A Critical Discourse Analysis of Three Speeches of King Abdullah II

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to determine the main linguistic strategies that King Abdullah II uses in his speeches. In order to do just this, the researchers selected three speeches to be the data of the study. As for the machinery, a two-level analysis has been attempted in an integrated manner. At the first level, the three speeches were investigated, coaching with the main principles of the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which are the descriptions of the text, discourse-as-discursive practice, and discourse-as-social-practice. At the second level, in order to determine how King Abdullah II frames the core issue in his speeches, four persuasive strategies of political discourse were employed. These strategies are creativity, reference, circumlocution, and intertextuality. As for the findings, the study finds out that King Abdullah uses these strategies competently in terms of employing them to deliver his messages. He uses the creative expressions to show the reality as it is, i.e., the bad image of the current state of affair and the potential good image of the future. Besides, he uses intertextuality in order to convince American audience about his ideas through resorting to an extract from one of the American presidents. In addition, he uses circumlocution to highlight and magnify certain issues. These issues include the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the American role in this peace process, and the call for international community to work together against the potential dangers. As regards reference, he focuses on the use of the pronouns of the first speaker (we, our, and I) in order to highlight his core issues mentioned above. The study recommends applying the other strategies of political discourse analysis to King Abdullah’s speeches such as, parallelism, indirectness, euphemism, disclaimers, etc.. The study concludes that King Abdullah uses his speeches as a means to reflect both the status quo and his vision towards region political issues.