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
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: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8220201 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE BINH DUONG - 2023 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: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8220201 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE Supervised by TRAN QUOC THAO, Ph.D BINH DUONG - 2023 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify my authorship the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled THE USE OF IMPLICATURES IN SPEECHES BY THE FORMER PRESIDENTS BARACK OBAMA AND DONALD TRUMP in terms of the statements of requirements for Thesis in Master’s Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee of faculty of English language, Thu Dau Mot University This thesis has not previously been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institutions Binh Duong, 2023 ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, PHUNG HANH NGUYEN, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses Binh Duong Province, 2023 Signature …………………………… PHUNG HANH NGUYEN iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This Master thesis would not be completed without any assistance from my professors, teachers, friends, and family Therefore, I sincerely give acknowledgement to their support and motivation during the time of conducting the study First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude, and profound thanks to my supervisor, Dr Tran Quoc Thao, who takes a profound interest to my dissertation His guidance and comments are invaluable, important and necessary to me during the process of conducting the study Moreover, his generous contributions and suggestions are greatly added to the quality of the dissertation Second, I would also like to express my thankfulness to the managing board of the class and the Faculty of Foreign Language of Thu Dau Mot University for having created good conditions for me to finish the research paper Third, I would like to address my deepest thanks to my parents, my husband for their endless love and care Their assistance and motivation help me to my research successfully Finally, a great number of special thanks are sent to all my friends for their spiritual help, care, and motivation during the time I my research iv ABSTRACT This study aims to reveal what former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump wanted the audiences to know and believe in their speeches Although these two former presidents live in the same country and the same century, they have different family backgrounds, different Parties, they may have various strategies of persuasion in their political speeches Therefore, they may use different implicatures in their speeches By using the theories that comprised of the implicatures approach by Grice (1975) the theory of speech act by Searle (Leech,1983), the researcher intends to explore implicatures used in their speeches to get more understanding of politics and raise the level of consciousness about what goes on in political language 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 Two research questions are used to explore how implicatures are employed and whether there are 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? Results indicate a non-significant difference, with both presidents predominantly utilizing conversational implicatures and favoring the representative function The study holds pedagogical implications for learners, teachers, and writers, emphasizing the potential for skillful implicature usage to enhance the sophistication of written communication Key words: implicature, former presidents, politics, politicians, political speeches v TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT v LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x CHAPTER – INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study 1.2 Statement of problems 1.3 Research aims and objectives 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study 1.7 Definitions of key terms 1.8 Structure of the study CHAPTER 2- LITERATURE REVIEW 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Political speech 10 2.2.1 Defining political speech 10 2.2.2 Characteristics of political speech 11 2.3 Implicature 13 2.3.1 Definitions of implicature 13 2.3.2 Grice’s implicature theory 14 2.4 Functions of implicatures 22 2.5 Implicature in political speech 28 vi 2.6 Previous studies 28 2.6.1 International studies 28 2.6.2 Local studies 32 2.6.3 Research gap 34 2.7 Conceptual framework 35 2.8 Summary 36 CHAPTER 3- METHODOLOGY 38 3.1 Introduction 38 3.2 Research design 38 3.3 Materials 38 3.4 Data collection procedures 41 3.5 Data analysis procedures 41 3.6 Framework for data analysis 43 3.7 Validity and Reliability 50 3.7.1 Validity 50 3.7.2 Reliability 50 3.8 Summary 50 CHAPTER - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 51 4.1 Introduction 51 4.2 Results 51 4.2.1 Former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s use implicature in their speeches 51 4.2.2 Types of implicature used in former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s speeches 52 vii 4.2.3 Functions of implicature used in the former president Barack Obama’s speeches 61 4.2.4 Functions of implicature used in the former president Donald Trump’s speeches 63 4.2.5 Similarities 65 4.2.6 Differences 70 4.3 Discussion 73 4.4 Summary 75 CHAPTER – CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION 77 5.1 Conclusion 77 5.2 Implications 79 5.3 Limitations of the study 82 5.4 Recommendations for further research 82 REFERENCES 83 APPENDICES 88 Appendix A: Sample of Obama’s speeches 88 Appendix B: Sample of Donald Trump’s speeches 162 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Source of corpus used in the present research 40 Table 3.2 Size of corpus 40 Table 3.3 Types of implicature in the present research 43 Table 3.4 The potential implicature of words used in Obama and Donald Trump’s speeches 44 Table 4.1 Frequencies of implicatures in speeches produced by Obama and Donald Trump 52 Table 4.2 Distribution of implicatures among the classifications of using Maxims 52 Table 4.3 Types of implicatures used in former presidents Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s speeches 55 Table 4.4 Distribution of functions of implicatures in Obama’s speeches 58 Table 4.5 Distribution of functions of implicatures in Donald Trump’s Speeches 61 Table 4.6 Distribution of functions of implicatures in Donald Trump’s speeches 63 ix