The socio pragmatic functions of inaugural speech: A critical discourse analysis approach

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Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

The socio pragmatic functions of inaugural speech: A critical discourse analysis approach Reza Biria*, Azadeh Mohammadi Department of English language, Islamic Azad University (Isfahan), Khorasgan Branch, P.O. Box 81595158, Isfahan, Iran Received 3 October 2009; received in revised form 11 May 2012; accepted 26 May 2012

Abstract Inaugural speech as the first formal presentation of a new president plays highly persuasive and ideological functions in the political scene of a country. This study adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to investigate the typical discursive characteristics underlying the inaugural address. To this end, George Bush's (2005) second term and Barack Obama's (2009) first term inaugural speeches were analyzed to explore the potential ideologies signaled by the discursive strategies and rhetorical devices which these presidents employed to express their political views. The results revealed that the speakers possessed a rich repertoire of discursive mechanisms such as the positive self and negative other-presentation strategies for influencing the addressees. The findings also attested the intricate relationships existing between language, power and ideology. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Inaugural speech; Critical discourse analysis; Discursive strategies; Rhetorical devices; Positive self-presentation; Negative otherpresentation

1. Introduction Within the remit of general sociopragmatic enquiry, it is suggested that the relative power and status of language users has a direct bearing on the way language forms are combined for achieving a particular rhetorical purpose. Hatim and Mason (1990) maintain that the complex ways by which language elements are interconnected in discourse create a precondition for the speakers’ representation of their communicative intent. In fact, by the meticulous manipulation of linguistic resources, speakers delivering a public speech can actualize their ultimate goal which is to make the audience believe what they are asserting is worthy of whole hearted and unconditional support (Duranti, 2006). Among public speeches, political discourse is characteristically unique in that the speakers tend to make an appeal on both personal and emotional levels. Then, to be convincing, they must not only appear sincere and fully committed to their cause but also must sound plausible, fair and on the side of the good. In fact, in this mode of expression, the speakers should move beyond plain exposition into the labyrinthine realm of argumentation whose primary purpose is merely building a case for persuading a given audience (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004). It is evident that in making a case, the speaker's main objective is to substantiate the validity of the propositions he is making by utilizing believable, unassailable and defensible reasoning. As a consequence, by marshalling evidence and exerting vigorous evidential support, the speaker can turn his speech into a mode of oration wherein he tries to prove that he is right and well-meaning, and in so doing, he tries to win the audience to his side. It follows, therefore, that linguistic

* Corresponding author at: Assistant Professor of applied linguistics at the Post graduate School, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran. Tel.: +98 311 5354042. E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Biria). 0378-2166/$ -- see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.05.013

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elements should not merely be considered as acts of referral but as a system of units by which different speakers formulate their perceptions of the world, their beliefs and ideologies (Capone, 2010; Fairclough, 1989). Until 1960, the main concern of discourse analysts interested in investigating the inaugural address was the power and role of the president holding office. Neustadt (1990) defines Presidential Power as a tool for persuasion. He believes that power is a function of personal politics rather than of formal authority or position. Interestingly, the core elements of his argument about presidency center on people, politics, and leadership which have long been the essence of relevant research concerning political speech. Denton and Hahn (1986:10) view the presidency from a different perspective. In fact, they think of it as a rhetorical and persuasive institution that ‘‘constitutes social action, provides a context for collective action, and contributes to the oral history and definition of the nation’’. Likewise, Cheng (2006) asserts that a president's speeches are his major resource for leading the country and convincing the public. Therefore, the rhetorical style adopted by a president can unquestionably influence his degree of success in achieving his political goals. On this basis, following the analytical frameworks adopted by Van Dijk (2004) and Cheng (2006), the present study aimed to fathom out the major discursive characteristics of inaugural speech by focusing on the positive self-presentation and negative otherpresentation strategies which are believed to be linked to the ideological values of the speakers. It is a commonly held belief that individuals with different social roles may use language for achieving specific communicative goals. To interpret the situated meanings in political discourse, therefore, demands a profound knowledge of the existing social, political and economical contexts. Naturally, politicians as social actors are the main focus of the media and present their ideas and claims through political discourse. Thus, by using this type of speech, they try to control the public and inculcate their ideologies. There have apparently been many research reports on political texts and talks which have been analyzed by using various types of CDA frameworks (Sarcaceni, 2003; Ruud, 2003; Van Dijk, 1997, 2004).1 For instance, Van Dijk (1997) argues that one of the primary tenets of CDA is to show the sources of existent dominance and inequality in the society through analyzing written or spoken texts. He believes that by adopting a CDA approach, we can identify the discursive strategies employed by the speakers who intend to construct or maintain meaning in sociopolitical contexts. Furthermore, he states that a text ‘‘is merely the tip of the iceberg and it is the responsibility of the discourse analyst to uncover the hidden meaning of the text’’ (1997:9). While most CDA studies focus on the representation of racism in media discourse (Wodak, 1996; Teo, 2000; Van Dijk, 2001), only a few have been reported to adopt a critical discourse analysis approach to the investigation of inaugural speeches. As such, the main objective of the present study is to fill the gap in the literature related to CDA in order to indicate how language users employ a set of sociocultural and psychological frameworks to create and maintain differences in power. This is actually what the majority of CDA studies normally do. In fact, by focusing on particular sociopolitical contexts, they aim at shedding light on the links between textual structures and their sociopragmatic functions in the intricately intertwined interactions within a given society. All in all, one of the significant objectives of CDA is to unearth and examine the complex mechanisms of discursive practice utilized by the speakers. It is clear that by reviewing some definitions of inaugural address, we can clarify the applicability of the CDA perspective for explicating the real meanings hidden in the political discourse. According to Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia (2009), an ‘‘inaugural address’’ is the presidential speech given to inform the people of the president's intentions as a leader. Notably, political inaugurations often feature lavish ceremonies in which the politicians publicly take their oath of the office in front of a large crowd of spectators. Campbell and Jamieson (1990) state that an inaugural speech is actually designed to set the tone for new beginnings when a new office holder assumes responsibilities. Then the inaugural address, it may be said, is a specific kind of discourse targeted at unifying the audience by reconstituting them as the people who can witness and ratify the ceremony, practice shared values drawn from the past and determine the political principles that will govern the new administration. Each of these objectives must naturally be attained through discursive tools that appropriately actualize the speaker's intentions. As such, Graber (1981) believes that political language is a complex kind of discourse which must meet a variety of functions and requirements; namely, information dissemination, agenda-setting, interpretation and linkage, projection for the future and the past, and action stimulations. Similarly, Cheng's (2006) study concerning the inaugural speeches of Taiwan's president analyzes how President Chen Shui-bian applies linguistic rhetoric to achieve his sociopolitical goals. She believes that the principal aim of the presidential inaugural address in the democratic societies is traditionally to ease the transition of power and to unite the country after an election. Consequently, the newly elected president proposes solutions for the country's problems and tries to express his goals by means of the rhetorical devices that can effectively contribute to his success in making people

1 Van Dijk as one of the key figures in the field of CDA has approached it from a sociocognitive perspective. The focus of his critical studies is mostly on prejudice and racism in discourse. For Van Dijk, CDA is not a branch of discourse analysis, instead he suggests that researchers should look at CDA as an interdisciplinary approach and follow an emic approach towards it by considering the realities of other cultures, countries, and other disciplines in human sciences. Based on this interdisciplinary approach to CDA, he labels his methodology as socio-cognitive discourse analysis.

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to believe in him and the ideology he represents. Hence, Van Leeuwen (2008) focuses on the stylistic analyses of political discourse by investigating the main traditions in which it is formulated. Naturally enough, in the political realm, shaping the notions of self and other is one of the vital strategic goals of political actors. As such, in analyzing the presentation of self and other, the purpose and function of discursive practice is crucial. To put it differently, what is important is not to discuss perceptions of self and other and how they are created; rather, why they are created and what the intended functions of behind these concepts are. The reason is that political speech as a form of public discourse plays a pivotal persuasive function and its major objectives are: to convince the public of the political measures taken, to win the campaign, and to win the public support for future political actions. It is worth mentioning that persuasion is done subtly and has a close relationship with the notions of ideology and identity which are interlinked in political discourse. According to Van Dijk (2002:1) ‘‘political discourse is eminently ideological’’ and in order to construct ideology ‘‘the concept of identity’’ is essential. Since the audience of a political discourse is usually heterogeneous, the speaker who intends to win such audience will not be precise and singular in the construction of identity. Van Dijk (2002) maintains that politicians enact their multiple identities in different ways. In fact, they not only speak as politicians, but they also adopt a wide variety of roles such as conservatives or liberals, men or women, feminists or anti-feminists, racists or anti-racists, etc. Naturally, if political speech is aimed at affecting and articulating basic beliefs and ideologies, it will be necessary to first define the group for whom the beliefs are valid. Thus the speaker has to determine the borders of the group by defining its members. At the same time, he has to claim his membership and clarify his own position in order to articulate his basic beliefs effectively. Engel (2004) discusses how the images of self and other are used to represent the nature of membership in political speech and how they contribute to the construction of cognitive discourse models in social cognition. He analyzes the radio addresses delivered by the U.S. president George W. Bush from January 2001 to September 2003 to detect the images of self and other, and their discursive functions in a sociopolitical context. He maintains that the image of self is not confined to the persona of the speakers; rather, it may also include groups of people associated with them. But the favorable presentation of the persona of the speaker has a significant function in political speech. The construction of a mental model of self in these terms, and conveying this model to the audience is invariably part of the discursive events involved in political speech. In addition, he maintains that delegitimization as a rhetorical strategy can be employed to present those in the periphery or the others negatively. Therefore, certain techniques including the use of ideas of differences and boundaries, and speech acts such as blaming, accusing and insulting are used to negatively portray the other/them members. He further concludes that before 9/11 Bush works mainly on the image of self and tries to convey positive connotations to consolidate national unity and rapport. Comparatively, the image of other is used much more implicitly and strategically and is employed to subtly coerce administrative bodies to cooperate with a weak president. The analysis of his speech indicates how the personalization of other used by the president after 9/11 provides an explicit distinction between the model of self and the model of other and the way these conceptual models are polarized. In another study, Leudar and Marsland (2004) analyze the public addresses delivered by the U.S. president George W. Bush, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda after the 11 September 2001 attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. Their study aims to investigate public presentations of violence and of participants in the violence. They show that each speaker distinguishes us from them and formulates this distinction in order to justify past violent actions and to prepare the grounds required for recognizing those which may happen in the future. Basically, Bush and Blair both distinguish us from them in social, political and moral terms, whereas bin Laden does much of the same by utilizing specific religious expressions. For instance, in Bush's speeches words like freedom and opportunity are attributed to America and America is introduced as the intended victim of the attacks. The implication is that they are the enemies of freedom and opportunity. In fact, the attackers are depicted as the worst of human nature but we, the victims, are represented as caring individuals. Then, the us/them distinction certainly has an intricately interwoven moral, social and political nature. In the same vein, Van Dijk (2005) analyzes the speeches delivered by the Prime Minister José María Aznar in Spanish parliament in 2003 and indicates how he legitimized his support of the U.S. and the threatening war against Iraq. In his insightful analysis of the prime minister's speeches, he identifies three types of positive self-presentation strategies; namely, when the speaker speaks for his group or organization, when the speaker speaks for his country, and when the speaker speaks for himself. Whereas the first two strategies are typically political, the last is personal since it mainly emphasizes the good character of the speaker. He further suggests that all these forms of positive self-presentation are interactionally occasioned, and form the expected responses to real or possible criticisms of the real or potential opponents. By conducting a critical discourse analysis of euphemization and derogation in emails on the late Pope, Rahimi and Sahragard (2006) also try to explain how a single event like the death of Pope can be viewed differently by the people with different religious backgrounds. The main concept of their study concerns the macro strategies of positive selfpresentation and negative other-presentation, which they believe, can be manifested through different micro strategies

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such as euphemization and derogation. They conclude that CDA can be an appropriate approach for detecting biased and manipulative language use. In addition, they indicate how the email writers’ religious backgrounds can affect their choice of words for expressing condolences and how such influence is deeply rooted in their differing ideologies. In another interesting study, Bakhtin (1986) explains that in constructing meaning, speakers may use polyphony to minimize their dominating role for making an intended audience feel and share the significance of the topic and the situation they are discussing. In fact, by gaining the collaboration of the addressees they present themselves as members of the in-group rather than the out-group. In this way, the audiences hear their own needs and sentiments from the person who is delivering the speech. Similarly, Suleiman and O’Connell (2008) provide a critical analysis of the CNN Lary King's interview with male, female, black and white politicians to discover whether variables like ethnicity and gender have any discernible impact on the way these speakers organize their speeches. Focusing on the existence of inter and intra group relations in America, they point to certain commonalities existing in the responses which these black interviewees (e.g., Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powel) provided to the reporters. In brief, they claim that race and gender have a predominant role in political discourse. Finally, Capone (2010) analyzes Barack Obama's South Carolina Speech from a particular pragmatic perspective basing his argument on Goffman's (2007) notion of footing2 and Bakhtin's (1986) notion of polyphony. He argues that Obama utilizes a complex set of rhetorical mechanisms which are strongly associated with the historical and cultural context in which his speech is situated, and within such sociocultural context, the president tries to inform his audience of America's present financial crisis and Iraq's war events. As a matter of fact, Obama skillfully uses a type of discourse which is characteristically similar to Afro-American sermons. Consequently, by changing the rhythmic structure of his speech and repeating the main idea, he tries to evoke specific sensitivities and heightened emotional responses in his audience. In this speech, the president also employs personification as one of his effective strategies. By alluding to certain relevant stories, he actually tries to personify his ideas through multiple voices. To sum up, Capone (2010) maintains that, in South Carolina speech event, Obama acts as a ventriloquist to represent the voices which reflect both the in- group and out- group members.

2. Data Collection and analytical framework The rationale behind selecting the inaugural speech as the corpus of analysis was justified for three main reasons. The first reason was recency. The inaugural speeches made by the two presidents, one immediately succeeding the other, were more likely remembered by the American public because they had just been involved in the heat of presidential elections. As such, the transcripts of their political talks seemed to be more appropriate for the analysis. Secondly, these presidents as major political actors employed different strategies to pursue specific political, social and economic goals concerning the current sociopolitical situation in America. The last and perhaps the most important reason for selecting the inaugural address for the study was its highly persuasive sociopragmatic texture since a newly elected president tries to persuade his audience to believe him, to cooperate with him, to perform his plans for the future and to feel convinced that they have made the right choice. As a consequence, Bush's second term and Obama's first term political speeches were retrieved from Wikisource Online Free Library (2009) for analysis. The analytical framework utilized in the study consisted of two CDA models adopted by Van Dijk (2004)3 and Cheng (2006). The former placed a great emphasis on two main strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation as the principal basis of discourse analysis because the discursive strategies of positive self-presentation (i.e. semantic macro-strategy of in-group favoritism) and negative otherpresentation (i.e. semantic macro-strategy of derogation of out-group) were materialized through such discursive moves such as ‘authority’, ‘categorization’, ‘comparison’, ‘euphemism’, ‘evidentially’, ‘lexicalization’, ‘metaphor’, ‘nationality’, ‘self-glorification’, and ‘victimization’. By contrast, the latter focused on the rhetorical devices used by the president of Taiwan in his two inaugural speeches and included such rhetorical moves as ‘lexicalization’, ‘parallelism’, ‘anaphora’, ‘antithesis’, ‘victimization’, ‘identification’, and ‘metaphors’. Overall, these analytical models were employed for the critical analysis of the inaugural speeches under investigation.

Erving Goffman (1981:128) proposed the general concept of ‘‘footing’’ to explain the ‘‘changes in alignment we take up to ourselves and others’’. Footing is a relationship of speakers to the act of speaking, and we often shift from one foot to another in interaction. We can signal changes of footing in various ways. According to Goffman (2007), various roles can be distinguished in relation to what people say in their utterances. 3 Van Dijk (2004) identifies categories in ideological discourse analysis. Some of these categories are as follows: actor description, categorization, authority, burden, comparison, consensus, counterfactual, euphemism, etc. We have used the same categories in this study, because inaugural speeches as a type of political discourse are ideological as well. 2

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To indicate the exact nature of discursive strategies and rhetorical devices utilized by the speakers and to compare the discursive characteristics and underlying ideologies of the intended inaugural speeches, we considered each paragraph of the text as a macro unit4 and analyzed it according to the parameters defined by the selected models. The main concern of the study was the way us or the in-group and them or the out-group were depicted by the American presidents. In this analysis, special attention was paid to the existing contexts which were exclusively different for each president. As a matter of fact, for Bush, 11 September 2001 events formed the political context affecting America's local and foreign policies. For Obama, however, these events marked the time of a great economic crisis in America. Naturally, the newly elected president's major goal was to calm down both his people and the people of other parts of the world like Iraq and Afghanistan. To capture the differences in the political views and the ideological strategies exercised by the presidents, a wordlist analysis was used to calculate the absolute frequencies of the contested words in these speeches. It should be mentioned that by keywords we mean those high frequency tokens which contributed to the creation of positive self and negative other-presentations. In a nut shell, the prevailing socioeconomic and political contexts had to be considered in the analysis because they affected the choice of lexical items, discursive strategies and other related rhetorical tools. Below you will find the main results of the study as well as the critical analysis of certain discourse samples followed by the discussion of the obtained results. 3. Results and discussion The CDA approach to the analysis of inaugural address led to several insightful results. First of all, both presidents followed a predetermined format in the opening and closing parts of their speeches. Evidently in both cases, the beginning and opening words aimed to win the attention and good will of the audience. In other words, the presidents started their speeches by giving thanks to the ex-presidents, official members and the guests participating in the inaugural ceremony before introducing their cases in an interesting and favorable light. Likewise, they closed their speeches by making sure that the audiences have not been misunderstood and by giving a peroration-that is, a final, heightened appeal for support. Interestingly, both presidents finalized their speeches by a ceremonial deism which is a common expression about God. Secondly, to achieve their intended goals, the presidents under study employed different discursive strategies to confirm their case by refuting and condemning opposing views demonstrating that they are untrue, illegal, and self-contradictory. At times, they also tried to offer concessions of points to the opposition by answering their questions and offering alternative positions. It is evident that the speakers handled the body of their speeches differently. The results of the word count analysis revealed that Obama employed more words to convey his message compared with Bush. In fact, his inaugural speech included 2406 words, while Bush had enlisted 2083 words in his speech. The results also indicated that the speakers had made a differential use of pronominals or personal diectics. As Wales (1996:50) points out, pronominals ‘‘are rarely neutral in reference’’. This proposition has been substantiated in several interesting studies. For instance, Muhlhausler and Harre (1990) assert that among personal pronouns, the first and second person pronouns are discursively significant because one of the functions they perform is to index social relations. In fact, these linguistic elements can mirror relative status, deference, and distance on the one hand and solidarity and intimacy on the other. It is clear that such functions play a crucial part in social interactions in general and political discourse in particular. As an illustration, in English the first person plural pronouns may have either an exclusive or an inclusive function. By employing inclusive pronouns such as we or our, the presidents used a discursive strategy whose aim was to create identification and rapport between themselves and their audiences. However, by using exclusive pronouns like they and them they tried to draw a distinct demarcation line between America and her friends and those in the other-group. This is what Coe et al. (2004:234) explain as the construction of binary communication that represents the world as a ‘‘place of polar opposites’’. Column chart 1 presents the occurrence of the pronoun we with its different representations like our, ourselves and us as well as the occurrence of the exclusive pronoun I in Bush's and Obama's speeches: (Fig. 1) It was observed that the inclusive pronouns of we and our were among the highly frequent tokens in both speeches; however, their occurrences were higher in Obama's speech. The tendency of the speakers to apply inclusive we can be attributed to the kind of discourse they employed. In fact, in political discourse, the inclusive we implies and reinforces national and ideological boundaries. Therefore, both Bush and Obama implicitly exercised their power and corporate ideology by speaking on the behalf of their people and putting the government and the people in the same group to create unity and solidarity.

4 For accessing the complete inaugural speech scripts and for checking the paragraph/macro unit analyses refer to Wikisource Online Free Library (2009).

[(Fig._1)TD$IG]

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Occurances of Personal Pronouns in Bush′s and Obama′s Speeches 80

Frequency

70 60 50 40 30

Bush′s Speech

20

Obama′s Speech

10 0 We

Our

Us

Ourselves

I

Personal Pronouns

Fig. 1. The frequency Profile of inclusive/Exclusive Pronouns in Bush's and Obama's Inaugural Speeches.

As Column Chart 1 indicates, the application of the pronoun I is comparatively less than we in both speeches. In fact, the corporate and national ideologies encourage such discourse-based exclusivity. What is remarkable is that the exclusive pronoun I occurs 7 times in Bush's speech, while in Obama's speech it occurs only 3 times. Considering the fact that the length of Obama's speech is longer than Bush's, such a difference is significant because it shows that Bush puts more emphasis on himself as a person who holds a highly influential position in the country. This may be due to his belief in the strict individualistic values which makes him distinct from his audience. Kim et al. (1994) define individualism and collectivism as cultural traits which are used to describe the common attitudes belonging to the individuals rather than the group. The individualism/collectivism framework is commonly used to describe personality characteristics, habits and traits rooted in the cultures in which certain individualist and/or collectivist traits occur. Likewise, the concept of power distance proposed by Hofstede (1991) is somehow related to the individualism/collectivism distinction. Power distance represents the degree to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions try to accept the unequally distributed power. Therefore, the cultures that approve of a low power distance are expected to take side with more consultative or democratic power relations. In such cultures, regardless of the existing formal positions, people tend to relate to one another as equals. Bush as a person who values individualism implicitly emphasizes the uniqueness and independence of himself as an individual among his group. On the other hand, Obama strategically attempts to minimize the use of I showing respect for collectivistic values to implicitly promote cooperation and solidarity for both himself and his American audience. Although individualism is positively viewed in American culture, resorting to collectivistic values by Obama reflects his knowledge of political discourse and its requirements. Tables 1 and 2 indicate the occurrences of potential keywords which denote positive self and negative other presentations in Bush's and Obama's speeches respectively: A word of caution is in order here. The potential key words with a frequency equal to 7 or more were labeled as first group tokens while those occurring 4 times or more were categorized as second group tokens. Consequently, as Tables 1 and 2 indicate, words like freedom, America, nation, American and liberty are among the highly frequent keywords in Bush's speech. By contrast, Obama's first group tokens include nation(s), new, America, generations, people, world and common. The over-lexicalization of such terms contributes to the underlying ideologies of the speakers. On the other hand, Bush's overemphasis on moral values like freedom and liberty reflects the strategy of positive self-presentation. He intends to show America and its people as the vanguard of human values. In addition, by reiterating America 20 times and American 10 times, he employs the discursive strategy of naming to evoke a sense of Americanism.5 It is clear that the belief in Americanism is enshrined in the president's nationalistic and professional ideologies. Apparently, Bush's racist ideology is evident in his employment of words with positive connotations like free, freedom, liberty and hope. However, he uses words such as tyranny, tyrants, dictators, terrorists and mortal threats with negative connotations to magnify the bad nature of the other-group and to convince his people that American wars against countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are for the sake of supporting human values. Additionally, identification is achieved not only by the application of inclusive pronouns but also by employing terms like America and nation on various occasions. All these techniques create senses of solidarity and identification between the newly elected president and his people. According to Denton and Hahn (1986:89) ‘‘The concept of identification is central

5 Ricento conducts a study on the construction of American national identity during the Americanization campaign. One of the most salient themes that he finds is ‘‘the idea that Americanism requires, or is constituted by, thought-sharing. That is, Americans know who Americans are because they ‘think alike’; they ‘see eye to eye’ on the essence of Americanism, they share the same ‘ideas’ about national identity.’’ (Ricento, 2003:617).

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Table 1 Occurrences of first group and second group potential keywords in Bush's inaugural speech (2005). First Group tokens

Frequency

Relative frequency

Second group

Tokens frequency

Relative frequency

Freedom America Liberty Nation(s) American Own World Country People Free History Hope(s) Justice Peoples --

25 20 15 12 10 9 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 --

1.20 0.96 0.72 0.57 0.04 0.43 0.38 0.38 0.38 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 --

Citizen Government(s) Human Ideal(s) Work United States Presidents Rights Choice Tyranny Great Fire Generation(s) Good Life

6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4

0.28 0.28 0.28 0.28 0.28 0.28 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19 0.19

Note: The total number of words in Bush's speech was 2083.

Table 2 Occurrences of first group and second group potential keywords in Obama's inaugural speech (2009). First group tokens

Frequency

Relative frequency

Second group tokens

Frequency

Relative frequency

Nation(s) New America(’s) Generation(s) People(s) World(’s) --------

15 11 10 8 8 8 --------

0.62 0.45 0.41 0.33 0.33 0.33 --------

Common Work American(s) Spirit Crisis End Father(s) God Government Greater Men Peace Power

6 6 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

0.24 0.24 0.20 0.20 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16

Note: The total number of words in Obama's speech was 2406.

to presidential rhetoric, for one of the important jobs of a president is to persuade the audience that he identifies with their interests and thus it is in their interests to identify with him’’. Conversely, for Zheng (2000), identification is a targeting strategy employed by politicians to stimulate particular sections of the community. He adds that presidents apply this technique for the groups which are held together by the common ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, and vocation in order to convince them and to win their support (see also Suleiman and O’Connell, 2008). The findings of the study also indicated that compared with Obama, Bush tried to choose strategies and tactics which presented the other group more negatively. By contrast, in Obama's speech the category of other included the people of the world as well as the ex-president (i.e. Bush) and his republican government. In addition, he cunningly used certain negative terms and expressions to describe the wrong policies of Bush which had pushed America into an undesirable economic situation. To clarify the point further, the following paragraphs/macro units were analyzed to shed light on the importance of political and ideological orientations of these presidents in choosing what to say and how to say them. The analyses revealed that Bush categorizes the people of the world into two groups: the us-group with positive qualities and the themgroup with negative characteristics.

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We have seen our vulnerability --- and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny --- prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder --- violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

In macro unit (3), the euphemistic term vulnerability is used as a rhetorical device to mitigate the weakness of America in dealing with terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.Through euphemization, the positive self-presentation strategy is reinforced. Similarly, through lexicalization, he tries to attribute negative characteristics such as resentment, tyranny, murder, violence and destructive power to the out-group or the periphery members. The adjective whole classifies all the regions of the world in the out-group signifying Bush's discriminatory ideology. While the phrase destructive power is attributed to the terrorists, the most defended borders refer to the borders of America, which were broken by September 11 attacks. In addition, mortal threat is used to prophesy that similar attacks will happen in the future and it is the duty of the government to prevent them. Then, he finds a rhetorical method to rationalize America's initiation of war against Iraq and Afghanistan to fend off the rising criticism against his foreign policy. He employs the metaphor one force of history in combination with positive characteristics like rewarding hope of decent, tolerant and human freedom to implicitly introduce America as having such a force. Here, the term force is used to imply the unique power of America in which all American governments strongly believe. Unsurprisingly, Bush's speech is similar to other American presidents who claim that America is the savior of mankind, the vanguard and supporter of freedom and that other nations are fraught with tyranny and violence due to their ideologies. Such a national self-glorification move is obviously derived from a racist ideology. As an American president, regardless of his republican orientations, Bush certainly knows how to handle and display his professional ideology. At the end of this macro unit, he concludes that the liberty in America is intertwined with the success of liberty in other lands. He again rationalizes his war-like policy through the application of the term liberty. He contends that America's peace depends largely on the freedom existing in other parts of the world. Clearly, utilizing moral explanations may be the most influential way of convincing both Americans and their opponents of why American soldiers have to take part in wars in remote areas like Afghanistan and why the American government must pay astronomical costs for such wars. (9):

Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

Again in macro unit (9), the people of the world are portrayed negatively through the application of words such as tyranny, oppression and oppressors. This negative-other presentation strategy is apparently related to Bush's racist ideology that prevents him from observing the positive aspects of other countries as well. Evidently, using the term peoples which semantically encompasses all people of the world from every race and nation in one group is highly ideological. Although he intends to persuade people to believe that he empathizes with the oppressed people, his biased and racist categorization of people in the out-group is evident in every word he employs. He introduces the United States as the supporter of liberty by addressing other nations and saying When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. The question is: why do American soldiers slaughter unarmed people including women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan, if they are supporters of liberty? Does liberty present a privilege that is to be imposed on nations? These are amongst the many questions that presidents like Bush must answer to rationalize their foreign policies. Classifying people into us/them groups is not something new in Bush's speeches. Mayhall (2009) in the textual investigation of the pre and early post 9/11 shows how President Bush in response to the attack on the U.S. World Trade Center attempts to change the financial and consumer product markets into battlefields against terrorism. According to this study, most President Bush's speeches during this time are markedly characterized by us/them distinction. As an illustration, he tries to stimulate American dynamism by employing relevant imagery in order to highlight the conflict between the radicalized other and the patriotic self. In fact, by placing the United States on a pedestal and by calling it the civilized West, he downgrades the Middle East, which is largely associated with Islam, by defining it as uncivilized. Another important point about Bush's speech is that his religious-based republican ideology can be detected in some parts of his speech (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 1, 4, 5, 11, 15,16,17,18, and 22 respectively). In macro unit (1), he gives his thanks to the reverend clergy. The inclusion of clergy in his address described by the positive term of reverend reveals his religious tendencies which are intricately interwoven with his republican ideology. Similarly, in macro units 4 and 5, he employs metaphors such as the day of our founding and when the soul of a nation finally speaks to allude to his religious beliefs as a republican president. Clearly, the second metaphor is employed to give a spiritual aspect to America's war in

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Iraq. The words God and sacrificed in macro units (11) and (15) are also associated with his religious-based ideology. Then in macro unit 16, Bush states ‘‘In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty’’. Naturally, we here refers to all Christians. According to Yurica (2005), Bush's speech reveals his plans to export his political agenda to other nations, and in the process, build an American Christian empire. He categorizes Christians in the in-group (us) and people with other religions in the out-group (them). The objective is to introduce the us-group as those who are implicitly designated by God to show the meaning and promise of liberty to the people of the world. Interestingly, the texture of his speech is also characterized by such rhetorical devices as parallelism and anaphora (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 2, 5, 17, 18, 19, and 23). While parallelism is the application of similar syntactic structures, anaphora is the repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially used for creating rhetorical or poetic effects. For example, the repetition of the phrase years of in the sentence: ‘‘After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical --- and then there came a day of fire’’ gives harmony and power to the speech. All in all, the textual analysis of Bush's speech showed that identification, euphemization and lexicalization were among prominent discursive strategies which provided the necessary ground for the actualization of the positive selfpresentation and negative other-presentation moves. On the other hand, the study illustrated that the most frequent strategies utilized in Obama's speech were identification, euphemization, metaphor and victimization. These strategies were utilized to establish the group boundaries and depict a positive picture of us and a negative picture of them. Identification was manifested in the use of high frequency tokens of we (62 times), our (67 times) and us (23 times) as well as nation (15 times) and people (8 times). Macro units (3), (6), and (20) represent parts of Obama's use of identification strategy respectively: (3):

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

(6):

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

(20):

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

It is clearly observed that the priorities of Obama's government are American values like peace, freedom, and friendship as well as the principles of humanity which are employed in a number of places: ‘‘those values upon which our success depends --- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism --- these things are old, these things are true.’’ The concept of freedom used by Obama is a principle on which the American liberalism is built (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 2005:343). In part of his speech (macro unit 25), Obama as a democrat venerates the rights of citizenship to demonstrate his opposition to all kinds of inequality observed in his society including segregation, racial and religious prejudice, etc. At the same time, he tries to prove that his government is supportive of the us-group: (25):

This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence --- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed --- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

In macro unit (17), he extends the semantic domain of the word nation and tries to create a kind of religious solidarity by putting the followers of different religions such as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and even non-believers in the same group. Cady (2009) maintains that for centuries Muslims have been treated as the ‘‘menacing other’’ in the formation of Western identity. However, Obama as a new president fabricates a new scenario in which the role of Muslims as evil

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people has greatly been changed to the people who deserve to be included in the in-group and even counted as the members of the super American society. This strategy is justifiable because Obama's intention is to relieve the tension existing between the Muslims and the Western world. (17):

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus --- and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

At the same time, he cunningly tries to differentiate between his people and himself or the us-group and those in the them-group. He attributes negative qualities like threat, corruption, destroyer and violence to the members of the othergroup (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 16 and 19). In a part of his speech (macro unit 16), he calls the members of the othergroup as foes that pose nuclear threats, induce terror, and slaughter innocents: (16):

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort --- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

Similarly in micro unit 19, he once again subtly addresses the non-democratic leaders around the globe as those who sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West. He uses the word destroy to describe what they do in their societies. Rating these leaders as those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, he places them in the periphery and tells them that ‘‘they are on the wrong side of history’’. Obama's reference to the crisis in the following sentences extracted from paragraphs/macro units (3), (4), (9), and (13) pinpoints to the existing bad economic situation affecting the lives of many Americans. He wants the American public to know that the major concern of the new president is to cope with the undesirable downward trend of American economy: ‘‘That we are in the middle of crisis is now well understood’’ ‘‘These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics’’ ‘‘Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began’’ ‘‘This crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control’’ As can be seen, Obama as a democrat skillfully articulates derogatory terms such as grievances, false promises, recriminations and worn-out dogmas to refer to the wrong policies of Bush and his republican government. In the expression, ‘‘Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some’’, the quantifier some collocating with derogatory terms greed and irresponsibility is implicitly used to refer to the ex-president and his republican aids who have been responsible for the bad economic crisis in America. In the same vein, he labels Bush's policies as childish things: ‘‘the time has come to set aside childish things’’. In these examples, Obama clearly tends to categorize Bush and his republican government in the other-group. Obviously, this strategy is not seen in Bush's speech. It is generally agreed that image-based rhetoric is more effective and influential than concept-based rhetoric because imagery can evoke powerful emotional reactions. Pointing to the close relationship existing between emotion and imagery, Emrich et al. (2001) found that certain lexical items like root, heart, explore, grow, journey, frontier, path, dream, etc.. . . have a widespread application in political discourse. For instance, the word path implying action was one of favorite metaphors of President Reagan (see his second inaugural address, 1985) and was also one of G.W. Bush's lexical choices (see his nomination acceptance address, 2000). Likewise, President Obama aims to enlist image-based rhetoric and makes frequent use of metaphor in his inaugural speech (see paragraphs/macro units 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 17, 21, 22, 23, and 25). Exemplifying this would be expressions such as rising tides of prosperity, still waters of peace, gathering cloud and raging storms.

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Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents. So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

Journey, Obama's favorite metaphor, is repeatedly used in macro units (7), (9), and (26). He purposefully employs this metaphor to remind Americans of the conquest of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the immigration of their ancestors to the continent. The journey metaphor not only appeals to the addressees’ emotions but it also evokes their patriotic feelings and prepares them for action: (7):

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling-for-less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted --- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risktakers, the doers, the makers of things --- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

In macro unit (23), the metaphors of levees break, darkest hours, firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke and a parent's willingness to nurture a child are similarly strategic devices which act as a persuasive tool calling Americans for action. (23):

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Victimization is another important rhetorical strategy employed by Obama (paragraphs/macro units 1, 14, 15, 17, and 26). Fjellstrom (2002:103--4) states that victimhood has a religious-sacrificial meaning. The rhetorical technique of victimhood is implicitly used by Obama for appealing to the addressees’ emotions because it not only ensures unity but it also represents the nationalistic ideology of the president. For example, in macro unit (1): ‘‘My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.’’ The term ancestors is used in combination with the term sacrifices to materialize the rhetorical tactic of victimization. By using the imagery of victimhood, he tries to link the past to the present. Like macro unit (15) in which he resorts to the discursive strategy of victimhood, once again he tries to remind his addressees of the struggle of the earlier generations with fascism and communism. Considering the negative attitude of Americans toward fascism and communism, he frequently employs these culturally loaded terms to portray a victimhood image of the past in order to evoke the public's readiness for patriotism in the present and the future. (15):

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Additionally, he refers to his programs for the future by employing terms like new, reforms and restores which have positive connotations and show his professional competence as a politician. The term new is among the first high group keywords in Obama's speech, while reform and restore belong to the second high group tokens because their frequency of occurrence is less than 4. Through using phrases like prepare the nation for a new age, a new life, to create new jobs, to lay a new foundation for growth, a new era of peace as well as a new way forward and a new era of responsibility, he tries to win the audience's affection and win their support for his plans. Evidently, the findings were consistent with those of Rahimi and Sahragard (2006). It is worth mentioning that CDA is appropriate for analyzing a political genre like inaugural speech because it can detect biased and manipulative language. Furthermore, in this type of discourse, the choice of lexical items is highly controlled by the underlying ideologies of speakers. It should be noted that the findings were also consistent with Van Dijk's(2004) ideas about political ideologies. In fact, they attested that political ideologies are not only included in the production or understanding of political discourses and other political practices but also are (re)produced by them. The political discourses analyzed in this study unearthed

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the racist, nationalistic, professional and democratic/republican ideologies of the speakers. In addition, the results supported the findings of Leudar and Marsland (2004) since the results revealed how each speaker distinguished us from them to justify their past actions and to prepare the people for future. For instance, in our study, Bush used the macro strategy of positive self-presentation to rationalize his war-like policies and Obama used metaphors to propose his promises for future. However, by enlisting the simultaneous application of two analytical frameworks, we found that the results did not support Van leeuwen's (2008) view about the unsystematic nature of most CDA studies because it seems that systematicity and CDA have a natural inherent relationship. 4. Conclusion This study has viewed inaugural address from a critical discourse analysis perspective. We tried to illustrate that the speakers have access to a wide range of discursive strategies and rhetorical devices including semantic and lexical choices which enable them to represent their underlying ideologies. Although positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation were the ultimate goal of the speakers, Bush and Obama employed them differently due to their different political ideologies. In other words, Bush employed these rhetorical strategies to hide his nationalistic and republican ideologies and made an attempt to present a negative picture of the members of the other group including both non-Americans and non-Christians. At the same time, he tried to present a positive picture of the in-group; namely, Americans and their government. On the other hand, by categorizing America's previous government in the out-group and by attributing negative qualities to them, Obama tried to offer a different image of his party's political agenda. The application of such discursive strategies was most likely rooted in his partisan ideologies. Interestingly, the speakers at times employed similar argumentative strategies because they both belonged to the same macro culture and shared the same sentiments on specific issues like Americanism and professionalism. Indubitably, the results of CDA studies can demystify the intricate relationships existing between language, ideology and power. It is clear that linguistic resources can be used as a guise for covering the intended meanings of the speakers who often find themselves in face threatening situations. Generally speaking, political realm is a highly conflicting sphere, and it seems that, successful politicians are those who try to avoid embarrassing situations because they do not want to lose the public trust and their support. Needless to say, our study indicated the complex nature of political discourse and its various syntactic, semantic and lexical intricacies. Consequently, the practical value of CDA with its diverse analytical tools cannot be denied and its insightful rigorous methods can certainly improve various aspects of language pedagogy including teaching, learning, developing teaching materials and even testing. Considering the limitations of the present study in terms of size and content, further research is needed to confirm whether CDA is indeed an appropriate framework for doing sociopragmatic research. Following, you will find some suggestions for future research: (1) Further research needs to be conducted by focusing on the application of other CDA frameworks. This would have a great practical and evaluative value since it can alleviate conflicts and minimize possible incompatibilities between theory and practice in CDA research. (2) Concerned researchers may find it interesting to conduct a CDA study to explore the upcoming America's presidential election in 2012, along with its presidential debates. Such debates characteristically reflect different rhetorical strategies that the candidates may use to win the public support. (3) Other studies can investigate the students’ awareness of the dichotomous nature of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation strategies and its possible impact on their writing and reading comprehension skills. (4) Studying the positive presentation of the self and the negative presentation of the other in the discourses of male and female political speakers can be another line of research which can be investigated by interested researchers. References Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 1986. Speech genres and other late essays (V.W. McGee. Trans.)University of Texas Press, Austin. Bush, George W., 2005. Second Inaugural Address. , Retrieved February 28, 2008, from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/GeorgeW. Bush's_ Second_Inaugural_Address. Cady, Linell, 2009. Choosing our better history: religion, secularism, and American public life. 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Azadeh Mohammadi is currently a PhD student studying applied linguistics and teaching at the English Department of Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran.