A Radical Shift to a Profound and Rigorous Investigation in Political Discourse: An Integrated Approach

Abstract

Drawing on overarching methodological frameworks of Hallidayan grammatical metaphor, Fairclough's perspective on critical discourse analysis and rhetoric, this study attempts to posit a novel, integrated and practical approach to political, the media, advertisement and other discourses. To this end and based on the proposed approach, it aims to critically and eclectically exemplify and dissect three speeches delivered by Mr. Barack Obama, former president of the US, to first manifest the integrated approach practicality and adeptness through analysis; then by virtue of analysis to unveil how language is manipulated and distorted by orators in order to convey seamlessly intended messages and political creeds to the audience. Surveying recent annals of literature, to date no one has conducted an integrated study applying these disciplines in an individual paper and this study as a trial one can be useful for upcoming research. The analysis depicts practicality and efficiency of the integrated approach and displays that the speeches abound with nominalizations, modal verbs, parallelisms and antitheses. Furthermore, there are some three-part listing, the use of passivization, quotations and modality metaphors. Therefore, a tendency to utilize more nominalizations, parallelism and other devices by the speaker can be a fundamental reason for making his political language more powerful, impressive, persuasive and ambiguous as well.

Islamification vs. Islamophobia: A Message to the Youth in the Occident: Critical & Rhetorical Inquiries

“…could be practically exploited for critical and rhetorical evaluation in various genres and discourses. Furthermore, in spite of ID's clear association to persuasion and inducement of attitudes and actions, as outlined by Burke (1969a, b), few studies (Rex, 2011;Zhou & Kazemian, 2015) have applied ID to the realm of political discourse whereas huge quantities of research investigated old rhetorical tropes in various discourses (Flowerdew, 2002;Murphy, 2003;Atkins & Finlayson, 2014;Kazemian & Hashemi, 2014, 2017. This is dispiriting since the rhetoric of politics is a fundamental and an indispensable part of the communication discipline.…”

“…All of the above properties make the political discourse more intricate and discursive and it merits our particular and rigorous attention. In using language in different contexts and discourses such as politics, advertisement and so on, rhetoricians tend to employ particular forms of language to convey particular meanings and assumptions to various people with various orientations and beliefs at one time and within one piece of discourse; therefore, their utterances have a certain force and have consequential effects on the addressees (Woods, 2006, p. vii; Kazemian & Hashemi, 2017).…”

The Discursive Construction of the Chinese National Image in China Daily’s Reports on the G20 Summit

“…In their second study, Kazemian & Hashemi (2017) have analyzed ideological components embedded in three addresses of Mr. Barack Obama; the analysis is grounded in Fairclough's notions of ideology and importance of observing the grammatical aspects of discourse, Hallidayan Grammatical Metaphor (GM) in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and some rhetorical devices. In their article, they have investigated fifteen devices and sought to perceive how they function in political texts and how the speeches, as powerful and dynamic mediums, marshal thoughts and notions as a form of action.…”

Metaphor as a Means of Pessimism in English Poetry

“…In much different veins at recent annals of literature, some other considerable studies have also been conducted in Metaphor and Grammatical Metaphor to lexicogrammatically and semantically investigate various texts and discourses to discern multiple strategies exploited by orators and authors in political, scientific, religious etc. texts to make the texts persuasive, significant, appealing and obscure as well (Cap &Okulska, 2013; Kazemian et al, 2013;Noor et al, 2015;Zhou & Kazemian, 2015;Kazemian & Hashemi, 2017). Prior studies have tended to concentrate on some other genres and discourses.…”