Power in American Presidential Speeches:A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Presidential debate is a crucial part of forming political genre to attract public attention
towards the candidates. The candidates employ various linguistic techniques to persuade the
audience to know their true personalities.This study is a critical discourse analysis of power in
American presidential speeches. It is designed to explore four representative linguistic
features of van Dijk employed by the two candidates (Donald Trump and JoeBiden) in the
2020 American Presidential Debate. These four linguistic features are: personalpronouns,
three part-list, fillers, and interruprions. They are used to analyze thereproduction of six
issues: Trump and Biden’s record, The Coronavirus, The Economy, TheSupreme Court, Race
and Violence in American Cities, and Election Integrity.
This study presents an interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative analysis of selected
speeches of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The qualitative analysis includes selecting some of
Trump and Biden’s speeches situated in the American presidential debate of the 2020.
Whereas the quantitative analysis includes the frequency of occurrence of personal pronouns,
fillers, interruption, etc.Van Dijk’s model and other models of CDA are employedin the study.
It is hypothesized that:
1. Both candidates mock each other using sarcasm.
2. Trump makes lots of interruptions while Bidenwas expressing his opinion, so Biden
rebuked him by saying "Will you shut up, man?"
3. Both candidates used repetition of sentences as a form of emphasis on their political
views.
4. Trumpand Biden used Personal Pronoun “I and we” as positive self-presentation and
use “you and he” asnegative other-presentation.