A Critical Discourse Analysis of Lexical Selection in Obama's Speech on Gun Violence Reduction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61704/pr.543Keywords:
Critical Discourse Analysis, Gun Violence Reduction, Obama's Speech, Language, Political DiscourseAbstract
Language has a very effective role in the life of the politician as he or she uses it to achieve his or her aims and to convey his or her ideas. This study tries to show particular discursive strategies specially focusing on lexical selection strategies that are followed by Barak Obama in his speech on 16th January, 2013 that can help to draw out his ideology and power. The study follows a critical discourse analysis approach presented by van Dijk (1997) in a way of explicating its validity to explore Obama's ideology and power and trying to present a method for better understanding of political discourse. The study mainly hypothesizes that lexical richness and vocabulary diversity must illuminate hidden ideology and any lexical selection can not be random. The study concludes that Obama's language, particularly lexical selection, is in service of his political interest, social stance and power. It also concludes that Van Dijk's macrostructural analysis is very helpful in studying organized political ideology.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Wafaa M. Ali
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Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). You may not alter or transform this work in any way without permission from the authors. Non-commercial use, distribution, and copying are permitted, provided that appropriate credit is given to the authors and Al-Hadba University.
