience's perception of speakers who are trusted by the audience by being very empathetic and be responsive to them Example: “I want to thank all the elected officials who are here, and I want to do a special shout-out to a long-time friend of my husband's and mine, somebody who we admire so much who did really transform this state during his governorship." (H8.5-Ethos-VCh) is a proof showing that Hillary Clinton was very responsive to the audience, especially her supporters.
In fact, she tried to show her gratitude toward her supporters, which also reflects her good heart for those who are in full advocacy with her.
Logos refers to the reasoning or logic of an argument (Aho, 1985; Green,
2004) Logos is employed by presenting credible information as additional evidence and proof Aristotle emphasized two forms of logical proofs - enthymeme and example which are presented as follows:
• Enthymeme is the proofs, leaving out a premise that is normally accepted by the audience, then utilize deductive logic-moving from global principle to specific truth; Enthymeme is described to be simply an insufficient syllogism, most commonly the major premise, with is the part that everyone knows Logos triggers the inner thoughts of the audience and stimulates them to fill the blank As enthymeme provides a temporary conclusion from possible premises (Aristotle,
Related Studies
This chapter provides literature review according to particular themes directly related to the research to find out gaps and highlight the contribution of the research findings As the research investigates the persuasive strategies in English political speeches from the perspective of CDA, the literature review attempts to reach the review for the research’s critical themes First, previous studies on the topic of persuasion and persuasive strategies would be presented in the literature review; followed by the related studies on persuasive strategies in political speeches adopting CDA.
Political discourse has been a prolific topic of many pieces of research aiming at achieving an insightful analysis to understand more about the power of such discourse The growing academic interest in political discourse can be regarded as a “social request” exposing and discovering not only the peculiarities of political thought and actions but also those linguistic means employed by politicians in their discourse to impinge and control public opinion Regarding persuasion communication in politics, many researchers have also put much effort into generating many studies on the topic There have been several previous studies which are relevant to this topic being analyzed in the field of political discourse.
Ko (2015) conducts a study exploring the content of Aristotelian theories in Taiwan’s Presidents Ma Ying-Jeou’s political discourse on the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement This thesis focuses on Ma Ying- Jeou’s debate discourse, particularly during the question-and-answer section and provides an empirical and theoretical number of public debates on rhetorical strategies adopted by political leaders However, the thesis does not touch such issues as metafunctions to highlight the Aristotelian persuasive strategies which limited the thesis from looking at the persuasive strategies from the interpersonal, textual and ideational meaning.
Also coincidently adopting Aristotle’s three means of persuasion (Ethos, Pathos,and Logos), Ghasemi (2020) stresses the importance of persuasive strategies in political discourse in offering opportunities for politicians to influence and control their audiences by their desires and benefits by examining the persuasive side of the language use in presidential speeches delivered by Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani.This contrastive analysis delineates persuasive strategies basing on the Aristotelian approach towards the methodology of persuasion, finally indicating the prominence ofLogos in presidential speeches as the frequent strategy Three contrastive themes of religion, time and participant names in the speeches signifying the politicians’ distinctively different culture and political discourse as well as the impact of contextual aspects have been discussed in the study Given an elaboration on the theory ofAristotle’s rhetorical appeals of persuasion, the study hardly provides an in-depth analysis on the sub-divisions of each persuasion appeal (Ethos, Logos, Pathos) to highlight the utilization of these persuasion strategies in political discourse Besides,addressing different politicians still releases room for research exploration on other politicians with different characteristics and political ideologies.
In similar vein, Abedi, Lashkarian, & Nematollahi (2018) in their study investigate the use of persuasion by the former President, Barack Obama as a discursive strategy in his two speeches regarding ISIS The analysis of these speeches is done by the application of typology and pronoun analysis However, the researchers of the study admit some limitations and delimitations of their study that can be recompensed in further research That is, they wish they could have been looking at the same subject from different perspectives of theoretical frameworks such as psychoanalysis or critical social theory for a better overall understanding of the phenomenon under the study In addition, it would be best if President Obama’s speeches have been benchmarked against those by other political leaders regarding the crisis of ISIS, and in this case, a more adequate picture of the topic would be in full display, which also highlights the limitations and also the gaps of the research need fulfilling.
Donald Trump’s non-verbal and verbal expression featuring dominance is put at the spotlight in a study by Kleijn (2017) to portray Trump’s manner of communication and somehow an interpretation of how rhetoric and non-verbal communicative efforts can be applied to manifest higher power positions within social context These mentioned studies focus on individual politicians, instead of providing a comparative description of the different use of persuasive strategies by different politicians, which makes the study strikingly differentiate itself from the previous ones.
As the research attempts to provide a Critical discourse analysis of HillaryClinton and Donald Trump’s persuasive strategies in their presidential election speeches, utilizing Fairclough theory of CDA, related studies on political discourse adopting this research approach would be worth reviewing Numerous relevant studies have been conducted to figure out a significant relationship between structures and ideological structures In this regard, Sarfo and Krampa (2013) conduct a study about critical discourse analysis of speeches of Bush and Obama on terrorism The main purpose of their survey is to discover which linguistic resources Obama and
Bush employed to project terrorism and anti-terrorism concepts Their study indicates that both politicians utilized verbs and nouns as the vocabulary items to serve the aim of projecting terrorism and anti-terrorism.; and that Bush and Obama frequently used phrasal categories to project terrorism and anti-terrorism such as verb phrases, noun phrases, adjective phrases, adverbial phrases and prepositional phrases and clauses and simple, compound and complex sentences to serve the same purpose The study has given implications for the linguistic point of view on the concept of terrorism It gives fresh impetus to further studies in the concepts of terrorism, especially from the new trends in linguistic features However, indicating one particular concept of terrorism limits the studies from discovering other political themes and ideologies that may be possibly communicated in political discourse.
Ehineni (2014), on the other hand, conducts a study to explore the role of modals in Nigerian political manifestos By using the CDA model, he explores how the modals could be utilized by Nigerian politicians to persuade their audiences to vote for them This study unmasks the ideological underpinnings of the modals in use by Nigerian politicians and stresses that modals are not just linguistic elements, but significantly ideological tools The author shows how linguistic elements like modals can be used by politicians as a tool of influence to persuade the electorate. Much as the study declares its application of Fairclough’s CDA model, barely does it successfully display how CDA approach governed the overall research.
In another attempt, Hassan (2016) conducts a study on critical discourse analysis of the political speech of Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, at the New SuezCanan inauguration ceremony He claims that his study is the first of its kind since it aims to explore the salient linguistic features of the speech and the main ideologies and strategies to achieve his long-standing political goals In part of linguistic practices, the author attempts to depict the main ideology through analyzing the semantic macrostructures and strategies used by President El-Sisis through analyzing the local semantics of linguistic features This study can be considered a good model of research methodology for further research in this field, adopting the use of different discourse registers to make light to the ideologies embedded in the politician’s discourse, instead of depicting the persuasive strategies and resorting to the interpersonal meaning highlighting modality and attitudinal selections featuring persuasion to outstand the ideologies communicated This clarifies the gaps of the previous research with the study in question Also exploiting the three-dimension framework of CDA by Fairclough, Javad (2019) conducts a contrastive analysis between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential discourses, basing on a qualitative-quantitative study focusing on how societal power relations were established and reinforced through language use However, the study limits itself to language use in general but barely relates to the ideologies and power manifested in political speeches, as well as refer to the theory of persuasion which is considered the significant function of political discourse.
Vietnamese authors have also contributed to the study on persuasion in political discourse from the angle of CDA Nguyễn Thị Huyền (2021) also conducts a study on persuasive strategies in political discourse and comes up with significant findings which emphasized Hillary Clinton’s utilization of three rhetorical pillars in persuasion (logic, credibility and emotions) in her speech to eventually characterize herself as a capable language user Besides, it is revealed that ways to arrange viewpoints, ideas, facts and macro-structure of text that affect the audience’s minds and get their sympathy were the strength of the Democrat presidential candidate. From the perspective of CDA, the study highlights the unfair situations which women are suffering without any prompt solutions The findings of the study entail the urge for women protection in terms of social dignity as well as humanistic values in society The study has contributed to the study of political discourse, adopting CDA, however, it solely focuses on one politician and merely touches Aristotle theory of persuasion, instead of reaching a combination of SFG from the perspective of CDA to highlight the metafunctions of persuasive strategies employed, which marks the differentiation of research from others.
Nguyen Thi Minh Tam (2019) also carries out a CDA study of the Inaugural
Speech of Presidential Donald Trump delivered on 20 th , January 2017 to explore the relationships between language, ideology and power through social practice, discourse process of his speech, following Fairclough’s CDA framework (1992, 2001): Description, Interpretation, and Explanation The study focuses on the analysis of language features, the relationship between situational and intertextual context, and social process, adopting descriptive qualitative method The results of the analysis have shown that Trump used soft skills to express his ideology to inspire the Americans, to propose future plans and lead the Americans to follow him However, the study restricts itself to only one speech among numerous Trump’s political speeches Therefore, it hardly displays Trump’s multiple ideologies but merely the ones expressed in the single presidential inaugural speech. Besides, CDA is the main theoretical background of the research, and no other theories are mentioned to reach a more comprehensive exploration of language. Likewise, Nguyen Thi Van Anh (2020) spotlights the relationship od CDA and SFG as displayed in President Barack Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Speech with a view demonstrating the interplay between power, language and ideology Accordingly, the research concentrates mainly on analyzing lexicalization, syntax and structure of the speech It is recognized that Obama reaches his success in conveying his ideology and expressing his power as the new president While SFG are reached, the research barely presents the analysis of metafuctions to yield findings regarding interpersonal, ideational and textual functions employed by the president. Furthermore, the author chooses not to place the text in discursive and sociocultural context to highlight the mentioned relationship; therefore, limiting the research results to achieve more dimensional approaches to generate multiple findings.
Adopting Fairclough’s three dimensions, Nguyen Dieu Hang (2014) elaborates the relationship between power and ideology in Obama’s attempt of using language to gain support from American people through his political speeches The research focuses on the analysis of a speech delivered by Obama at President Nelson Madela’s memorial, from CDA perspectives Much as the research reveals findings that show that the president employed linguistics features as the strategies to present his power and ideology, neither does it classify the strategies by names or by specific rhetoric appeals as being categorized according to Aristotle’s rhetoric theory of persuasion nor display the different stages of analysis following Fairclough’s three-layered model of CDA.
All in all, it can be concluded that the previous related studies have partly touched some areas of the research such as language use employed by politicians, the adoption of CDA in analyzing political discourse, Aristotle’s theories employed by a particular politician… However, while many pieces of research have been conducted to highlight features of presidential election discourse in terms of semantics, syntax, none of their analysis have covered the revelation of types of persuasion strategies employed by politicians or unearthed the metafunctions highlighting ideologies and political stands as displayed in the persuasive strategies in political discourse Besides, the comprehensive three-layered model of CDA which is prominently employed in providing analysis for political speeches are absent from those pieces of research, giving space for the researcher to conduct thorough research to fill the gaps of previous studies The research characterizes itself in comparison with other studies in a way that it reaches different approaches to investigate the use of persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s presidential speeches Particulary, the research will not only provide a description of the persuasive strategies (Ethos, Logos, Pathos) and their sub-divisions utilized in the political speeches of Clinton and Trump by adopting Aristotle’s (1984) rhetorical theory but also unearth the description of metafunctions in the SFG by Halliday (2004, 2014) to highlight the ideologies and power as manifested in the employed persuasive strategies Besides, adopting the theory relating toFairclough’s (1995, 2010) three-layered model of CDA, the lexico-grammatical features of the persuasive strategies will be look at three different stages for analysis.Above all, to lay a solid theoretical background for later parts of data collection and analysis, the presentation of related theory is considered to play a vital role.
Summary
This chapter has provided a relatively comprehensive literature review and theoretical background related to the thesis Particularly, Fairclough’s CDA model
(1995, 2010) and Halliday’s Textual Analysis in SFG (2004, 2014) are the grounding theory for the researcher to unearth the persuasive strategies employed by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their presidential election speeches. Besides, to provide a comprehensive picture of the features describing persuasive strategies employed, Aristotle’s theory (1984) was supplementarily adopted to assist the classification of different persuasive strategies employed by each politician Besides, to foster the interpretation of the lexical resources highlighting the interpersonal meaning that reflect each politician’s ideologies and power in their persuasive strategies, the thesis further adhered the Language of Evaluation offered by Martin and White (2005) The theoretical framework of the thesis is fully described in Figure 2.6 Besides, to provide a comprehensive roadmap for later chapters, the thesis’s conceptual framework is also presented as in Figure 2.7.
Figure 2.6 Theoretical Framework of the Thesis
Figure 2.7 Conceptual Framework of the Thesis
This chapter presents the methodology of the current study First, it presents the research design and methods employed in the thesis; next it describes the sampling and the data collection in which considerations in selecting materials and the sources of data are presented Then come the data collection procedures Finally, a description of data analysis is fully presented.
Research Design
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse was adopted as a general theoretical framework in the course of the analysis CDA is an approach to discourse analysis that examines the relationship between language, power, and ideology First, in CDA, language is seen as a social practice that is shaped by power relations and used to reproduce or challenge existing social structures and power relations Second, the role of choice in SFL as a framework for analyzing language in three meta-functions is also relevant to CDA, as it reflects the speaker's or writer's intentions and values, which can be analyzed to reveal the underlying power relations and ideologies that are embedded in language use Third, in CDA, the analysis of language choices involves examining how language is used to construct and reinforce social identities, relationships, and power relations Consequently, this approach allows the researcher to examine the language use in Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s political speeches as a form of social practice with a view to investigating the relationship of power, ideology and hegemony in their discourse.
In order to provide an in-depth and detailed description of the persuasive strategies in political speeches, the study was obviously descriptive in nature For the further step after the description, frequent comparison between the groups of data collected from political speeches delivered by Donald Trump and HillaryClinton was also aimed at in order to highlight the critical discussion of contrastive information obtained from a contrastive analysis. the qualitative approach since the collected data was targeted to yield the linguistic features about syntactic linguistic units in the form of sentences, phrases, clauses, words which were classified into their syntactic categories along with their semantic functions It was also descriptive in nature in the sense that this study was intended to describe how the language used in the political speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their presidential campaign was manifested with quantitative information, namely, the frequency of the linguistic units that occurred in a stretch of discourse The motivation behind the research design and methodology was based on the objectives and research questions that guided the tasks to obtain the information to systematically describe the linguistic characteristics and behaviors of the persuasive strategies used in political speeches by Trump and Clinton More specifically, it helped answer the what, when, where and how questions regarding the research issues about the appraisal values of the language used and their ideology manifested through their persuasive strategies. Thus, CDA was used as a methodology that enabled a vigorous assessment of what was meant when language was used to describe and explain in this descriptive study which seeks qualitative and quantitative information for the research questions to be restated here.
(1) What lexico-grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions are manifested in persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches?
(2) What lexico-grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions are manifested in persuasive strategies in Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches?
(3) What are the similarities and differences in political speeches delivered byHillary Clinton and Donald Trump in terms of persuasive strategies, lexico- grammatical features, intertextuality employed to convey the two politicians’ ideologies and power in political discourse concerning discursive practice and social practice of CDA?
• Locating and Defining Issues or Problems about the persuasive strategies in communication;
• Reviewing the literature with previous studies about the persuasive strategies in political speeches;
• Setting research specific aims, questions, objectives and assumptions about the description and identification of persuasive strategies utilized in Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential election speeches;
• Adopting a theoretical framework of CDA, SFG for the description and analysis of instances of persuasive strategies employed in Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential election speeches;
• Designing the Research Project guided by the objectives and research questions: Descriptive research for qualitative and quantitative information;
• Sampling: Deciding on the sample design to collect political speeches by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton;
• Selecting sources of data and instruments;
• Collecting valid and reliable data on instances of the linguistic units used in political speeches by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton;
• Analyzing data (Interpreting Research Data) qualitatively and quantitatively in the framework of CDA, SFG;
• Reporting research findings and conclusions.
Research Methods
With an aim to look for the qualitative and quantitative information about the persuasive strategies employed by the 2016 presidential candidates, the study built on a descriptive analysis which is a research method for studying written language in relation to its context of the political speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches.
The choice of this method was made with the focus on:
• The purposes and effects of CDA and the evaluative language, specifically the language used as persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s
• How values, beliefs and assumptions are communicated in conformity with the assumptions of CDA (Fairclough, 1995, 2010) and the institutionalized systems of SFG (Halliday, 2004, 2014).
The descriptive analysis was conducted along with the contrastive analysis to find out the different choices in using linguistic units at different levels in the persuasive strategies employed in Trump and Clinton‘s election speeches The choice of descriptive analysis was made due to the fact that it was a common qualitative research method in many humanities and social science disciplines, including linguistics, specifically the study with the focus on qualitative information about the persuasive strategies utilized by the two 2016 American presidential candidates.
This method was expected to find out the information in terms of
- The persuasive strategies utilized in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches and the lexico-grammatical resources realizing the metafunctions of these strategies (The Description Stage);
- The persuasive strategies utilized in Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches and the lexico-grammatical resources realizing the metafunctions of these strategies (The Description Stage);
- The contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies utilized in the two politicians in their discourse as well as their metafunctions (The Interpretation
- The lexico – grammatical features highlighting the metafunctions of the persuasive strategies that reflected each politician’s ideology and power in their persuasive strategies (The Interpretation Stage);
- The relationship of persuasion strategies, power and ideologies employed by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by relating the textual constructions to the socio-political context (The Explanation Stage).
Finally, the research provided the analysis of persuasive strategies of HillaryClinton and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches from the angle of CDA which functions to help accomplish a descriptive analysis of the political texts in between the textual constructions and the socio-political context Utilizing the three-layered model of Fairclough (1995), Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s election speeches were analyzed throughout three stages: the Description Stage, the Interpretation Stage and the Explanation Stage.
This study adopted the three classical steps of description, juxtaposition and comparison (Krzeszowski, 1989) to identify similarities and differences in terms of the use of persuasive strategies linguistically realized by the lexical grammatical units and the functional aspects of these linguistic units used in the framework of SFL The similarities and differences in Hillary Clinton’s speeches and those of Donald Trump were also expected to encompass the aspects of how ideology and power were exerted in terms of interpretive and explanatory information.
This descriptive analysis was accomplished through three stages
The Description Stage includes the following steps: First, the text was closely read to get the comprehensive understanding Second, basing on Fairclough’s CDA model (1995, 2010) as the research approach, the text was then analyzed to extract utterances carrying persuasive strategies, utilizing the theory of Aristotle’s Rhetoric
(1984) to facilitate the classifying and grouping of persuasive strategies of each politician according to Ethos, Logos and Pathos and their sub-categories Third, applying the SFG by Halliday (2004, 2014) the data was analyzed to investigate the metafunctions in the persuasive strategies employed in the utterances to highlight the deology and power embed The Interpretation Stage discovered how the utilization of the persuasive strategies employed in the two politicians’ presidential speeches was displayed and compared, providing the contrastive analysis of the questioned persuasive strategies as well as their metafunctions The Explanation
Stage later begun by relating the textual constructions regarding the metafuntions of the persuasive strategies of the two politicians to the socio- political context, to compare and contrast their ideologies and political stands.
Sampling
Among many political speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a certain research from an online source: http://wwww.presidency.ucsb.edu/2016_election.php which is a website known as The American Presidency Project The site is a source of speeches and press releases of past and present American public office holders.
Clearly, the units of analysis for this study are paragraphs of campaign speeches delivered by the two American political candidates under study as provided in the web source which provides the total collection of 86 presidential election speeches in the sample frame for Hillary Clinton and 74 for Donald Trump. However, the researcher did not attempt to give an analysis on the available speeches collected Instead, to reach manageable data for the research, firstly, sample speeches that are interviews, news conferences and debates were excluded as the research intentionally focuses on the presidential election speeches of the candidates A total of 73 speeches were left for Donald Trump and 64 for Hillary Clinton after the initial round of classification.
Secondly, it is noticed that speeches delivered by Trump and Clinton before they were announced as presidential candidates of their various political parties during the campaign period were also eliminated Therefore, the reduced number of Trump’s speeches after the Republican Party Convention was 65 speeches while those of Clinton after Democratic Party convention was 35 As the Republican Party Convention and Democrat Party Convention marked the parties’ nomination for Trump and Clinton respectively to be presidential candidates, only the speeches after the nomination announcement were put into account.
Finally, to ensure further balance and manageability of the research, random computer sampling was carried out thanks to the aid of computer software, theResearch Randomizer (Figure 3.1), to pick the 35 out of Trump’s 65 speeches,ensuring the even number of Clinton’s and Trump’s speeches for later analysis.
Figure 3.1 A snapshot of Research Randomizer Software
Data Collection
The data of the research are in the form of utterances collected from the politicians’ presidential election speeches The utterances collected were the ones that include words, phrases highlighting evidence of persuasion according to the sub-divisions of persuasive strategies by Aristotle (1984): Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. The length of the utterances containing persuasive strategies could be varied due to different characteristics of different persuasive strategies The thesis analyzed the utterances in the videos on YouTube and transcripts of the speech by describing and explaining the data based on the theory of CDA Applying Fairclough’s CDA model
(1995, 2010) with Halliday’s Textual Analysis in SFG (2004, 2014) presented in the previous chapters, the present contribution tried to make a study on the contrastive analysis of persuasive strategies employed by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s structures and ideological structures, discover the two politicians’ ideologies and power thanks to the sociocultural practice analysis.
The source of data for this research was written data transcribed from spoken speeches To ensure the equal number of speeches collected from the two politicians Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the software Randomizer was utilized The researcher collected and analyzed the utterances in the speech transcripts Instances in the form of utterances were then chosen from the collected data by careful document reading and observation, to serve the objectives of the study As being recommended by Eyman (2015), “close reading also serves as a starting point because it provides the contrast for newer rhetorical methods”, close reading through personal scrutiny of the data was viewed as a useful tool to collect data for the study Apart from utterances, words and phrases as smaller units were also observed for a closer look and detailed analysis.
An elaboration was then given with details being delved into the phenomenon of the written data using Fairclough’s CDA model (1995, 2010), SFG (Halliday,
2004, 2014) and Aristotle’s Rhetoric strategies (1984) with a view to highlighting the persuasive strategies and their metafunctions in the political speeches delivered by the two American politicians Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in their political run to the White House in 2016 In addition, the study provided a contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies employed by Clinton and Trump in their presidential speeches to gradually reveal the difference in the two speakers’ employment of power and ideologies for persuasion.
The data of this research are the speeches that contain many kinds of persuasive strategies The source for data was taken from http://time.com/3920332/transcript-full- text-hillary-clinton-campagn-launch/ As the data of this research are from the utterances or words in Hillary Clinton andDonald Trump’s presidential election speeches, several steps need to be done.
The researcher downloaded the target presidential election speeches of the two
1 politicians before close reading and observation These speeches were positioned to be those delivered during their 2016 presidential campaign. The researcher started collecting the data from speeches, ensuring the balanced
2 number of speeches collected from the two politicians to reach the objectiveness and equality in later data analysis and comparison.
3 The researcher identified and coded expressions of persuasive strategies found, to Ethos, Logos and Pathos and their sub-categories (Aristotle, 1984)
The researcher read closely the data in order to achieve a deep understanding for further analysis These processes helped the researcher figure out and
4 identify the data, which is in the form of utterances, potentially containing persuasive strategies In fostering the process of identifying deeper layers of data, the act of coding the speeches collected was needed Besides, smaller units such as clauses, phrases, or individual words were also observed for an insightful analysis.
By highlighting the utterances containing persuasive strategies, the researcher classified the data regarding persuasive strategies and put them into appropriate
5 categories (Ethos, Logos, Pathos) and sub-categories Especially, as there were two sources of data, one generating from Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches and the other from Hillary Clinton’s, the data from each source was selectively separated and grouped under the realization of the same criteria with a view to making a comparison of the instances collected later.
6 The editing process, rechecking the data obtained to see whether the data was good enough and could be quickly prepared for the next process was necessary.
All of the speeches chosen for the analysis were coded for the ease of analysis and categorization Those speeches belonging to Donald Trump were coded as T, being arranged in order from T1 to T35 Likewise, H1 to H35 were the coded speeches ofHillary Clinton Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 provide lists of the two politicians’ speeches and their corresponding codes Besides, to clearly indicate the specific categories to which the persuasive strategies belong, more information was added to the code To exemplify, if the Logos persuasive strategies taken from speech
Data Analysis
Utilizing the three-layered model of Fairclough (1995), Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s election speeches were analyzed throughout three stages: the
Description Stage, the Interpretation Stage and the Explanation Stage.
In The Description Stage, the utterances were initially analyzed to foster the revelation of features describing persuasive strategies employed, adopting Aristotle’s theory (1984) Also in this session, utterances from the speeches were analyzed in accordance with Halliday’s Textual Analysis in SFG (2004, 2014) which was also the grounding theory of the thesis to uncover the metafunctions as manifested in the persuasive strategies employed by Clinton and Trump in their presidential election speeches The thesis focused on several aspects of SFL to analyze the metafunctions as embedded in the two politicians’ persuasive strategies:
In terms of interpersonal metafunction, such aspects of SFG were stressed:
• Modality: Modality refers to the ways in which speakers express their attitude towards the message they attempt to convey In Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential election speeches, the thesis analyzed the modal choices which the two politicians made to identify the degree of certainty or uncertainty, obligation or necessity, and desirability or preference that the expressed.
• Appraisal: Appraisal refers to the linguistic resources that speakers employ to express their attitude of the content of their speech In Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential election speeches, the thesis analyzed the Appraisal choices the politicians made to identify affectivity or emotionality, and social and interpersonal positioning that they expressed.
In terms of ideational metafunction, such aspects of SFG were stressed:
• Transitivity: Transitivity refers to the relationship between the subject, the verb, and the object in a clause In Clinton’s and Trump’s presidential election speeches, the thesis analyzed the transitivity patterns to identify the types of actions and processes being described by the politician.
• Theme and Rheme: Theme and Rheme refer to the organization of clauses and sentences As the initial part of a clause, the Theme identifies the point of departure, while the Rheme is defined as the final part that entails new information In Clinton’s and Trump’s speeches, the thesis analyzed the Theme and Rheme patterns to identify the main ideas and arguments presented and developed by the two politicians Topical and interpersonal theme delivered in the strategies were also finally revealed.
The Interpretation Stage started with the contrastive analysis of the persuasive strategies employed by Clinton and Trump in their presidential election speeches and also the comparison of their discursive practice.
Finally, the Explanation Stage is the follow-up stage to uncover the relationship of persuasive strategies, power and ideologies employed by HillaryClinton and Donald Trump in which the realizations of the textual constructions were linked to the socio-political context for further generalization.
Reliability and Validity
To ensure the validity of the study which was determined by the accurateness of the method that measures what is intended to measure, the thesis was expected to generate relevant measuring constructs to reveal valid findings Therefore, the measuring constructs to generate findings regarding persuasive strategies in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches were carefully decided. The following constructs of the thesis should be measured:
(1)persuasive strategies: identify and categorize the persuasive strategies used by the politicians using the established methods of Critical Discourse Analysis.
(2)language use: analyze how language is used to create persuasive effects.
(3)power relation: analyze how persuasive strategies are employed to reinforce or sabotage power relations.
(4) political discourse: analyze how political discourse construct the use of persuasive strategies in political speeches.
To guarantee the construct validity and to generate the information of persuasive strategies in Clinton’s and Trump’s political speeches, adopting Fairclough’s three-
• The Description Stage to identify persuasive strategies utilized in Clinton’s and
Trump’s presidential election speeches and the lexico-grammatical resources realizing the metafunctions of these strategies In the thesis, the persuasive strategies were identified and categorized using the established methods of Critical Discourse Analysis Besides, the metafunctions as embedded in these strategies were analyzed to unearth how the use of language in political speeches created persuasive effects.
• The Interpretation Stage to point out the similarities and differences of the metafunctions in Clinton’s and Trump’s persuasive strategies to reflect the two politicians’ distinctive ideology and power.
• The Explanation Stage to shed the light on the relationship of persuasion strategies, power and ideologies employed by Clinton and Trump by relating the textual constructions to the socio-political context.
Regarding the metafunctions in Halliday’s SFG (2004, 2014), meaning the interpersonal, textual and ideational functions, distinctive constructs were measured.
• To generate interpersonal function, the description of modality and appraisal resources was taken into account As modality involves the ways the speakers express their attitude towards the messages conveyed while appraisal refers to the linguistic resources employed by the speakers to express their attitude of the speech’s content, utilization of these constructs adequately unveil the interpersonal meaning embedded in the politicians’ persuasive strategies.
• To reach the textual function, the analysis of the relationship of theme and rheme which generates topical theme and interpersonal theme embedded in discourse highlighting persuasive strategies was inevitable Consequently, the patterns of theme and rheme would assist the realizations of arguments and main ideas developed by the two politicians, shedding light to the discovery of the ideology and power communicated in their persuasive strategies.
• Finally, to identify the ideational function, the analysis of processes in transitivity system was also put at spotlight This construct delves the of actions and processes being carried out by the two politicians.
The measuring variables are relevant to measure the intended constructs to yield relevant information regrading the discovery of power and ideology of the persuasive strategies employed Besides, the internal validity is also ensured when there bares little irrelevance between the measure and constructs mentioned above as the thesis’s theoretical background has clearly presented a close relationship between CDA and SFG and some key ideas were shared by both Halliday (2004,
2014) and Fairclough (1995, 2010) (as discussed in 2.1.3) Hence, it can be said that the thesis can ensure both construct validity and internal validity to entail external validity to make further generalizations for the thesis’s conclusion.
Besides, to ensure the reliability of the study which reflects the consistency of the measuring method in yielding same findings, the study referred to the use of more than one approach to analyze a research question to enhance confidence in the findings Therefore, in this research, a combination of many approaches were used.With a view to unveiling the characteristics of persuasive strategies employed inHillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s political speeches, two grounding approaches were reached were Fairclough’s CDA model (1995, 2010) and Halliday’s TextualAnalysis in SFG (2004, 2014) to generate a solid theoretical framework and conceptual framework for the analysis Besides, careful reading and cross check of the findings was necessary to ensure the same findings for analysis Additionally, to further ensure the reliability of the data, deliberate checking, process tracking and note-taking were necessary All of the words or clauses in questions in the analyzing text were put in bold and italics for different purposes Particularly, the utterances extracted from the speech were also traced with detailed notes and systematically coded in accordance with the coded original source speeches All data, including the reduced data, reconstructed data and transcription of the utterances were provided in the appendixes with all the detailed highlights and notes.
This chapter on the research Design and Methodology presents the qualitative approach and descriptive analysis These methods were used for this study since the attention was paid to the description and explanation of semantic features as well as the discovery of ideologies embedded in discourse Moreover, a comparison of these features reflected by the two target politicians was clearly presented From the light of Fairclough’s CDA (1995, 2010) and Halliday’s Textual Analysis in SFG
(2004, 2014), all the features of persuasive strategies employed in the speeches were expected to be deliberately discovered in full.
PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES IN HILLARY CLINTON'S
Ethos in Hillary Clinton’s Political Speeches
The factors entailing the realization of Ethos persuasive strategy in discourse as highlighted by Aristotle (Aristotle in Griffin, 2011) are perceived intelligence, virtuous character and goodwill In Hillary Clinton’s election speeches, these factors were utilized with distinguished percentages to perform the act of persuasion toward the targeted audience Table 4.1 clearly presents the percentage of each category.
Table 4.1 Ethos in Hillary Clinton’s political speeches
As can be seen from Table 4.1., the figures showing Hillary Clinton’s virtuous character and goodwill outweigh her expressions of perceived intelligence, with the percentages of each rhetorical proof of 42%, 29% and 28% respectively.Some examples of each type can be illustrated in the subsections below.
Constituting the highest proportion among the sub-types of Hillary Clinton’s Ethos persuasive strategy is Virtuous character Some instances regarding this feature could be considered for more comprehensive understanding of the Ethos used.
(H8-Ethos-VCh) So I want us to have an economy that works for everyone, to grow the economy, to create more jobs, but I also want a fairer economy because – when you work hard, you should not be still in poverty at the end of the year
(H9-Ethos-VCh) Standing on that debate stage the other night; I was especially thinking about that And, look, I have been very clear about what I want to do if I'm fortunate enough to be elected president That's why I could go to work for the Children's Defense Fund
In the journey of gaining trust and building credibility among the audience, Hillary Clinton endeavored to perform herself as a leader with excellent character. Through her utterances, Clinton communicated her values and motives as proofs of her virtuous character to gradually accumulate the audience’s trust In example
(H8-Ethos-VCh), Hillary Clinton showed her good intentions for her nation, by establishing a “fairer economy” and helping people escape from poverty Or she continued showing her sympathy toward disadvantageous people due to the unfortunate existing race discrimination, color discrimination and gender discrimination in the society Hillary Clinton also saw herself “fortunate enough” if she was eventually elected as the president of the United States, considering this as a precious chance for her to keep on being determined with all the plans which she would like to accomplish for the nation (H9-Ethos-VCh) Bringing “opportunities for kids and fairness for families” were some among the promises she would actualize in her new position as a president.
Hillary Clinton’s goodwill can be clearly seen through the following examples:
(H32-Ethos-Gw) I want to be a really strong partner I'll compete a little with them I want to be a really strong partner with Detroit and other cities that are on the way back up to make sure you get the investment and the support, the housing and the jobs that you need
(H1-Ethos-Gw) Thank you all for the great convention that we've had And Chelsea, thank you I am so to be your mother and so proud of the woman you've become Thank you for bringing Mark into our family and Charlotte and Aidan into the world strategies highlighting Clinton’s Ethos Showing gratitude to people who had been engaged to assist her during the process of the campaign could be considered a way to show Clinton’s goodwill Particularly, she expressed her gratitude toward the voters who were present to her speeches and very attentive to her every single word. She was especially touched for receiving enormous support from the advocators. Besides, Hillary Clinton was so thankful for the contribution of the local officials, the volunteers and campaign organizers However, by stressing “I want to be a strong partner”, she meant that instead of letting the people deal with the situation on their own, she longed for being their dedicated companion and cooperating with them Dragging herself to ally with them could entail the triumph in persuading the audience to her side and winning their advocacy toward her presidential campaign.
Clinton’s employment of intelligence was reflected clearly through all the instances Some typical instances can be discussed as follows.
(H1– Ethos-PIn) Well, I've had the privilege to work closely with our troops and our veterans for many years, including as a senator on the Armed Services Committee and I know how wrong he is I have to tell you, as your secretary of state I went to 112 countries
So, we gathered facts, we built a coalition and our work helped convince Congress to ensure access to education for all students with disabilities I sweat the details of policy, whether we're talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa or the cost of your prescription drugs
From the data examined above, Hillary Clinton, while presenting her campaign speech, impressed the voters with her strong experience in service thanks to many years of working closely with the American military or her diplomatic capacity throughout cooperating with numerous countries all over the world in many different critical areas such as education, medical or pharmaceutical fields… to serve the beneficiaries (H1- Ethos-PIn) Prominently, to powerfully reinforce her utterances highlighting intelligence, she also presented actual figures or gave specific examples (the number of countries or a proper name of a particular State) This strategically helped Clinton create an image leverage to shine herself as a dedicated, experienced, and knowledgeable woman in politics and leadership, sharping the belief of a
Interpersonal function embedded in Hillary Clinton’s Ethos was investigated on a number of aspects: modality and appraisal resources regarding attitudes The findings and discussion of each aspect would be presented in detail with an attempt to highlight the interpersonal function which entails the ideology and power displayed in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches.
Modality is considered a significant part to generate the interpersonal function between the speakers and listeners It also shows the speakers’ opinion and judgment about the probabilities of the propositions they present It was realized that in Ethos, the distribution of certain modal verbs was to highlight distinctive features of this particular persuasive strategy In other words, Ethos was inclined to make use of certain modal verbs to serve its communicative purposes and interpersonal features (Table 4.2).
Table 4.2 Modality in Hillary Clinton’s Ethos
(H1.20-Ethos-VCh) We will rise to the challenge just as we will probability, always have And we'll build a path to citizenship for millions of median immigrants who are already contributing to our economy …We will work with all Americans and our allies to fight and defeat terrorism
Logos in Hillary Clinton’s Political Speeches
Logos is the other persuasive strategy concerning the techniques to persuade the audience through giving logical arguments, facts and so on According to Aristotle’s theory of persuasion, the speaker can use enthymeme or/and example to give logical reasoning Clinton had applied both enthymemes and examples in her speeches to present relevant proofs for her reasoning and argumentation Clinton had conclusions while examples were supplemented to support her Logos (Table 4.7).
Table 4.7 Logos in Hillary Clinton’s political speeches
It is not a coincidence that what frequently appears in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches are rhetorical proofs describing enthymeme Giving logical argument via premises to entail temporary conclusion was treated as an efficient persuasive strategy for the Democrat politician to advance her qualities and values over her competitor For most of the time, argument and reasoning were employed in Clinton’s election utterances to intentionally attack her opponent, lowering the opponent’s image while at the same time making her own one outstand with distinguished superior qualities and values.
(H31-Logos-Enth) And I think it's fair to say that my opponent has already revealed who he is [Premise 1] So think about it, if he wants to keep exonerated people in jail [Premise
2], how can we trust him to fight for the rule of justice and fairness and criminal justice reform in America? Well, I've said many times, he has shown us who he is, now it is up to us to decide who we are [Conclusion]
[Premise 1: Trump’s true essence; Premise 2: concrete evidence of Trump’s wrongdoings →
Conclusion: Trump could not fight for the rule of justice and fairness and criminal justice reform in America]
(H29-Logos-Enth) And look, I've had my disagreements with Republicans [Premise 1] Because I have a very different vision of America [Premise 2] Instead of dark and divisive, it's hopeful and inclusive It's big-hearted, not small-minded It is about lifting people up, not putting them down It's a vision that says and I believe this with all my heart, we are stronger together [Conclusion]
[Premise 1: disagreements with Republicans; Premise 2: different vision of America →
Conclusion: I believe this with all my heart, we are stronger together]
In H31-Logos-Enth, two possible premises were employed to yield one final conclusion While the first premise implied Clinton’s revelation of Trump’s evil nature, the second moved on exemplifying the former with a bad illustration of her by no mean a representative of “justice and fairness” or “criminal justice reform” for America On the other hand, to highlight her crucial role in shedding light for America to a new chapter of optimism and success, Clinton utilized enthymeme as an effective tool for her persuasion Indispensable clashes with the Republicans were presented as the first premise; a strong declaration of Clinton’s different vision for America was the second in (H29-Logos-Enth) to eventually come up with the conclusion that the Americans would only be stronger within Clinton’s presidency.
To support her reasonings and arguments, Clinton also resorted to examples in her Logos Some instances of the use of examples are illustrated as follows.
(H1-Logos- Ex) But just look for a minute at the strengths we bring as Americans to meet these challenges We have the most dynamic and diverse people in the world We have the most tolerant and generous young people we've ever had We have the most powerful military, the most innovative entrepreneurs, the most enduring values, freedom and equality, justice and opportunity, we should be so proud that those words are associated with us
(H2-Logos-Ex) Think of what we've achieved these last eight years American businesses have created 15 million new jobs since the recession Twenty million Americans have health coverage – and no one has seen a bigger drop in uninsured rates under the Affordable Care Act than Latino Americans We got more good news this week
(H1-Logos-Ex) I remember meeting a young girl in a wheelchair on the small back porch of her house She told me how badly she wanted to go to school It just didn't seem possible in those days And I couldn't stop thinking of my mother and what she'd gone through as a child It became clear to me that simply caring is not enough To drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws You need both understanding and action So we gathered facts, we built a coalition and our work helped convince Congress to ensure access to education for all students with disabilities
To enforce the reasoning, examples are inevitable Taking the advantage of examples to construct convincing speeches, Clinton resorted to numerous examples bending on the use of illustration and elaboration to bolster her logical argument. Particularly, to highlight the strengths of the Americans especially in confronting hinderances and outside storms, she complimented them on their outstanding qualities by using various positive descriptive adjectives such as “the most tolerant and generous”, “the most powerful”, “the most innovative”, “the most dynamic and diverse” (H1-Logos- Ex) … Besides, instead of giving trite and hollow statements
Americans over years by realistic facts and figures (15 million new jobs, twenty million Americans with health coverage…) (H2-Logos-Ex) Such compliments undoubtedly assisted Clinton to increase the possibility of winning the majority of Americans’ hearts Besides, the technique of storytelling was also employed in constructing examples, strengthening her logical reasoning In (H1-Logos-Ex) , she shared the story of a young girl in a wheelchair whom she met by chance, which triggered her initiatives to propose health insurance policies for kids as well as educational programs for the disadvantaged With her loving heart and caring for children, real implementation and actions were louder than mere words.
Clinton’s election utterances featuring Logos would be analyzed in terms of interpersonal and ideational functions in the following parts to uncover her power and ideologies as embedded in this type of persuasive strategy.
To enforce her Logos featuring reasoning and argumentation, Clinton utilized different modalities which gave certain meanings and nuances in speech to reflect interpersonal metafunction of clauses relating to what degree the proposition seemed valid Examples of modalities being used in Logos were as follows:
Table 4.8 Modality in Hillary Clinton’s Logos
Persuasive Instances Modality Type strategies
None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone
H1.14- America needs every one of us to lend our energy, our
Logos- talents, our ambition to making our nation better and can probability,
Enth stronger That's why "stronger together" is not just a low lesson from our history, it's not just a slogan for our campaign, it's a guiding principle for the country we've always been and the future we're going to build, a country where the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top strategies
H15.6- We're going to have to protect ourselves against that too
Logos- And when we find unjustified spikes in the prices of
Enth) longstanding, life-saving drugs, we should slap penalties should obligation, on companies trying to cheat people who need those median drugs And I believe we should cap the amount working families pay out of pocket every month for medicine
H1.12- …We have the most powerful military, the most
Logos- innovative entrepreneurs, the most enduring values, should obligation,
Enth freedom and equality, justice and opportunity, we should median be so proud that those words are associated with us
Pathos in Hillary Clinton’s Political Speeches
Another strategy of persuasion employed by Hillary Clinton in her presidential election speeches relates to the attempt of touching and controlling the emotion of her audience is Pathos The classification of Clinton’s Pathos can be displayed below.
Table 4.13 Pathos in Hillary Clinton’s political speeches
To serve persuasive strategy of Pathos, emotion arousing is designed to achieve two main purposes: either to raise up the emotion of the audience or to becalm the emotion of the audience Clinton took advantage of Pathos in her presidential campaign utterances to mostly arouse the emotion of hatred, admiration and confidence among the audience Once the emotion and attitude were intentionally directed and the desired emotion achieved, persuasion could be successfully obtained.
According to Table 4.13, friendship takes up the largest proportion among the Pathos employed by Hillary Clinton, followed by admiration (16%), hatred (15%) and confidence (15%) … When talking about American people, the long-lasting tradition of America as well as the contribution of her people and supporters, Clinton attempted to becalm the audience with her showing tremendous admiration towards the mentioned characters Furthermore, she was also so compassionate about and admired those who appeared in her stories Though they were humble individuals, they could bring about such different and admirable values (H34-Pathos-Ha) Yet, to attackTrump, Clinton intentionally aroused hatred among the audience, spreading similar feeling to those targeted so that that they could share the same By using many negative words such as “brag”, “hasn’t paid a penny”, “how insulting”, “how dead wrong” ,Clinton focused all of the hatred she had on her opponent Under Clinton’s subjective lens, Trump was portrayed as a person who merely “bragged” or boasted about his finance while he refused to fulfill his responsibility of contributing to the fair share of taxes; who would always looked down on health care or education, on the military or institutions with much criticism (H2-Pathos-Ha) Besides, Clinton also expressed her deep hatred towards Trump when contrasting the traditional true quality of theAmericans to be highlighted as “indivisible with liberty and justice” with what outsiders saw such an American like Trump to be so entitled with “extreme policies
Mexican immigrants” with “racist attacks on a federal judge” (H2-Pathos-Ha).
Additionally, as an experienced politician assuming various significant responsibilities in the federal political system for a long period of time, Hillary Clinton demonstrated herself as a very confident person This explained the reason why she frequently aroused the confidence of the audience in placing trust in her and her administration to successfully lead them to brighter paths full of positive expectations and ambitions in her presidential campaign against Trump.
(H2-Pathos-Ha) We teach our children that America is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all Not just for people who look a certain way or worship a certain way, but for all Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the extreme policies and divisive rhetoric they’ve heard from my opponent – from the racist lie about Mexican immigrants that launched his presidential campaign to his racist attacks on a federal judge …How insulting, how dead wrong
(H34-Pathos-Adm) I love our country and I believe in the American people and I know there is nothing we can’t do when we make up our minds Throughout our history, generations of Americans have risen together to meet the tests of their time They defended democracy They built the greatest middle class the world has ever known They marched for civil rights and voting rights, for workers’ rights and union rights, for LGBT rights, rights for people with disabilities
(H8-Pathos-Ha) He actually bragged about gaming the system to get out of paying his fair share of taxes In fact, I think there’s a strong probability he hasn’t paid federal taxes for a lot of years And this is a man who goes around calling our military a disaster; who goes around criticizing every institution, from health care to education, our vets But he probably hasn’t paid a penny to support our troops or our vets or our schools or our health care systems
Interpersonal function embedded in Hillary Clinton’s Pathos was investigated on a number of aspects: modality, appraisal resources regrading attitudes The findings and discussion of each aspect would be presented in detail with an attempt to highlight the interpersonal function which entails the ideology and power displayed in Hillary Clinton’s presidential election speeches.
To enforce her Pathos to arouse the audience’s emotion, Clinton utilized different types of modalities All aimed to highlight Clinton’s purpose of persuasion
Some instances of the modality used are illustrated in the following table (Table
Table 4.14 Modality in Hillary Clinton’s Pathos
Persuasive Instances Modalit Type strategies y
H4.9-Pathos- And as I said yesterday in North Carolina, I’m going
Fr to close my campaign the way I began my career all those years ago at the Children’s Defense Fund and the will probability, way that I will serve as your president should I have median the great honor of being elected: I will be focused on opportunities for kids and fairness for families
As a country, we have a moral obligation to give her family and every family a chance to rise up and reach H5.1-Pathos- their dreams That is what at stake in this election It is probability, not about golf course promotions or birth certificates will
It come down to who will fight for the forgotten, who will invest in our children, who will really have your back in the White House
Think about that for a minute Because every single one of us has something to contribute To this great H34.4- country We are already great but we can be greater can’t probability,
Pathos-Fr And we will be greater I love our country and I believe high in the American people and I know there is nothing we can’t do when we make up our minds
We’re going to end family detention, close private H2.3-Pathos- detention facilities and stop the raids and roundups No obligation, child should have to say goodbye to their parents every should
Conf median morning not knowing if their mom or dad will be there when they get home
Hillary Clinton, used more low and median value modalities than high value ones Her employment of modality can be rooted in the intention of spreading negotiation toward the audience She would like to present her ideologies and viewpoints on an issue and then influence, persuade, and negotiate with them to take her side In Pathos, the modality “will” which entails a higher scale of modal commitment was used as a means for Clinton to express her emotion and the desire for accomplishing or fulfilling an important mission (H4.9-Pathos-Fr) highlighted great honor of hers Children and families would be Clinton’s mission to spread love and fulfill the obligation (H5.1-Pathos-Fe) Both instances (H4.9-Pathos-Fr) and (H5.1-Pathos-Fe) employed “will” to strengthen the Clinton’s commitment and power through verbal expression.
On the other hand, with the employment of modality “can’t” and “should” as in H34.4-Pathos-Fr and H2.3-Pathos-Conf, Clinton’s Pathos tended to be more influential and intentionally spreading more emotion With “can’t” as in H34.4-
Summary
This chapter has provided the Description Stage of Hillary Clinton’s three types of persuasive strategies Ethos, Logos, Pathos, following the CDA three- layered model by Fairclough All types of persuasive strategies were fully investigated in terms of interpersonal, ideational and textual function with an attempt to uncover ideologies which Clinton endeavored to communicate to her audience The findings would be considered a foundation for the thesis’s later part of Interpretation Stage (Chapter 6) which entails the contrastive analysis between the politicians’ persuasive strategies and the Explanation Stage which uncovers the different sets of ideologies and power demonstrated by the politicians in their process of persuading the audience for presidential votes.
PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES IN DONALD TRUMP’S
As the Description Stage according to Fairclough’s CDA three-layered model, Chapter 5 gives way to an analysis of Trump’s employment of persuasive strategies in his presidential election speeches Accordingly, each strategy according to Aristotle’s theory of persuasive strategies (Ethos, Logos and Pathos) will be looked closely for the realization of interpersonal, textual and ideational function to eventually highlight the power demonstrated by the politician and the ideologies deliberately communicated for persuasion.
Ethos in Donald Trump’s Political Speeches
Donald Trump’s image and credibility were constructed thanks to his rhetorical proofs in the realm of Ethos which was characterized by his perceived intelligence, virtuous character and goodwill In Trump’s presidential election speeches, these factors were especially utilized with distinguished percentages to deliberately conduct his act of persuasion toward the targeted audience.
Table 5.1 Ethos in Donald Trump’s political speeches
Donald Trump’s discourse exhibited proofs of Ethos featuring intelligence to win the audience’s beliefs in the fact that Trump was truly a competent future presidential candidate for the America His intelligence refers to how credible and trustworthy he could be, possibly gaining credit to himself and influencing the audience’s final voting decision His employment of intelligence was reflected clearly
(T3-Ethos-PIn) I've done great business with China; I've done really well with China I have these tenants, I sell condos and I own the Bank of America building in San Francisco with a group, a great group, thank you ma'am We have the most loyal people.We have the smartest people
(T6-Ethos-PIn) As you know, I am not a politician I have worked in business, creating jobs and rebuilding neighborhoods my entire adult life I've never wanted to learn the language of the insiders and I've never been politically correct – it takes far too much time and can often make more difficult Fourteen months ago, I declared my campaign for the Presidency on the promise to give our government back to the people Every day since then, I've worked to repay the loyalty and the faith that you have put in me Every day I think about how much is at stake for this country This means a lot to me and it is going to be a top priority in a Trump Administration
(T6-Ethos-PIn) In my Administration, I am going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information I am going to forbid senior officials from trading favors for cash by preventing them from collecting lavish speaking fees through their spouses when they serve I am going to ask my senior officials to sign an agreement not to accept speaking fees from corporations with a registered lobbyist for five years after leaving office, or from any entity tied to a foreign government
Intentionally boosting his image and credibility regarding intelligence and experience, Trump approached the audience in a subtle way In the statement “I’ve done great business with China I ‘ve done well with China” (T3-Ethos-PIn), instead of confidently stating his achievements in politics, Trump especially highlighted his capacity in the areas of doing business Trump’s expertise was none of politics as stated in his honest confession However, he proved his comprehensive understanding of the existing economic and political fraud, making a connection between a successful businessman and political leadership when he would bring improvements to the country thanks to his reform plan In T6-Ethos-PIn, he proposed the solution of signed agreements from senior officials toward cooperation with corporations or foreign government to prevent them from “collecting lavish speaking fees through their spouses when they serve” Undeniably, the economy was considered a fundamental pillar in a nation as it served the needs of the citizens Therefore, by means of giving his viewpoint about the economic situation in America and putting forward solutions, Trump deliberately convinced people about his intelligence in the area of economics as he had spent throughout his lifetime in business.
Apart from perceived intelligence, good qualities highlighting virtuous character were also enriched in Trump’s enforcement of Ethos Communicating to the audience how good his intentions were to the benefits of people and the whole nation would naturally bridge the social gap between him and the audience, not to mention, steadily shaping a good relationship between them.
(T7-Ethos-VCh) In my Administration, every American will be treated equally, protected equally and honored equally We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms and seek a new future built on our common culture and values as one American people
(T8-Ethos-VCh) Crumbling roads, bridges and airports will be replaced with the infrastructure our country needs and deserves Children stuck in failing government schools will be able to attend the school of their choice Government will become lean, effective, responsible and honest Our border will be protected and our children will be safe, very, very safe
Trump sharpened his character to purposefully gain the trust from the audience.
In T7-Ethos-VCh, by uttering a list of intentions relating to plentiful issues, from social ones such as establishing equality, avoiding “hatred and oppression”, or the economic concerns in building the needed infrastructure for the American population, in education, politics and national security as in T8-Ethos-VCh, Trump portrayed himself as a caring leader closely attached with virtuous character Children was traditionally the topic that stimulated much emotion and care from not only parents but the whole society as they were considered the seeds for future Therefore, it was not a coincidence for Trump to subtly touched the subjects of children and children care in terms of education and safety, which would contribute to constructing his perfect image as the leader with good heart and good intentions.
To further persuade the audience and build up his positive brand image, qualities enforcing goodwill were added to strengthen Trump’s credibility Some examples regarding goodwill would generate an insightful analysis of this good character.
(T15-Ethos-Gw) Thank you It is so great to be back in Iowa Spending time in your state has been one of the great joys of this campaign Together, we are going to win Iowa in November and we are going to win the White House and Make America Great Again (T9.5-Ethos-Gw) Thank you very much, indeed." Wow! Thank you, Nigel What a job! What a job he did What a job he did against all odds Thank you, Nigel That was some job that he
(T17.3-Ethos-Gw) I have met many incredible people during the course of this campaign But nothing has moved me more deeply than the time I've spent with the families of the Remembrance Project and the incredible strength and courage you've shown in your often lonely fight for justice
Apart from giving thanks to participants and advocators, by sincerely pledging the audience to vote for him, Trump elevated the important role of the audience in assisting him to pursue his goals, considering himself and the audience to be one united team sailing on the same boat (T15-Ethos-Gw) The word “together” was stressed to drag the participant of the audience to the noble mission of making America great again Trump explicated that “together”, they would accomplish one victory to another, form winning Iowa in November to winning the White House. Furthermore, Trump also expressed his gratitude toward many individuals with good deeds and achievement (T9.5-Ethos-Gw) or groups of people who were always raising their consciousness in fighting for justice regardless much hardship and lots of obstacles All in all, Donald Trump had proved to stretch out his sincerity to draw enormous attention and interest to the values and whole-hearted dedication of individuals and fellowmen in every single step to boost American comprehensive development and improvement, proving himself as a leader with high suitability and brilliant aspects to be nominated for presidential candidacy.
Functioning to generate the interpersonal function between the speakers and listeners, modality was taken into account for analysis Some examples illustrating the employment of modality in Ethos would explain how the Republican candidate demonstrated power through his persuasive strategy.
Table 5.2 Modality in Donald Trump’s Ethos
Persuasive Instances Modality Type strategies
T7-Ethos- I will fix it This means so much to me and I will work as hard as I can bring new opportunities to places in our probability,
VCh will country which have not known opportunities in a very median long time In my Administration, every American will be strategies treated equally, protected equally and honored equally
We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms and seek a new future built on our common culture and values as one American people
Crucially, my trade reforms will create a manufacturing revival in America By ending foreign currency manipulation, product dumping and other predatory
T14-Ethos- trading practices, we will be able to open thousands of will probability, new plants and factories across America Once more, we median
Logos in Donald Trump’s Political Speeches
Logos features in Donald Trump’s political speeches could be classified 2 types: evidences and relevant proofs.
Table 5.7 Logos in Donald Trump’s political speeches
It is not a coincidence that what frequently appears in Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s presidential election speeches are rhetorical proofs describing enthymeme Giving logical argument via premises to entail temporary conclusion is treated as an efficient persuasive strategy by the two politicians to advance their qualities and values over their competitors For most of the time, argument and reasoning were employed in both speakers’ speeches to intentionally attacked their opponent, lowering the opponent’s image while at the same time making their own one outstand with distinguished superior qualities and values.
(T8-Logos-Enth) This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by crooked Hillary Clinton 33,000 e-mails gone [Premise 1] The only way to change results is to change leadership [Conclusion 1] We can never fix our problems by relying on the same politicians who created our problems in the first place [Premise 2] A new future requires brand new leadership [Conclusion 2]
[Premise 1: America could not rely on a politician like Hillary whose scandals were revealed
→ Conclusion 1: America should change leadership; Premise 2: fixing problems created by a problematic politician was impossible →
Conclusion 2: a new leadership was expected]
(T13-Logos-Enth) When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following, amnesty, open borders and lower wages [Premise] Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced Countless Americans who have died in recent years would be alive today if not for the open border policies of this administration and the administration that causes this horrible, horrible thought process, called Hillary Clinton [ Conclusion]
[Premise: politicians’ promises about their responsibilities to be fulfilled →
Conclusion: countless American people were suffering due to the failure of Hillary Clinton’s administration in fulfilling their duties]
Trump was also taking the counter-attack toward Clinton when he emphasized regarding their responsibilities to the nation and people, to such issues as amnesty, open borders, lower wages Paradoxically, the reality witnessed the failure of
Clinton’s administration in implementing “their duty to secure the borders” or in
“enforcing the law”, pushing both the nation and its people to the verge of hardship and obstacles and leading to countless American fatalities (as in T13-Logos-Enth). This was the conclusion drawn by Trump to arouse the audience’s suspicion toward Clinton’s leadership and capacity in ensuring a healthy America Additionally, in
T8-Logos-Enth, Trump started with the premise by purposely digging up his rival’s wrongdoings, picking the Democrat candidate’s scandal of mysterious evaporation of her confidential emails, before proceeding his arguments by asserting that America could hardly avoid troubles if the nation relied on such a problem-maker like Clinton to be a president He finally concluded that changing leadership would be the only way out to save America and its people Confidently, he stated “A new future requires brand new leadership”, thriving to convince the listeners to a new mindset of replacing the existing failed administration and longing for the better with new brighter expectations.
Examples were also employed in Trump’s Logos to foster his reasonings and arguments Some instances of examples can be illustrated as follows.
(T3-Logos- Ex) Look at what the democratic party has done to the city as an example and there are many others, of Detroit 40 percent of Detroit's residents, 40 percent, live in poverty Half of all Detroit residents do not work and cannot work and can't get a job Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime, number one This is the legacy of the democratic politicians who have run this city
(T8-Logos-Ex) Hillary Clinton, is a throwback to an ugly past where politicians preyed on our poorest citizens while selling them out for personal gain According to the Bureau of the Labor of Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan Today, that number is down to only 160,000 and it is going to be a lot lower because if you look at the massive plants being built right now in Mexico, car plants, folks, you can kiss these jobs goodbye
Trump also gave a large number of examples in his speeches These examples followed the stated enthymemes to enforce the effect of witnessing the evidence the city of Detroit, Trump brought up specific figures of unemployment rate, or the level of violence or its residents in poverty,… Whereas, in another data collected from his presidential election speeches, (T8-Logos-Ex), Clinton was portrayed as one of the greedy politicians willingly sacrificing their citizens for their immense greed The failure of NAFTA economic policy which reduced the number of 285,000 auto workers in Michigan to only 160,000 and more because of massive plants being built in Mexico, leading to the sufferings of numerous workers and accelerating unemployment rate within America was served as a realistic example for Trump’s argument to blast Clinton’s poor business capacity Besides, stories were also included in Trump’s election speeches to help convey his the message These are the subsequent supplementary evidence to support Trump’s enthymeme of criticizing his opponent, persuading the audience to advocate him in his presidential campaign.
Table 5.8 shows the distribution of modality in Donald Trump’s presidential utterances highlighting Logos, functioning as one of the ways for the Republican presidential candidate to utilize to achieve his purpose of persuasion.
Table 5.8 Distribution of modality in Donald Trump’s Logos
T10.8-Logos- But that means you need to show up and vote on have to obligation, Enth November 8th You have to knock on doors You have high to pick up that phone Go to our website to learn more You have to campaign on the streets Spread the love that we have in this room to the people of our country
To beat the system, you have to lift your voice, pound the pavement and get out the vote
T4.7-Logos- Who likes the snake? Do you know the snake? Do you should obligation, Enth like it? Who likes the snake? Here we are with this We median know bad things are going to happen We know as we allow more and more people to come in from these terror areas, bad things are going to happen Has anybody heard the snake? Not that many? Should I do it again? So think of this, folks, think of this, think of it
T30-Logos- As you know, the FBI has reopened its investigation shouldn’t obligation, Enth into crooked Hillary Clinton And as you know, they just median found—listen to this and I guess you know it, 650,000 e-mails Phase one, she's so guilty She shouldn't be allowed to run for the presidency That's why I say the system is rigged
T26.4-Logos- We owe $20 trillion dollars in debt, but that's only part must obligation, Enth of the story – we have over $100 trillion dollars in high unfunded liabilities and we have a budget that's out of control with annual deficits The failed political establishment must go – it must go for the sake of your country, your future and those you love the most
On the other hand, when stretching out the persuasive strategy of Logos, Trump tended to use “have to” and “should” which were high and median modalities regarding obligation In T10.8-Logos-Enth, Trump emphasized his ultimate desire in inviting the audience to contribute to the election in many ways: pick up the phone, go to websites, spread the love and lift your voice, which went in line with imperative sentence Such application fostered the power released by the speaker to urge the audience to act out accordingly Trump highlighted that once audience followed his advice and instruction, could they beat the system and seize triumph Or in (T4.7-
Logos-Enth), to feature his Logos of reasoning, by asking the audience numerous questions, Trump recommended them to take careful consideration on various issues.
Pathos in Donald Trump’s Political Speeches
Trump resorted to Pathos to fulfill his attempt of arousing or soothing the emotion of theaudience to simultaneously communicate with the audience issues of advocacy and disagreement Among various types of emotion embedded in Pathos, Trump tended to hold more anger, hatred and fear as his strategy to serve his persuasive purposes.
Table 5.13 Pathos in Donald Trump’s political speeches
(T35.4-Pathos-Fr) As I've said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their families
(T35.9-Pathos-Fr) I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America's interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone — all people and all other nations We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict And now I'd like to take this moment to thank some of the people who really helped me with this, what they are calling tonight, very, very historic victory
(T17.6-Pathos-Fr) While my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, I call you hardworking American patriots who love your family and love your country
Pathos featuring friendship also means expressing gratitude, love, a sense of community to trigger inner strength and power In fact, before directing the audience to do anything as expected, fostering the intended purpose of persuasion, Trump needed to successfully make them become allies That explained why Trump had been offering many good words, compliments to create a sense of harmony and satisfaction among the audience In T35.4-Pathos-Fr, Trump tactfully clarified that the campaign was not a campaign by nature but “an incredible and great movement” of many patriots who desired “a brighter future” for themselves and their beloved ones (T17.6-Pathos-Fr).
By confessing this, Trump attempted to reach the doubled purposes of not only acknowledging the people’s patriotism but also stimulating each individual’s self- defense for the national peace and well-being On the other hand, there had been many times when Trump would like to send his gratefulness to those who had been companions and supporters for his presidential election (T35.9-Pathos-Fr) as a way to praise their hard work and motivate them for further contributions.
(T1- Pathos-Ha) You know, Hillary's real tough, give me a break When you look at the world and what's happened so we have the queen of corruption, she's the queen of corruption She is a disaster I said before, if crooked Hillary Clinton becomes president, terrorism will destroy the inner workings of our country
(T34.2-Pathos-Ha) Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the office of the presidency of the United States
(T17.7-Pathos-Ha) Hillary Clinton has been there in Washington for 30 years – her disastrous record speaks for itself The only people she delivers for is her donors
Showing negative feeling, such as hatred or scornfulness was the strategy which
Trump would aim to communicate his positive attitude toward what the Republicans support which was also his supporting political party and combat against the contrasting political stand, especially his campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton. Specifically, He criticized Clinton as the “ queen of corruption”, “a disaster”,
“crooked Hillary Clinton” (T1- Pathos-Ha) (T34.2-Pathos-Ha) … and associated the idea of Clinton’s administration to the sooner or later inner national destruction. Trump also blamed Clinton for her evil drive to run for the presidential election as from his perspective, Clinton was notorious for her scandals as in “ her disastrous record speaks for itself” and bared little attention to the citizens but her donors and her own benefits (T17.7-Pathos-Ha).
(T8-Pathos-Fe) And many people right now in this audience that think you have jobs, you're gonna find out very soon that your company is leaving from Mexico or some other place and you're not going to have your job for very long We end up with devastation We end up with unemployment We end up with nothing
Nevertheless, in order to provoke the feeling of annoyance among the audience towards horrifying things possibly happening in the future, fear appeals were employed by Trump Since Trump was originated from a businessman, instead of a politician, hardly could he succeed in the fight against the Democrat candidate, therefore, yielding seeds of fear and uncertainty basing on her mistakes was Trump’s strategy of persuasion In fact, the picture of America was re-drawn by Trump with many shades of darkness There were some shades of the increasing unemployment rate in America due to Clinton’s outsourcing companies, which made the country to be prone to total “devastation” (T8-Pathos-Fe) Foreseeing the terrible things to probably occur and relating that catastrophic incident to his opponent was Trump’s strategy to deeply implant the emotion of fear among the audience to the other side and take his side instead.
(T17.5-Pathos-Conf) Jobs will return, incomes will rise and new factories will come rushing back to our shores and hospitals American cars will travel the roads, American planes will soar in the skies and American ships will patrol the seas American steel will send new skyscrapers into the clouds American hands will rebuild this nation – and American energy, mined from American sources, will power this nation American workers will be hired to do the job We will put new American steel into the spine of this country I will fight for every neglected part of this nation – and I will fight to bring us all together as One American People
Despite all the darkness obsessing the U.S., Trump still believed in the revival of the nation to “be great again” Thanks to his proposed plans, signs of resuscitation was visible in every aspect of life Trump showed his confidence and beliefs in the capacity to transform and reform the nation, in terms of the economy
(offering jobs, increasing incomes, building factories…) (T17.5-Pathos-Conf), infrastructure (building more roads, bridges, tunnels, highways, airports, schools…)
(T17.4-Pathos-Conf), or energy (T17.4-Pathos-Conf) Trump, additionally, reflected his determination and strong will to reach the ultimate aim of bringing the American citizens as “One American People” (T17.4-Pathos-Conf) As a matter of fact, Trump’s confidence in uttering his promises sowed positive belief among the audience and made them start believing in him.
(T18.1-Pathos-Adm) Thanks, Maria, for that introduction and for the work you and your organization do to honor these stolen American lives – and to advocate for justice on behalf of all American victims
(T18.2-Pathos-Adm) I have met many incredible people during the course of this campaign But nothing has moved me more deeply than the time I've spent with the families of the Remembrance Project and the incredible strength and courage you've shown in your often lonely fight for justice