A Critical Discoursal Analysis of Obama's Political Speech at Cairo University

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis studies how social power and
inequality are expressed in text and talk in social and political
contexts.
This study aims at showing the discoursal structure and
linguistic features of President Obama's speech within the framework
of functional linguistics.
The study hypothesizes that the relational process is the most
dominant one. In addition, President Obama's discoursal strategies are
short and simple. Moreover, personal pronouns are the most frequent
and positive rather than negative modality is used. Finally, Obama's
speech involves less offensive and metaphorical words.
The study has come up with the fact that the speech involves the
use of relational verbs and spatial, temporal and reason circumstances,
as well as other features that confirm the hypotheses rose.