Rhetorical Devices as the Strategy of Conceptualizing the Leadership Identity in American Political Speech

Abstract

Political leadership was conceptualized in interactional between politician and citizens through the sociolinguistics term. This article aims to investigate the use of rhetorical devices and how it applied in the political speech. Political speech is characterized by rich information related to the condition of the government which reflects the social condition in the society. Focusing on the use of metaphor, euphemism, the rule of three, parallelism and pronoun, this study will explore how certain aspect of communication are affected by rhetorical devices based on Jones and Peccei (2004) theory.Glenn Back"s speech was selected as the subject of this study. This study usesa qualitative approach to create a depth explanation of the way the speaker uttered and implied the implicit meaning of rhetorical devices in the speech. The finding of this research is expected to provide the valuable insight of rhetorical speech within the discourse approach.