The use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents barack obama and donald trump

Trang 1 BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY PHUNG HANH NGUYEN THE USE OF IMPLICATURES IN SPEECHES BY THE FORMER PRESIDENTS BARACK OBAMA AND DONALD TRUMP MAJOR

INTRODUCTION

Background to the study

Language is a crucial tool for communication, allowing us to exchange information, thoughts, love, and attitudes Therefore, it is an important thing that cannot be separated from human beings (Rabiah,2012) However, it can also be used indirectly for reasons like modesty or politeness Speakers may use words to imply different meanings, hiding their ideas to make listeners infer Language has various aspects, including rhetorical questions, metaphors, political lexicon, code- switching, and implicatures Understanding the speaker's meanings, context, and implicatures is essential for effective communication Understanding language is a way to view the world and its role in linguistics

Understanding implicatures is crucial in political speeches, as politicians aim to persuade audiences of the validity of their claims Habwe (1999) highlights the importance of discourse in managing a country Ho Chi Minh's 1946 speech, where everyone could use weapons, sparked strong determination and ultimately led to the country's victory in the Resistance War

The Democratic Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, is the oldest political party in the United States It represents the idea that government should solve social problems and supports equal opportunity for all citizens, with Jefferson being the first elected President in 1884 (Special English, 2004)

The Republican Party, founded in the early 1850s, was formed by anti-slavery activists seeking free Western lands The party's name, Republican, reflected equal rights and Thomas Jeferson's Democratic-Republican Party The party later nominated John Fremont for president, but Lincoln became the first Today, Republicans claim responsibility for banning slavery, ensuring equal protections, and granting voting rights (Special English, 2004)

Barack Obama, born in Hawaii in 1961, is the 44th president of the United States He was educated about civil rights leaders and the black civil rights

2 movement After graduating from Columbia University, he moved to Chicago and worked as a community organizer He believed that the best way to change the lives of the poor was through the law Barack applied to Harvard Law School and was elected president of the Harvard Law Review He wrote a book, Dreams from

My Father, about his struggle to find a place in the world He was ambitious but not overreaching, and was open to learning from experiences Obama is relatively introverted and emotionally calm

Studies show that Obama uses rhetorical strategies in his inaugural speech, including reiterations, anaphora, modal verbs, and pronouns, to convey his concerns and message to the American people Mette Nielsen (2009)

Similarly, in Mckenzie’s study (2008), it is argued that Obama uses rhetorical strategies to convey his ideas of morality and their views of the war in Iraq Obama does not like war He argues that the war in Iraq is wrong

Peter Clark (2017) supposed that Obama’s speeches work effectively thanks to four related rhetorical strategies: the power of allusion and its patriotic associations; the oratorical resonance of parallel constructions; the "two-ness" of the texture, to use DuBois's useful term; his ability to include himself as a character in a narrative

Aschale (2013) analyzed Obama’s speeches and found out that Obama often begins his speeches with a warm welcome for his presence in the languages of the audience and closes the speeches with a religious remark; may God’s peace be up on you, May God bless you It is quite clear that Obama uses words related to religion in his speeches

Massoud Sharififar and Elahe Rahimi (2015) made a survey about the art of linguistic spin in Obama's political speeches at United Nation in September 2013 based on Halliday's systematic functional linguistics and concluded that Obama applied a colloquial language, consisting of simple words and short sentences that are understandable to different people The prominent factor of Obama’s speeches

3 is the use of personal pronouns Obama gives significant role to personal pronouns such as 'we' to make sense of intimacy with the audience as well as follow a common objective The tense can be another factor that signalizes presidents' political speech Because it refers to present, past and future events as well as activities that demonstrate government's objectives and at the same time display the worldwide situations that extend from political, cultural, and economical field at present

Donald Trump, the 45th US president, was born in 1946 and grew up in a wealthy family His father encouraged him to be a "killer" and sent him to military school to balance aggression with discipline Trump attended New York Military Academy, Fordham University, and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce His speeches often use derivational words and abstract nouns, referring to the state, action, quality, or cause The first person of personal pronouns is also used in his speeches

Homolar and Scholz (2019) analysed Trump’s campaign speeches and identified a ‘three-fold rhetorical strategy’ in his ‘decidedly populist crisis rhetoric’: the declaration of a crisis, the identification of the agents behind this crisis, and a promise of a resolution to the crisis by supporting his candidacy

David Block (2019) suggests that Obama's elaborate speech style diminished as he entered politics, while Trump's hyperactivity and lack of rational thought in his speeches and tweets are evident Trump's Twitter use demonstrates his ignorance about global politics and estrangement from rational thought and factual arguments His tweets and speeches contain hyperbole and statements of 'fact' without support

Statement of problems

In political speeches, the Presidents often use devices to persuade the audiences, especially they use implicatures to show their opinions, their ideas Therefore, understanding the implicatures in the political speeches is an issue that English foreign learners need to do when they learn pragmatics in linguistics However, only some researches into the use of implicatures in political speeches have been conducted so far Hence, this research is necessarily conducted with the aim of making a contribution into the exploration how the presidents use the implicatures in their speeches In our information technology era, newspapers play an important role in our human society and this study will help the readers, especially the English learners to understand deeply about the problems in the newspapers that they are concerned about when they understand about implicatures By analyzing the use, the functions, the similarities and difference in the use of implicature between the two former presidents are revealed The study is expected to help language learners with the in-depth understanding of functions of implicature used in speeches It is also expected to help the learners be aware of how to use implicature to write effectively in their academic writing

Research aims and objectives

This study aims to examine the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump The specific objectives are as follows:

• To analyze the implicatures used in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump;

• To compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions.

Research questions

In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives, the following research questions are addressed:

1 To what extent are implicatures used in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump?

2 Are there any similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions? If yes, how?

Scope of the study

Although this study is about political discourse, the researcher must admit that the term political discourse is very broad Therefore, the researcher only focuses on the implicatures in twenty speeches of the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump Content analysis by Grice’s maxims (1975) is a key methodological apparatus and the theory of speech act by Searle (Leech,1983) that enable the researcher to explore the speeches of the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump

Because of the limited framework of this study, the researcher only focuses on investigating the frequencies of implicatures in Barack Obama’s speeches and

Donald Trump’s speeches Then the researcher finds the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches Lastly, similarities and differences in the use of implicatures between two former presidents would be examined

Other aspects relating to semantic are not paid attention Hence, associated literature to semantic is not deeply reviewed From this, there is a hope that there will be other studies in the future which might cover this issue.

Significance of the study

Politicians have to use the words exactly because their speeches may influence the audiences They must use words and expressions carefully as those words and expressions may be misunderstood or interpreted in different ways Moreover, political speeches are composed by a team of professional writers who are learned how to use persuasive language in their writings Thus, to understand the implicatures in political speeches is very significant to human life Nobody can deny that the political speeches may have implied meaning in running a country directly or indirectly while politics is very important to human life in every nation Thanks to the usage of the language cleverly, many politicians were successful in politic field such as Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump who used to be the presidents of the most powerful country in the world They are considered as excellent orators whose speeches have been a valuable source for academic studies in terms of linguistics, persuasive language and discourse analysis Using implicatures is a way to persuade the audiences Therefore, it is necessary to make an analysis of implicatures applied in their speeches

Firstly, it is hoped that the research will be providing data to support everybody to know how speakers encode their utterances and how implicatures are decoded from the utterances during communication This research is not only useful for the researcher to know how implicatures are used in speeches by the former presidents

Barack Obama and Donald Trump but also for the next researchers who are interested in exploring implicatures

Secondly, this research is hoped to be a new study in Vietnam It will help the English teachers and the English learners have a clearer insight into the use of implicatures They will understand more about the types and functions of implicatures

Lastly, by doing this research, the researcher hopes that she herself will have a good chance to review the importance of using implicatures in order to help Vietnamese who are learning English can get precious experience in understanding a speech in politics or writing a speech Practically, this study can inspire the other researchers to explore the use of implicatures by analyzing the language in pragmatics.

Definitions of key terms

It is useful to define some main key terms for the readers to get a better understanding at the beginning of the study For the purpose of this study, these terms must be shortly defined to provide a specific perspective on the discussion of the research

Former presidents refer to people who used to be presidents of a country in the past

Politicians refer to members of a government or law-making organization

Political speech as speech that “is both intended and received as a contribution to public deliberation about some issue” (Cass Sunstein, 1992) A political speech is defined as a mono logic text whose purpose is to advance matters related to the running of the state either directly or indirectly A political speech takes place in a political event

Politics refer to the activities of the government, members of law-making organizations, or people who try to influence the way a country is governed

Politics is a struggle for power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice (Bayram, 2010) “Politics is the art of governance and power.” while “language is the universal capacity of humans in all societies to communicate (Anthony Paul Chilton, 2004)

Structure of the study

This thesis consists of five chapters

I have introductory elements of this study such as background to the study, purpose of the study, research questions, the study statement of problems, significance of the study, scope of the study, definitions of key terms, structure of the study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

This chapter covers all theoretical concepts related to the conceptual implicature, definition of political speech, definition of implicature, Grice’s implicature theory, functions of implicatures It also discusses some previous studies including international and local studies relating to the current one and withdraws the gaps that are worth discovering The conceptual framework is the part which presents how the study will be conducted.

Political speech

As a discourse, a speech is defined as a hortatory type of language (Logacre,1976; Beekman,1981) as opposed to procedural, narrative and expository types of discourse Speech is the application of language in different contexts A speech is a formal talk that a person gives to an audience (Hornby, 2005) According to Mckenzie (2008), there are four types of speeches They are: informative speeches which serve to provide interesting and useful information to the audience; demonstrative speeches which have many similarities with informative speeches but they include a demonstration of how to do the thing being taught; entertaining/celebrating speeches which the speaker provides pleasure and enjoyment such as a party speech, a graduation speech; and persuasive speeches are used to convince people to believe in something, to change in some ways Therefore, it is clearly that political speeches are persuasive speeches Since this paper attempts to investigate the speeches of Obama and Donald Trump, it is important to comprehend the relationship between language and politics

Bayram (2010) points out that politics is concerned with power: the power to make decisions, to control resources, to control other people’s behaviour and often to control their values The main purpose of politicians is to persuade their audience of the validity of their political claims

Political speech is an independent speech to others It is used at political events such as conferences, meetings to present, remark, comment about the political problems according to a political viewpoint It has a lot of words about politics The sentences in political speech are short, brief and persuasive (Phan Trong Luan, 2010)

Political speech is the speech which is related to the management of the government, the political organizations, political characters and it mentions to the problems about managing the society, reflects the concern of people to the management of the government (Nguyen Thi Huong & Tran Thi Hoang Anh,

2018) The purpose of politics is the tool for political orators to pursue and carry out the power (Beard, 2000)

Political speech has a direct functional role as a form of political action in the political process It is contextualized in such communicative events such as cabinet meetings, parliamentary sessions, and so on (Van Dijk,1997)

The main purpose of political speech is persuasion In political contexts, successful speakers have to appeal not only attitudes but also emotions from the listeners The speakers have to communicate at an emotional level and take standpoints that seem morally correct to help the listeners perceive and believe in their arguments (Charteris-Black, 2005)

Edelman (1977) states that the knowledgeable politician becomes successful by “using his or her knowledge of informal influence” According to Jones and Peccei (2004), this can be achieved through “presupposition” and

“implicature” because these tools help the listener make assumptions about the existence of information which is not made explicit in what is actually said, but that might be deduced from what was said

Van Dijik (2017) claims that the discourse of politicians occurs in the domain of politics, a concept that encompasses all the social actors and social actions that involve the government and the implementation of policy

Political speeches are as old as politics and the word ‘politics’ comes from the Greek word for ‘city’ or ‘government’ It is not surprising that the Greeks studied the art of rhetoric and wrote manuals on how to persuade an audience One of the most common features of this formal debating is that it is the skills of speaking persuasively that are far more important than a personally held belief in the topic under debate The main characteristics of political speech are: the use of vocabulary that is very strong in meaning; the repeated reference to ‘country’; a four-part list which seems to lack the potency of a three-parter; the contrastive pair that contains two parts which are in some ways in opposition, but in other ways use repetition to make the overall effect Pronoun reference is always important in putting over a piece of political persuasion (Beard, 2000)

In the introduction to their published edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics, Ruth Wodak and Bernhardt Forchtner define what political communication is by citing Armin Burkhardt (1996): ‘all types of public, institutional and private talks on political issues, that is, all types of texts and genres typical of politics and political action, as well as the use of lexical and stylistic linguistic instruments characterizing text and talk about political contexts’ Wodak and Forchtner (2018) go on to cite Burkhardt further, noting how he proposed four general areas that political communication and discourse analysis might focus on: (1) word-level analysis (catchwords, value words and euphemisms), (2) sentence and text-level phenomena (e.g., tropes, strategies, topoi), (3) pragmatic devices (e.g., forms of address, speech acts, presuppositions quotations and intertextuality) and (4) semiotic techniques (e.g., icons, symbols and the multimodality of communication events in general) Reisigl and Wodak

(2016) propose eight distinct fields of political action where political communication takes place and which critical discourse analysts might document

13 and examine These are: (1) law-making procedure; (2) formation of public attitudes, opinion and will; (3) party-internal formation of attitudes, opinions and will; (4) inter-party formation of attitudes, opinions, and will; (5) organisation of international/interstate relations; (6) political advertising; (7) political executive and administration; and (8) political control

In brief, a political speech is defined as a text or a speech whose content is related to advance political matters and it takes place in a political event It is often written or spoken to persuade audiences The characteristics of political speech are four main aspects of political speech-making: the claptrap; the list of three; contrastive pairs; use of pronouns.

Implicature

In this part of the chapter, a great number of definitions of implicature are presented and explained so that readers can understand and discuss about implicature

The term implicature means something that is implied in the conversation which differs to the literal utterance, then, there is left implicit meaning in the real usage of language (Li, 2016)

Gazdar (1979) defined an implicature is a proposition that is implied by the utterance of a sentence in a context even though that proposition is not a part of nor an entailment of what was actually said

Trask (2007) concludes that implicature is a conclusion A hearer who has a sufficient knowledge of a context can draw the conclusion

Finch (2005) supposes that implicature is the result of the process between the speaker and listeners infer in the production and interpretation of utterances

Levinson (1983) argues that implicature is one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics In pragmatics, Paul Grice (1975) discusses two kinds of implicature: conventional and conversational implicature He lists four maxims that have the cooperative principle: quantity, quality, relation, and manner

There are four main ways in which the speaker can behave with respect to the cooperative principle; the speaker can observe the maxims, violate a maxim, flout a maxim, or opt out the maxims The most interesting reason why maxims are flouted is to enable speakers say something indirectly Whenever attention is drawn to the violation of maxims, the hearers are forced to infer something about the reasons for such behaviour and what is implicated Sometimes, maxims are not violated but are simply brought to the hearer’s attention There could be other reasons for violating maxims, which are hidden from the hearers One of such may be to opt out a conversation in which the speaker does not want to cooperate

Conventional implicature Conversational implicature generalized particularized

Figure 2.1: Grice’s model of category

There are conventional implicatures which are determined by the conventional meaning of the words used (Grice, 1975) Conventional implicatures are related to specific words and result in additional conveyed The specific words are but, however, moreover, besides, furthermore, although, still, even, therefore,

15 so, yet Conventional implicatures do not obey the cooperative principle or the maxims A statement always carries its conventional implicature This is an example of a conventional implicature

He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave

In this example, the speaker does not directly assert that one property (being brave) follows from another property (being an Englishman), but the form of expression used conventionally implicates that such a relation does hold If it should turn out that the individual in question is an Englishman, and not brave, then the implicature is mistaken, but the utterance, Grice suggests, need not to be false

Conversational implicature is part of a lexical’s item or expressions agreed meaning, rather than derived from principles of language use, and not part of the conditions for the truth of the item or expression (Levinson, 2000) Conversational implicature refers to the implications that can be inferred from a form of an utterance, on the basis of cooperative principles Conversational implicature concerns the way we comprehend an utterance in conversation in accordance with what we expect to hear This is an example of a conversational implicature

B: ‘It would keep me awake all night.’

In the above example, B’s utterance may implicate that B would not drink coffee This means the hearer can infer from the form of the utterance

Of much greater interest to the discourse analysts the notion of conversational implicature which has four maxims which speakers will normally obey:

Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as it required

Quality: Make the contribution one that is true

Manner: Be perspicuous (express yourself clearly)

According to Grice (1975), conversational implicatures can be worked out if the speakers or the participants of the conversation understand the conventional meaning of words and references used in an utterance, partially or fully fulfil the maxims of the cooperative principle (or at least fulfil the cooperative principle itself), understand the context of the utterance, understand the background or common knowledge of the utterance and agree that all previous headings are taking place In short, Grice (1975) argues that our oral exchanges do not consist of a series of disorganized remarks There is a set of four basic maxims which help people to conduct the conversation by using the language efficiently and effectively Speakers have to speak sincerely, briefly, relevantly and clearly when they engage in a conversation while speakers often mean more than what they literally say There are four ways in which the speaker can behave with respect to the cooperative principle; the speaker can observe the maxims, violate a maxim, flout a maxim, or opt out the maxims Grice also classified conversational implicature into generalized conversational implicature and particularized conversational implicature

Generalized conversational implicatures occur when no special knowledge is required in the context to calculate the additional conveyed meaning (Yule,

1996) Generalized conversational implicatures are implicatures that arise without any particular context or special scenario being necessary (Grice, 1989) The examples about generalized conversational implicatures often relates to phrases with an indefinite article of the model “a/an+ C” such as a house, a garden, a building These phrases are inferred that “a/an+ C” means not speaker’s C Here is an example of a generalized conversational implicature:

I was sitting in a house at 4 o’clock yesterday

The implicature in the above example indicates that the house does not belong to the speaker because if the speaker was capable of being more specific, then he or she would have said “my house” This kind of implicature still remains the same in other contexts in which this utterance appears Therefore, this is a generalized

17 conversational implicature from the use of the expression a/an + C to indicate that

Gazdar (1979) as cited in Levinson (1983) provided a subtype of generalized conversational implicature which is called scalar implicature Scalar implicature is an implicature of the negative of any form higher on a scale when any form in that scale is uttered Scalar implicature is general implicature which is marked by a scale of values That scale consists of different words such as:

Scale of quantity: all, most, many, some, few

Scale of frequency: always, often, sometimes

Scale of coldness: cool, cold, freezing

Scale of likelihood: possibly, probably, certainly

Here is an example of scalar implicature

The scalar implicature indicates Daisy does not always go swimming

Particularized conversational implicatures contrasts to generalized conversational implicatures because they require specific contexts Particularized conversational implicatures occurs when special knowledge is required in the special contexts, so that its meaning can be understood by the listener (Yule, 1996) Here is an example of a particularized conversational implicature Let’s imagine this scene in which a mother and a daughter are going to bed in the evening

Mother: Have you brushed your teeth yet?

Daughter: I will go to bed now

In the above example, an appropriate knowledge or information is needed in order to understand the implicature The answer intended to mean that the daughter has brushed her teeth already and she will go to bed This implicature is thus a particularized conversational implicature

To observe a maxim is to straightforwardly obey it

That is, to in fact say the right amount, to say only what you have evidence for, to be relevant, or to be brief, clear, and unambiguous (depending on the maxim in question)

Violating a maxim is defined as the unostentatious or covert non- observance of a maxim When a speaker violates a maxim, he or she will be liable to mislead To violate a maxim is to fail to observe it, but to do so inconspicuously, with the assumption that your hearer won’t realize that the maxim is being violated

Functions of implicatures

As mentioned above, the fundamental types of implicature are conventional and conversational implicature Conventional implicature is semantic, generated by the meaning of words in the sentence structure It is not based on the cooperative principles and is not conversation and context dependent

Grice stated that conversational implicature had five characteristics:

Conversational implicatures are cancelable or defeasible if we add some other premises to the original ones For example,

A: Do you want some coffee?

B: Coffee would keep me awake

In the above example, B does not want to have a cup of coffee because coffee will keep him awake But if B adds this sentence: Coffee would keep me awake And I want to stay awake Then, B’s meaning changes and we can infer that he is willing to have a cup of coffee

The conversational implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to the linguistic form used Therefore, it is possible to use a synonym and keep the implicature intact In other words, the implicature will not be detached, separated from the utterance as a whole, even though the specific words may be changed (David, 2012)

A: What did you think of the lecture?

B: Well, I thought the lecture hall was big B implies that he is not quite interested in the lecture If B replaces “thought” with “believe, should say or reckoned, etc.”, “big” with “large, great, etc.”, the implicature of the sentence remains the same

The conversational implicature of an utterance is different from its literal meaning There is no direct link between the two If it is to succeed as the speaker intends to, there must be ways for the hearer to work it out

Conversational implicature is an extra meaning, not inherent in the words used One cannot find conversational implicatures listed in the dictionary To recognise the conversational implicature of an utterance, one needs to know its conventional meaning and the context in which it is used Therefore, conversational implicature consists of the conventional meaning and the context The implicature will also change when the context changes (Widdowson, 2000)

A young man invited a lady to dinner and escorted her back home after dinner and said:

Man: Would you like to invite me up for a coffee?

Woman: Oh, I’m afraid the place is in a terrible mess

In this case, the lady’s answer is a polite refuse because she understands that the man does not just want the lady to invite him a cup of coffee On the other hand, the lady’s response does not lie in declaring the house is in a mess Therefore, conversational implicature should be put in the context to understand

An expression with a single meaning can give rise to different implicatures on different occasions, and indeed on any one occasion the set of associated implicatures may not be exactly determinable (Verschueren, 1983)

This utterance may indicate that John is cold, or efficient, or never stops working, or puffs and blows, or has little in the way of grey matter, or indeed any and all of these

Similarly, according to Nigar (2019), conversational implicatures are: a) calculable (listeners must be capable of working out the implicature for themselves; otherwise, it would be a conventional implicature); b) cancellable (can be denied explicitly); c) nondetachable (the implicature would remain the same even if the speaker said nothing else)

Some different functions of implicatures have been identified in research articles and analysis discourse As implicature serves a variety of goals:

25 communication, maintaining good social relations, misleading without lying, style, and verbal efficiency Knowledge of common forms of implicature is acquired along with one’s native language According to Levinson (1983), the notion of conversational implicature is one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics

He supposed that the notion simply as implicature as a shorthand He also distinguished this and other kinds of implicature like this:

Firstly, implicature stands as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena The concept of implicature therefore, seems to offer some significant functional explanations of linguistic facts

Secondly, the notion of implicature provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions

Thirdly, the notion of implicature seems likely to effect substantial simplifications in both the structure and the content of semantic descriptions

Fourthly, implicature, or at least some closely related concept, seems to be simply essential if various basic facts about language are to be accounted for properly Finally, the principles that generate implicatures have a very general explanatory power: a few basic principles provide explanations for a large array of apparently unrelated facts

According to Levinson (1991), implicatures has at least four functions: (1) possibility of obtaining functional explanation that significant to the language realization which is not covered by descriptive linguistics theory, (2) giving a firm and explicit explanation about its possibility that language user can grasp the messages although what is spoken differs from what is meant, (3) can simplify the semantic explanation from the difference relations among clauses despite the clauses were associated with the same words structure, and (4) can explain the variety of linguistic indications which is unrelated or even contradictory

Implicature in political speech

It is important these days to know that politics has now become a linguistic affair while language has become a political issue (Ayeomoni, 2004) Language is really important and it has the effect on the political power In order to affect the audiences positively and persuasively, political orators have to use the impressive and persuasive language (Nguyen Van Khang, 2012) Political discourse deals especially with the reproduction of political power, power abuse or domination through political discourse (Van Dijk, 1997)

Political implicatures as defined by Van Dijk (2005) are the specific political inferences that participants in the communicative situation may take on the basis of the speech and its context The inferences involved are not semantic, but pragmatic or contextual Moreover, politicians use implicatures, perhaps because they prefer to be implied, completely or incompletely in what is actually said, in their verbal messages and the way they tend to convey them to the audience Therefore, using implicature in politics can help orators to convey difficult things to express to their audiences In addition, they can use implicature to help the audiences to believe in the benefits that they can bring when they are leaders.

Previous studies

Researchers applied different theories from various theorists such as Austin

(1962), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Hymes (1972), Leech (1983), Brown and Yule

(1983), Fairclough (1989), Djik (1985), Dressler (1985), Njue (1989) to the problems of language use Implication has been one of the main topics in linguistic researches

A number of studies on implicatures have been found Reza and Ferdows

(2012) conducted a study about Grice’s cooperative maxims as linguistic criteria for news selectivity They review the wide range of news values lists proposed by media scholars and linguists since the publication of Galtung and Rouge’s leading

29 article (1965) and suggest Grice’s cooperative maxims as linguistic set of news values The purpose of the study is to show that news can be considered as a mutual conversational activity between the media and its audiences, as a result the maxims ruling the conversation process are respected in news production process They show that an indispensable number of criteria or news values, pinned down by media researchers in recent decades are actually rewording of these maxims and journalists are actually aware of these pragmatic maxims while composing their news stories They can trace the related evidence of respecting the four maxims (Quality, Quantity, Manner and Relevance) in the news in the way they are observable as hedges in conversational activities, showing that they have in- action linguistic equivalences

Irma Rizkiani Hanifah (2013) explored about the non-observance of maxim in Facebook conversation The study investigated about types of maxims which are not observed by male and female Facebook users and how male and female users do not observe maxims in their conversations In this study, a qualitative case study is implemented as a tool for data gathering to get feedback from the population consisting of sixteen male and fifteen female students of English classes who have Facebook account at one university in Bandung Based on Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, the collected data from the conversations on Facebook from August to December in 2012 were downloaded and analyzed The findings revealed that male users failed to observe the maxim of relation because they gave irrelevant contribution (53.13%) meanwhile female users failed to observe the maxim of quantity because they gave more information (44%) Flouting of maxim is the most frequent non- observance of maxim that both male (96.88%) and female (92%) users performed

Pan (2012) conducted a study into vagueness in English News from Grice’s cooperative principles She supposes that if there is no vague language in newspapers, the reliability and veracity will be reduced to the degree, and the news items will not be trust-worthy at all Therefore, she analyzed certain samples

30 selected from some English newspapers by means of Grice’s Cooperative Principle so as to demonstrate that vague language can effectively stand out the accuracy of the English newspapers She shows that English news is a type of conversation in which reporters are the speakers, while the readers are the addressers Hence, to be more effective, reporters are supposed to flout the four maxims of cooperative principle She concludes that vague language in news usually violates the Quality, Quantity, Manner and Relevance Maxim of the Cooperative Principle due to different reasons like special situations Results from her study reveal that the vague language helps and strengthens the artistic effects of the news items which cannot be expressed directly by the exact number or detailed information in the English newspapers

Igwedibia (2016) focused on analyzing the political speeches of Obama on

“Race and economic Renewal in America” with the frame work of pragmatics in the light of theory of conversational implicature He affirmed that Obama’s speeches under the present study obeyed Grice’s maxims to a great extend and flouted the same to lessen extent This has been observed from the analysis of his speeches in the light of the maxims of quantity, quality, manner and relation Igwedibia emphasizes that Obama's speeches show a careful and nuanced adherence to these maxims, ensuring adequate information while strategically flouting them to introduce layers of meaning and elicit specific audience responses Beyond the specific analysis of Obama's speeches, Igwedibia's study has broader implications for the study of political communication, helping to develop frameworks for evaluating speeches that go beyond traditional content analysis and consider the pragmatic complexities of effective political discourse

Zhou (2013) carried out a study to tackle the significance of implicature in dramas by a quantitative research on all the conversations conducted between Liu Mazi and other characters in the play Cha Guan All the conversations of Liu with different characters in Cha Guan were compiled into a corpus, and then each of his speech spoken to them by him would be analyzed from the perspective of

31 implicature The maxims flouted in each turn of the conversation and their numbers would be listed in a form of a table The results show that implicature is an important device for the depiction of Liu Mazi

Putri (2011) had an analysis of implicature as found in transcript of interview between Barack Obama and Hisyam Melhem from Al-Arabiya TV This study reveals that conversational implicature emerged by Obama’s violation of cooperative principle during the interview Putri's findings contribute to a better understanding of how political figures conduct interviews, particularly in the context of international media The implications of Obama's involvement in the Al-Arabiya TV interview could lead to discussions about diplomatic communication, media relations, and the delicate balance between transparency and strategic messaging in politics

Dairo (2001) conducted a study about Grice’s (1975) notion of conversation and implicature in the interpretation of meaning of literary texts He focused on Ola Rotimi’s play, our husband has gone mad again, and it depicted the extent to which dramatic dialogue could be a cooperative endeavour Based on the Grice’s theory, he concluded that apart from the conventional meanings of utterances which semantic provides, it is necessary to consider the conversation implicatures relative to the speaker or user of the language in an exhaustive explication of literary texts He used speech act analysis to analyse the conversations in the play and supposed that conversations in dramatic discourse often intentionally violate or flout maxims The reason of being flout the maxims is to enable speakers to say something indirectly When the speaker violates the maxims, the hearers are forced to infer something about the reasons for such behaviour and what is implicated Sometimes, maxims are not violated but are simply brought to the hearer’s attention He also concluded that implicatures are pragmatics aspects of meaning and the logical relation of discourse They are partially derivable from the literal meaning of an utterance produced in a specific context, which the speaker and the

32 hearer share, and which depends on a recognition of cooperative principles and maxims by the speaker and hearer

Having mentioned above, most foreign studies in the field of linguistics focused on the use of Grice’s theory to analyse the conversations in plays or dramas, news, interviews, conversations on facebook

A great number of previous researchers realized that people tend to flout the maxims or violate the maxims Therefore, finding implicatures in conversations plays an important role and the choice of using Grice’s theory plays an important role in a research article for writers in interpreting and announcing the findings as well as the process of the research

Not only has implicature been discussed in different aspects in a great number of research articles in international studies, but there are a great number of research articles on implicature in Vietnamese studies also

In Vietnam we have some famous authors who wrote language books about pragmatics, especially about implicature such as Nguyen Thien Giap (2000), he discussed hedges which refer to cooperative principles and conversational implicature in Dung Hoc Viet Ngu He said that if we want to succeed in communication, we have to understand both explicit and implicit If we do not understand the implicit of an utterance, we will not understand that utterance deeply

Hoang Phe (2008) supposed that when an utterance has an implicit, the implicit is always important, its implicit is even more important than its explicit People may use explicit to express implicit The listeners themselves have to infer the meaning of implicit through explicit The implicit is the main thing that the speakers want to convey to the listeners

The use of linguistic units and their implicatures in the listening section of TOEFL iBT TEST was conducted by Le Thi Nhu Lien and Tran Quoc Thao (2017)

Conceptual framework

This part aims at presenting conceptual framework for the study such as types of implicatures as well as the definitions related to implicatures

In order to achieve how differently and similarly Barack Obama and Donald Trump use implicatures in their speeches, a conceptual framework for this study was proposed as seen in Figure 2.2

Figure 2.2: Conceptual framework for this study

Types of implicatures which will be analyzed in Chapter 4 below were mainly classified based on Paul Grice From analyzing types and functions of implicatures in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches, similarities and differences in the use of implicatures between two former presidents would be examined.

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This chapter presents the methodology of this study A detailed description of the materials, data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures will be demonstrated in this chapter Based on the literature review presented in Chapter

2, a theoretical framework of the present research will be outlined Furthermore, the validity and reliability of this study will be also mentioned.

Research design

In order to achieve the objective of the study, the combination of descriptive, qualitative and quantitative method is focused and used in the whole study to seek the implicatures and analyze the types of implicatures used in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump In addition, it is used to compare and contrast the differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions.

Materials

The data for the present research, consisting of ten speeches delivered by the former president Barack Obama and ten speeches delivered by the former president Donald Trump The speeches of Barack Obama were selected on the internet on the website https://www.americanrhetoric.com/barackobamaspeeches.htm Although there are a variety of websites which have speeches of Barack Obama, this website is the most suitable sources of data for this study because it has all the speeches of Barack Obama and the quality of the data is reliable Similarly, the speeches of Donald Trump were selected on the internet on the website www americanrhetoric.com/Donald Trump's speeches

The objectives of the research are to analyze the implicatures used in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and to compare and contrast the differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the

39 former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions

Table 3.1 Source of corpus used in the present research

A total of twenty speeches were selected for this research Among many speeches of each former president during their presidential terms, these speeches are the suitable source of data for this research For example, the speeches that help them become the presidents: official announcement of candidacy for US President The speeches that mark them to begin a President in their Presidential term: Donald Trump's inauguration speech and Barack Obama’s inauguration speech

The total number of words in the whole corpus is 55171 words with 26521 words in Barack Obama’s speeches and 28650 words in Donald Trump’s speeches The total number of sentences in the whole corpus is 3530 sentences with 1442 sentences in Barack Obama’s speeches and 2088 sentences in Donald Trump’s speeches

Data collection procedures

According to the previous part of this chapter, the essential data used for analysis was collected from the website https://www.americanrhetoric.com Since this is a thesis of a Master of Art, the material for the study should be relevant, appropriate, and chosen purposefully The speeches were selected on purpose instead of random choice because of the desire of gaining a set of speeches which ensure these predetermined criteria:

• The length of the speeches is not too short or too long The speeches which contain about 1500 words to 4000 words are considered appropriate speeches

The corpus was built up from 20 speeches The speeches of Barack Obama contain

26521 words and the speeches of Donald Trump contain 28650 words making a total data of 55171 words for the study

• The criteria of this study are about implicatures of Barack Obama and Donald Trump speeches Therefore, the speeches of Barack Obama and Donald Trump are chosen

• The topics of the speeches of the two former presidents are quite similar For example, the researcher can choose the speech that Donald J Trump Declares Candidacy for President of the United States and the speech that Barack Obama was the Official Announcement of Candidacy for US President Similarly, the inauguration’s speech of Barack Obama and the inauguration’s speech of Donald Trump, the final speech of Obama and the final speech of Donald Trump were chosen to analyse The other speeches such as the speech of Obama in Ha Noi-Vietnam and the speech of Donald Trump in Da Nang-Vietnam, Obama’s speech about Ebola and Donald Trump’s speech about Covid 19 were chosen to analyse.

Data analysis procedures

After being retrieved and selected from the Internet on purpose, twenty speeches containing implicature signals of the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump were analyzed to identify the implicatures in each speech

Counting up the implicature signals with their frequencies by using Grice’s theory Then, implicatures of speeches were classified according to the pragmatic functions of implicatures and evaluated how they were pragmatically used Searle’s theory of Speech Act, which consists of Assertive, Commissive, Declarative, Directive, and Expressive, was utilized to find out the functions of implicatures This would help the researcher explore the similarities and differences of the use of implicatures in speeches by the two former presidents in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions After collecting the data, these two research questions are used to analyse:

Research question 1: To what extent are implicatures used in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump?

Research question 2: Are there any similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions? If yes, how?

The frequencies of implicatures in speeches are counted and compared the use of them between the corpus of Barack Obama’s speeches and Donald Trump’s speeches The functions of implicatures in sentences in the speeches are identified by using the conceptual framework in chapter 2

After finding the implicatures from the speeches and the functions of the implicatures in the sentences of the speeches, the analyzed data and the findings will be compared with each other to determine whether there are any similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions

To conclude, in this study, implicatures used by both Barack Obama and Donald Trump were firstly identified to determine the frequencies Secondly, types of implicatures and their pragmatic functions were classified to explore Lastly, the

43 implicatures were qualitative interpreted to know whether there were any similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions.

Framework for data analysis

There are two main objectives in the research: (1) to determine the frequency of implicatures used in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches to examine the pragmatic functions of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, (2) to find out the similarities and differences in the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of the types of implicatures and their pragmatics functions In order to achieve the set goal of the study, the data collected from 20 speeches for the study will be analyzed about the use of implicatures in speeches based on Grice’s theory

Table 3.3 TYPES OF IMPLICATURES (compiled and adapted) in the present research

No Types of implicatures Forms of implicatures

Conventional implicature and, but, even, yet, however, moreover, besides, anyway, well, still, furthermore, although, oh, so, therefore, sir, madam, mate, your honor, sonny, hey, oi, only, mainly, especially, actually, soon, just, also

The notion of conversational implicature which has four maxims which speakers will normally obey:

Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as it required

Quality: Make the contribution one that is true

Manner: Be perspicuous (express yourself clearly)

Generalized conversational implicature a/an + C to indicate that C is not the speaker’s

Special knowledge is required in the special contexts, so that its meaning can be understood by the listener

Scale of quantity: all, most, many, some, few

Scale of frequency: always, often, sometimes

Scale of coldness: cool, cold, freezing

Scale of likelihood: possibly, probably, certainly

In this research, the main framework with types of implicatures are: (1) conventional implicature, (2) conversational implicature, (3) generalized conversational implicature, (4) particularized conversational implicature

A range of words to form of implicatures is considered as encoding information about presuppositions, indicating the types of implicatures

Table 3.4 The potential implicature of words used in Obama and Donald

45 some Negation of higher value

Not many Last night, I visited the Old Quarter here in Hanoi and enjoyed some outstanding Vietnamese food I tried some Bun Cha, drank some beer Ha Noi (the 4 th speech of Obama) more Negation of value Over Hanoi has endured for more than a thousand years (the

4 th speech of Obama) yet Logical operator However And yet, over the centuries, your fate was too often dictated by others (the 4 th speech of Obama) but Logical operator/ In contrast to/

But like bamboo, the unbroken spirit of the Vietnamese people was captured by Ly Thuong Kiet (the 4 th speech of Obama) and Logical operator Combine/ join/plus

In another time, the profession of these shared ideals and our

46 common story of throwing of colonialism might have brought us closer together sooner (the 4 th speech of Obama)

The life movement is led by strong women, amazing faith leaders, and brave students who carry on the legacy of pioneers before us who fought to raise the conscience of our nation and uphold the rights of our citizens

(the 5 th speech of Donald Trump) or Logical operator Otherwise/ if not No matter how large or small a nation may be, its sovereignty should be respected, and it territory should not be violated (the

Think of all the veterans, Vietnamese and American, who have helped us heal and build new ties

We think gender equality is an important principle (the 4 th speech of Obama)

I see where Harvard announced that they’re closing for the season or for the year I think it’s ridiculous I think it’s an easy way out And

I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves, you want to know the truth, but

I noticed that today and probably others are doing that That’s called the easy way out I don’t know if people are helping them I guess their endowment’s plenty

48 big (the 9 th speech of Donald Trump) know factive implication Feel certain/ recognize/ sure

Nobody wants to sell their goods or go to school if they don’t know they’re going to be treated (the 4 th speech of Obama)

As mentioned above in chapter 2, implicatures are used as these functions: enabling, encouraging, motivating, leading, letting, making and persuading another speaker to give comments, agree to the given idea, express cultural differences and show his or her knowledge about the given topic

If we do not have a semantic connection between the speech with something that implies, it can be assumed that a speech will be interpreted by various implicatures If it is not understood, the speaker can make mistakes in capturing implicature communicated to him

To understand the implicature, the hearer is required to push all of skills and knowledge, such as world knowledge, cultural background, the ability to think referentially, presupposition, speech acts situations, cooperative principles, and the experience in general (Pranowo, 1995)

In order to understand the implicatures of the speeches in this study, the theory of Speech Act by Searle (Leech,1983) which comprises of five acts as Assertive, Commissive, Declarative, Directive, and Expressive is utilized to answer the question regarding the pragmatic functions of implicature

1 Commissive A speech act that commits the speaker to doing something in the future, such as a promise or a threat

Ex: If you don’t stop, I will call the police

2 Declarative A speech act that changes the state of affairs in the world

Ex: during the wedding ceremony the act of marriage is performed when the phrase “I now pronounce you man and wife”

3 Directive A speech act that has the function of getting the listener to do something, such as a suggestion, a request, or a command

4 Expressive A speech act in which the speaker expresses feelings and attitudes about something, such as an apology, a complaint, to thank someone, to congratulate someone

Ex: The meal was delicious

5 Representative/ Assertive A speech act which describes states or events in the world, such as an assertion, a claim, a report

Ex: This is a German car

Validity and Reliability

Since validity of a study prefers to the trustworthiness as well as the correctness, the materials for the study are selected from trustworthy sources such as reference books from Macmillan, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press The references of the previous researches were conducted by different researchers in different countries The speeches collected from websites for this study are a totally authentic source of data The procedures which are used to identify, interpret and compare the implicatures in speeches are subjective The objective of the study is assured

The data collection of the study was collected from the website of https://www.americanrhetoric.com, so the data analysis was reliable The data was analyzed by mainly using Grice’s theory about implicatures This theory is completely suitable for this study Furthermore, qualitative and quantitative method meet the standardization for doing research Twenty speeches, with ten speeches of Barack Obama and ten speeches of Donald Trump, and each speech was over 1000 words were selected for the study This data is quite enough for a study as a thesis of a Master of Art.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

Introduction

The previous chapter presents the methodology to collect data in terms of the types of implicature and their pragmatics functions with the theoretical framework based on Grice’s theory Chapter 4 analyses the data, identifies and reports the results and discusses the similarities and differences between the usage, frequency of implicatures in Obama’s speeches as well as Donald Trump’s speeches The procedure was conducted rely on the two research questions respectively.

Results

To identify the frequency of occurrences of implicatures in Barack Obama’s speeches and Donald Trump’s speeches, the data analysis is focused base on Grice’s theory (purposefully selected and compiled by the researcher) To answer the first research question, the frequencies of implicatures are counted and collected The information in Table 4.1 shows the data

4.2.1 Former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s use implicature in their speeches

As indicated in Table 4.1, the overall number of implicatures in Barack Obama’s speeches was 263 and it was 164 in Donald Trump’s speeches Taking consideration into the number of implicatures used, it can be claimed that there is a difference between Barack Obama and Donald Trump

From the obtained total number of implicatures, the average numbers of implicatures in each speech was calculated as well It can be seen that the average number of implicatures in each of the speech by Barack Obama is 26.3 and it is 16.4 in each of the speech by Donald Trump

The findings may indicate that the number of implicatures used by Donald Trump is lower than that of implicatures used by Barack Obama in general

52 although the number of sentences in Donald Trump’s speeches is higher than that of sentences in Barack Obama’s speeches

Table 4.1 Frequencies of implicatures in speeches produced by Barack

In Barack Obama’s speeches In Donald Trump’s speeches

Average number of implicatures in each speech

4.2.2 Types of implicature used in former presidents Barack Obama’s and

Table 4.2 Distribution of implicatures among the classifications of using maxims

In Barack Obama’s speeches In Donald Trump’s speeches

Total 263 100.00 % 164 100.00 % Figures from Table 4.2 show that Barack Obama utilized more implicatures than Donald Trump (263 implicatures in comparison with 164 implicatures) in their speeches Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used maxim of quantity the most Barack Obama used 46.03% of maxim of quantity and Donald Trump used 50.02% maxim of quantity This means Donald Trump used a little more

53 maxim of quantity in his speeches than Barack Obama Similarly, both of the two leaders also used the maxim of manner the least Barack Obama used only 9.5% the maxim of manner and Donald Trump only used 6.7% the maxim of manner However, the maxim of relation in Barack Obama’s speeches accounted for 30.03% while the maxim of relation in Donald Trump’s speeches only accounted for 7.31% In contrast, Donald Trump used more maxim of quality in his speeches than Barack Obama’s speeches He used 35.97% maxim of quality while Barack Obama used only 14.44% maxim of quality Besides, the two former presidents share similarities in the use of implicatures Firstly, it is the heavy use of maxims of quantity proven by the frequencies of 121 and 82 which account for 46.03% and 50.02% respectively The next similarity is the quite low frequency in the use of maxims of manner with the percentage only 9.5% was found in Barack Obama’s speeches and 6.7% was found in speeches by the former president Donald Trump Percentages of using maxims among the implicatures found in Barack Obama’s speeches and in Donald Trump’s speeches are graphically illustrated in figure 4.1 and figure 4.2 below

Figure 4.1: Percentage of using maxims in Obama’s speeches

Figure 4.2: Percentage of using maxims in Donald Trump’s speeches

It is clear that there is not a significant difference in using maxims in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches Using maxims of quantity takes a dominant proportion with percentage of 46.03% and 50.02% It is followed by using maxim of quality with percentage of 35.97% in Donald Trump’s speeches while Barack Obama only used 14.44% maxim of quality Therefore, Donald Trump used more maxim of quality in his speeches than Barack Obama Amazingly, maxim of relation only appeared in Donald Trump’s speeches with the percentage of 7.31% while there was 30.03 % maxim of relation occuring in Barack Obama’s speeches Maxim of manner was the least used category in speeches by the two former presidents Using maxim of manner was the least between the two former presidents with percentage of 9.5% and 6.7%

Table 4.3 Types of implicatures used in former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s speeches

In Barack Obama’s speeches In Donald Trump’s speeches

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage Conventional implicature 131 49.8% 74 45.13%

In this paper, we compare and contrast the types of implicatures used in former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s speeches based on a table that shows the frequency and percentage of conventional and conversational implicatures in their speeches The table shows that Barack Obama had a total of

263 implicatures, with 49.8% being conventional implicatures and 50.2% conversational implicatures Donald Trump had a total of 164 implicatures, with 45.13% being conventional implicatures and 54.87% conversational implicatures This indicates that both presidents used a similar proportion of conventional and conversational implicatures in their speeches, but Barack Obama used more implicatures overall than Donald Trump We will analyze some examples of each type of implicature from both presidents and discuss how they contribute to their rhetorical goals and audience engagement To illustrate how conventional implicatures work, we will examine some examples from both presidents' speeches For instance, in Barack Obama’s farewell address (the 10 th speech of Barack Obama), he said: "But for all our outward differences, we all share the same proud title: Citizen." The word "but" implies a contrast between the previous statement and the following one, suggesting that there is some tension or challenge in recognizing the common citizenship of all Americans despite their diversity In Donald Trump’s inaugural address (the 2 nd speech of Donald Trump), he said: "We

56 will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth." The word "completely" implies an absolute and final outcome, implying that there is no room for compromise or negotiation in dealing with terrorism Both presidents use conventional implicatures to emphasize their points and appeal to their audiences' emotions Conversational implicatures are more context-dependent and require more inference from the listener In the discourse of Barack Obama's speech in the official announcement of candidacy for United Nation President, conversational implicatures are evident They revealed a nuanced layer of meaning beyond the explicit expressions The rhetorical use of implicatures contributes to the depth and subtlety of the communication These illustrations are examined for the pragmatic implications:

Example 1: "I saw that the problems people faced weren't simply local in nature, that the decisions to close a steel mill were made by distant executives." (in the 1 st speech of Barack Obama)

This instance suggests a complex implicature The term "distant executives" not only denotes geographical separation but also implies a detachment at a social or emotional level This nuanced language underscores a perceived disconnection between decision-makers and the tangible consequences of their choices on local communities Such implicatures offer insights into the intricacies of socio- economic dynamics and the effects of distant decision-making on localized issues

Example 2: " that the lack of textbooks and computers in a school could be traced to skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away." (in the 1 st speech of Barack Obama)

This case employs implicature to highlight the perceived misalignment of priorities among distant politicians The phrase "skewed priorities" implies a deviation from what is considered optimal or equitable Through this implicature, Barack Obama subtly critiques the decision-making process, suggesting that the

57 allocation of resources is not commensurate with the actual needs of local educational institutions This implicature contributes to a broader critique of political decision-making and its implications on local sectors

These examples underscore the strategic use of conversational implicatures in Barack Obama's speech, demonstrating how they serve as rhetorical devices to convey layered meanings and subtle critiques Analyzing such implicatures enhances our understanding of the speaker's perspectives on the socio-economic challenges faced by communities and the intricacies of decision-making processes

Donald Trump's speech is marked by the strategic use of conversational implicatures, employing rhetorical devices to convey implicit meanings Let's have a look at a couple of examples from the provided text in Donald Trump’s presidential announcement speech

Example 1: "They will not bring us believe me to the promised land."(in the 1 st speech of Donald Trump)

Discussion

The main claim of the present research is to explore the use of implicatures in speeches by the former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, what their types of implicatures are, what their functions are, and what the similarities and differences in the use of implicatures of the two leaders In order to reach the aim of the study, first, the frequencies of implicatures used by Barack Omama and Donald Trump were investigated Then, their implicatures were counted to consider two kinds of implicatures, conventional implicatures and conversational implicatures In the conversational implicatures, the frequencies of generalized implicatures and particularized implicatures are considered to find out the

74 similarities and differences of using implicatures between the two leaders Next, functions of implicatures were also analyzed to find out the similarities and differences of using implicatures in the terms of pragmatic functions of implicatures

Taking consideration into frequencies of implicatures in speeches by Barack Obama and Donald Trump, there were few noticeable points that need paying attention to Results of this study revealed that there is not a significant difference in using maxims in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches Using maxim of quantity takes a dominant proportion with percentage of 46.03% in Barack Obama’s speeches and 50.02% in Donald Trump’s speeches Maxim of quality was the second dominant proportion with percentage of 35.97% in Donald Trump’s speeches but in Barack Obama’s speeches, the maxim of quality was 14.44% % in Donald Trump Surprisingly, maxim of relation only appeared a little in Donald Trump’s speeches and account for only the percentage of 7.31% while it accounted for 30.03% in Barack Obama’s speeches Maxim of manner was the least used category in speeches by the two former presidents with percentage of 9.5% and 6.7%

Results also indicated that Barack Obama used more implicatures in his speeches than Donald Trump’s ones Specifically, Obama used 263 implicatures while Donald Trump used 164 implicatures However, the difference in terms of frequencies of implicatures was significant The fact that Donald Trump utilized a little more conversational implicatures in his speeches than Barack Obama’s speeches

Regarding types of conversational implicatures, it showed that there was not a significant difference between using implicatures of these two leaders because both of them used more particularized implicatures than generalized implicatures

However, the account of using particularized implicatures in Donald Trump’s speeches (88.88%) reflected a distinction between the two leaders in communication styles

This result showed that Donald Trump often addressed issues with personalized attention Donald Trump used really low generalized implicatures with 11.12%, reflecting a reference for maintaining a more direct, specific approach in contexts Once again, results of this study also showed that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used functions of implicatures through Searche’s theory of speech act: commissive, declarative, directive, expressive and representative Both of them used functions of representative the most and declarative function the least This section of the discussion offers a comparison to findings of a great number of previous studies Therefore, in comparison with the previous result in term of using functions of implicatures, this is in agreement with findings of Retno Dwiwulandari and Ratna Dewanti (2020) He also claimed that functions of representative were used the most and declarative function was used the least in the analysis of conversational implicature in an extensive listening of BBC learning English podcast

In brief, both of Barack Obama and Donald Trump used conventional as well as conversational implicatures in their speeches Thanks to using implicatures effectively, they can persuade the audiences to accept and support their actions in many fields.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION

Conclusion

The study gives an overall look into implicatures of political speeches This study was conducted to identify how implicatures were used, what the functions of implicatures were and whether there were any similarities and differences in Barack Obama’s speeches and Donald Trump’s speeches Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, descriptive and contrastive methods, the frequencies of implicatures were analyzed, then the functions of implicatures were examined, after that the similarities and differences in types and functions of implicatures were identified In total, Barack Obama used more implicatures than Donald Trump Specifically, Barack Obama used 263 implicatures but Donald Trump used

164 implicatures Analyzing the frequency and percentage of conversational implicatures in the speeches of former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump sheds light on their distinct communication styles

Barack Obama's speeches revealed a balanced usage of conventional and conversational implicatures, with a total of 263 implicatures Nearly half of these implicatures (49.8%) were classified as conventional, reflecting his deliberate use of indirect language to imply meaning In contrast, 50.2% of Barack Obama's implicatures were conversational, suggesting a nuanced approach that invited listeners to infer deeper meanings On the other hand, Donald Trump's speeches, totaling 164 implicatures, exhibited a slightly higher reliance on conversational implicatures at 54.87% This aligns with Donald Trump's direct and unfiltered communication style, where the majority of implicatures were used in a conversational manner The comparative analysis of implicature usage highlights

78 the nuanced differences in the rhetorical strategies employed by these two former presidents

The distribution of speech functions in Barack Obama's speeches unveils a nuanced and strategic use of language that aligns with his rhetorical prowess Representative speech acts, constituting the majority at 63.13%, illustrate Barack Obama's inclination to inform and describe For instance, in his speeches, he often provided detailed accounts of current events, policies, and societal issues, fostering a sense of clarity and understanding among his audience The significant presence of directive speech acts, at 18.25%, indicates his adeptness at employing persuasive language to influence and guide his listeners One can observe this in instances where Barack Obama called for unity, urging citizens to come together for a common purpose Commissive function accounted for 6.84%, this number showed his commitment to action or promises Expressive function, accounting for 9.5%, highlighted Barack Obama's ability to connect emotionally with his audience, expressed sentiments that resonated with the collective experience Lastly, the limited use of declarative function, at 2.28%, suggested a measured approach to making straightforward statements or assertions, emphasized his preference for a more nuanced and diplomatic communication style Overall, this analysis underscores Barack Obama's multifaceted communication strategy, blending various speech functions to effectively convey his messages and engage with diverse audiences

Figures in this study showed the speech functions in Donald Trump's speeches It reveals a distinct distribution that sheds light on his rhetorical approach Representative function dominated at the percentage of 65.24%, indicating Donald Trump's propensity for conveying information and describing various states of affairs This aligns with his style of addressing policy matters, current events, and his administration's achievements Expressive function, accounted for 12.80%, reflected a notable emphasis on the communication of emotions, opinions, and attitudes Donald Trump's speeches often featured strong

79 expressions of his personal convictions, resonating with the sentiments of his audience Commissive function, at the percentage of 8.55%, suggested a commitment to certain actions or promises, which is exemplified in his speeches on policy initiatives and campaign pledges Declarative function, comprising 9.15%, revealed a moderate use of straightforward statements or assertions, indicating a balance between direct communication and more nuanced expressions Directive function were the least frequent at 4.26%, suggesting a relatively limited employment of explicit instructions or commands in his speeches Overall, this distribution showed the diversity of speech functions in Trump's speeches He could use a combination of informative, expressive, and commitment-oriented language to engage and resonate with his audience

The findings of this study are consistent with results of few previous studies and help claim that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used implicature but their usage was not a significant difference when implicatures are investigated in twenty speeches

Through analyzing the implicature in speeches of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the ability on determining types of implicatures of Vietnamese learners of English, we summarize some points.

Implications

Generally, the study looked into the speeches of Barack Obama and Donald Trump The findings of the study showed that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used implicatures in their speeches effectively Based on the findings, some implications can be suggested to Vietnamese teachers, students, learners, or writers

The study analyzed the speeches of Barack Obama and Donald Trump and confirmed their adeptness in utilizing implicatures This discovery holds significant relevance for Vietnamese teachers and students, as implicatures possess the power to elevate the precision of one's writing It is imperative for teachers to

80 impart an in-depth understanding of implicatures and their appropriate usage across various writing styles Not only does this enhance comprehension, but it also reinforces the potency of one's written work Mastering implicatures not only benefits students in academic essays but also in practical situations in their real life like delivering speeches as a club leader or class representative The value of implicatures helps students the writing skill and holds great significance in compelling verbal communication Proficient learners possess the skill to express their thoughts and viewpoints while delivering speeches for momentous events This competency is crucial, especially in leadership roles, where the ability to persuade and subtly influence opinions can greatly impact the outcome of diverse situations

In the world of public speaking, where the audience is dynamic, mastering the art of implicatures is a crucial tool Successful leaders are able to skillfully use implicatures to navigate intricate social situations, engender trust in their audience, and make a lasting impact Therefore, beyond simply unlocking deeper meanings in texts, mastering implicatures is a valuable asset in effective communication for leaders, greatly contributing to their success and influence in various roles

By gaining a thorough grasp on the utilization of implicatures, learners can get some advantages: a heightened comprehension of both subject matter and context, along with enhanced proficiency in incorporating these subtle hints into their own writing Learners are able to navigate texts with a greater depth of understanding, deciphering implied messages that may not be readily apparent This heightened level of awareness not only enriches their overall language proficiency, but also encourages a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to written language

In order to fully harness the power of implicatures in academic writing, English learners must adopt a well-rounded approach that encompasses both theoretical comprehension and practical implementation It is crucial for students to have a deep understanding into the theoretical elements of implicature, such as

81 its definition, various types, and functions within linguistic contexts Being armed with a thorough grasp of these principles, students can then skillfully utilize implicature in their writing, leading to a more sophisticated and nuanced presentation of their ideas

In addition to theoretical knowledge, practical application is crucial for truly grasping how implicatures operate Therefore, it is crucial for students to engage in hands-on exercises and analyze real-world scenarios With the guidance of teachers, these activities can help students recognize implicatures in various written materials, enabling them to develop a practical understanding of their function in different linguistic contexts Moreover, students should be encouraged to experiment with implicatures in their own writing, gradually refining their skills in incorporating these subtle yet powerful language tools Through active participation, students can internalize the use of implicatures and effectively enhance the depth and clarity of their academic writing

Through collaborative learning environments, students can greatly enhance their mastery of implicatures Engaging in discussions, peer reviews, and group activities allows for the sharing and exchanging of ideas, ultimately leading to a collective improvement in understanding and application of implicatures Additionally, receiving peer feedback is a valuable resource in this process, providing multiple perspectives and aiding learners in refining their use of implicatures Taking an active role in these collaborative efforts, English learners can accelerate their progress towards fully harnessing the power of implicatures in academic writing, resulting in enhanced effectiveness and impact in their written expression

In short, by gaining a thorough grasp of their nature and purpose, students have the potential to greatly elevate their writing abilities The study further highlights the significant role of implicatures in effectively assuming leadership roles in classes or companies Using implicatures effectively becomes significant to help the speaker and listener infer the production and interpretation of

82 utterances For those reasons, implicatures should be paid attention by the English learners to get the effectiveness in academic writing.

Limitations of the study

A limitation of the study is that the size of the samples is not large enough to examine the use, the function of implicatures in detail and deeply The samples which were purposefully collected in a small size are the limitation Another limitation is that this study only focuses on investigating frequencies, types of implicatures, and functions of implicatures in order to explore the similarities and differences between the usage of Barack Obama’s speeches and Donald Trump’s speeches Other important aspects, such as the discourse of each speech of the two leaders were not mentioned specifically Moreover, the study should be carried out by interviewing or making a survey to know the views of the other people, not only from the researcher.

Recommendations for further research

Implicatures in the presidents’ speeches is a very sophisticated and difficult phenomenon in pragmatics Within the limitation of an M.A thesis, a full description of all of them cannot be done Further studies are expected to deal with the use of implicatures in terms of the types of implicatures (conventional implicatures and conversational implicatures) and their pragmatic functions (commissive, declarative, directive, expressive, representative) with a large source of data to examine the similarities and differences of implicatures Moreover, the finding is a scientific basement to supply references for other researches of implicatures

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Appendix A: Sample of Obama’s speeches

1 Official Announcement of Candidacy for US President

Hello Springfield! Look at all of you Look at all of you Goodness Thank you so much Thank you so much Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us here today Thank you so much I am I am so grateful to see all of you You guys are still cheering back there?

Let me Let me begin by saying thanks to all you who've traveled, from far and wide, to brave the cold today I know it's a little chilly but I'm fired up You know, we all made this journey for a reason It's humbling to see a crowd like this, but in my heart I know you didn't just come here for me You came here because you believe in what this country can be In the face of war, you believe there can be peace In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope In the face of a politics that shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe that we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union

That's the journey we're on today But let me tell you how I came to be here As most of you know, I'm not a native of this great state I I moved to Illinois over two decades ago I was a young man then, just a year out of college I knew no one in Chicago when I arrived, was without money or family connections But a group of churches had offered me a job as a community organizer for the grand sum of 13,000 dollars a year And I accepted the job, sight unseen, motivated then by a single, simple, powerful idea: that I might play a small part in building a better America

My work took me to some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant

89 closings I saw that the problems people faced weren't simply local in nature, that the decisions to close a steel mill was made by distant executives, that the lack of textbooks and computers in a school could be traced to skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away, and that when a child turns to violence I came to realize that there's a hole in that boy's heart that no government alone can fill

It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education that I ever had, and where I learned the meaning of my Christian faith After three years of this work, I went to law school, because I wanted to understand how the law should work for those in need I became a civil rights lawyer, and taught constitutional law, and after a time, I came to understand that our cherished rights of liberty and equality depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate It was with these ideas in mind that I arrived in this capital city as a state Senator It was here, in Springfield, where I saw all that is America converge farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard I made lasting friendships here, friends that I see here in the audience today It was here It was here where we learned to disagree without being disagreeable; that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst

That's why we were able to reform a death penalty system that was broken; that's why we were able to give health insurance to children in need; that's why we made the tax system right here in Springfield more fair and just for working families; and that's why we passed ethics reform that the cynics said could never, ever be passed It was here, in Springfield, where North, South, East, and West come together that I was reminded of the essential decency of the American people where I came to believe that through this decency, we can build a more hopeful America And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and

90 common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America

Now, listen, I -thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you

Look, I recognize that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity, to this announcement I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change The genius of our Founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed And we should take heart, because we've changed this country before In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an empire to its knees In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty We welcomed immigrants to our shores We opened railroads to the west We landed a man on the moon And we heard a King's call to let "justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

We've done this before: Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call For that is our unyielding faith that in in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it

That's what Abraham Lincoln understood He had his doubts He had his defeats

He had his skeptics He had his setbacks But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people It's because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we're no longer divided, North and South, slave and free It's because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people as Americans All of us know what those challenges are today: a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can

We know the challenges We've heard them We've talked about them for years What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness the smallness of our politics the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle the big problems of America

For the past six years we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter We've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion We've been told that climate change is a hoax We've been told that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight And when all else fails, when Katrina happens, or the death toll in Iraq mounts, we've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault We're distracted from our real failures, and told to blame the other Party, or gay people, or immigrants And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void: the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play They write the checks and you get stuck with the bill They get the access while you get to write a letter They think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back The time for that kind of politics is over It is through It's time to turn the page right here and right now

Look, look, we have made some progress already I was proud to help lead the fight in Congress that led to the most sweeping ethics reforms since Watergate But Washington has a long way to go, and it won't be easy That's why we'll have to set priorities We'll have to make hard choices And although government will play a crucial role in bringing about the changes that we need, more money and programs alone will not get us to where we need to go Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility for instilling an ethic of achievement in our

92 children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice