Decoding the socio-political meanings of Presidential “I” in Mubarak’s last presidential speech: A systemic-functional approach

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the socio-political meanings of the deictic centre “I” in Mubarak’s last presidential speech on 10 February 2011. Crucially, the whole speech thematically revolves around such a deictic centre whose pragma-semantic gravity is well worth a thorough linguistic research, so that the following overarching research question can be addressed: what are the socio-political meanings pertaining to the pronoun “I” in Mubarak’s last presidential speech on 10 February 2011? The paper employs a tripartite systemic-functional model of analysis: transitivity, mood and theme. Each analytic strand corresponds to one aspect of contextual meaning in the speech: ideational, interpersonal and textual. There are two important findings: theoretical and practical. First, an SF approach can be text analytically more explanatory only when the macro socio-political context, underlying the micro co-text, is taken into account. Second, in Mubarak’s last presidential speech, there emerges a political discourse that tends to valorize a Presidential “I” in a way that reflects a dominant self-presentation versus a subordinate other presentation.