Comparative Study of Linguistic Features Used in the Inaugural Speeches of American Presidents

Abstract

Language is a very useful and powerful tool for communication and especially in political discourse it is very significant. During a political speech the leader tries to express, declare, commit, emphasize or motivate the listeners by using one’s ideology and power. Political personalities speak in different modes and tones and they announce their planning and aim to keep all aspects under their control and reduce the worry of the people. The aim of this paper is to identify the linguistic features used in the inaugural speeches of selected American Presidents and to analyze their functions using Critical Discourse Analysis theory proposed by Fairclough and the theory of Persuasion postulated by Aristotle. Researchers selected inaugural speeches of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The study was an attempt to relate the inaugural discourse to the discursive social processes and to find covert ideology and power factors in the speeches. The findings revealed significant differences among the different linguistic features, discursive practices and rhetoric devices used in inaugural speeches of the two US presidents.