The Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria

Ministry of Higher Education and scientific

Research
LArbi Ben Mhidi University
Oum El Boughi
Department of English

Political Discourse Analysis

Presented by:
-Ben Aziza Leila
supervised by:
-Boughezala Med Hayet
Mr . Ayadi Karim
-Fedloun Sara

First year Master-Group01

2014/2015

1)-What is political discourse?

Political discourse can be defined as a
written or spoken language, verbal or nonverbal, used in politics to affect the opinions
and attitudes of the audience . It is intenional,
functional, directive to a certain group of people
and it is rich in figurative language, i.e,
metaphors and similes (Dr. Al faki, 2014: 180).

2)-What is political discourse

analysis?
Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) deals with the
analysis of political discourse. Firstly, what do we
mean by political discourse? (Schffner 11719).Political discourse is the formal exchange of
reasoned views as to which of several alternative
courses of action should be taken to solve a
societal problem.. Political discourse is a method
of decision making in a democracy.

3)- Common features of political

speeches:
3.1- One of the most common features of
political discourse is the skills of speaking
persuasively that are more important than the
held belief in the topic under debate. In
competitions, for instance, debating teams are
given a proposition and are told which side they

must argue. They are judged on their rhetorical

skills and their abilities to speak persuasively,
rather than the honesty of their views (Dr. Al
faki, 2014: 182).
3.2- Another feature of political speeches is
what Atkinson calls the Contrastive pair That
contains two parts which are in some ways in
opposition, butin other ways using repitition to
make the overall effect. A good example of this
is Neil Armstrongs words when he became the
first person who set foot on the moon in 1969 .
He said, one small step for man : one giant
leap for mankind .
These words show a range of repition and
contrast across the two parts of the utterance.
The repeated one is related to words with
contrasting meaning within the same semantic
fields Small/giant and step/leap. The first words
are literal in that they describe what he was
doing at the time , however, the second words
are methaphorical , giant leap refers to
technological progress. (Dr. Al faki, 2014: 182).

4)- Discourse Structures:

3.1/Topic:PD is primarily about politics; it is
related to political systems, ideologies,
instructions, elections, etc. Also, topics may have
features of evaluations or what is called
polarization where the politicians give self-

presentation of themselves (their group, party) and

negative other- presentation for the opposition.

3.2/Super structure or Textual Schemata:

Textual schemata can make meanings more or less
prominent for partisan reasons. For instance, the
politicians may emphasize given meanings by
putting them in prominent schemata (by putting
them at the beginning, highlighted, etc) .

3.3/Local Semantic: Local semantic have many

properties that need analysis such as conditions of
local coherence, presupposition and entailment,
indirectness and implicitness, strategies of
description and representation. For instance,
polarization affects the local semantics of text and
talk in various ways and the well known move is
that of the disclaimer where the politician uses a
semantic move that aims to avoid bad impression
when saying negative things about others. For
example, in the discourse of racism when the
politician says Ive nothing against blacks, but .
3.4/Lexicon:Politicians in fact select carefully their
words because they have crucial role in PD. They
usually tend to describe their bad habits,
properties or actions with euphemism as well the
bomb is called peace maker and the killing of
civilians as collateral damages.

3.5/Syntax:is the political manipulation of

syntactic style, such as:
-The use of the political plural we has many
implications for the political position, alliances.

-Principles of exclusion and inclusiondetermine the

reference.
-Other syntactic variation, such as word order,
usually has two types of political functions:
emphasis or mitigation.Syntactic topicalization by
fronting a word, or active sentences that focus on
agent, passive sentences focus on objects and
defocus on responsible agency.

3.6. Rhetoric:classical rhetoric was primarily

developed as an `art' to persuade people in a
political assembly. Special forms and figures of
style were traditionally associated with political
text and talk:
-Euphemisms and hyperboles are the classical
figures describing such relative `too much' or `too
little' information being given, and also reflect
Grice's principle of quantity in discourse.
-Irrelevant additions may also be found in racist
discourse, e.g., when actors of crime are
irrelevantly described as belonging to a minority
group (van Dijk 1991, 1993c).
-Operations of deletion and substitution: where
information would be expected in a given context
but is deleted or substituted for similar partisan
reason.
3.7. Expression structures: the expression
structures of sounds and graphics usually also
play an indirect function in emphasizing or deemphasizing partisan meanings: Preferred

meanings are thus emphasized by shouting, high

pitch, raising intonation, or by headlines, big type,
striking colour or catchy photos, and the opposite
is true for dispreferred meanings.
3.8. Speech acts and interaction:
- One of the more prominent overall political acts is
legitimating which is a complex social act or
process that may be accomplished by other speech
acts, such as assertions, denials, and so on.
-Government declarations may largely be
assertions.
- Official laws and regulations are directives
(orders, commands, advice).
-Parliamentary debates include assertions,
questions, accusations or apologies (Abadi).

4) - Political speeches analysis :

The first example : The president
Richard Nixons resignation analysis of
paragraphs 13-16.
Nixon uses "If's" in this part of his speech
as such when he said "if some of my
decisions were wrong- and some were wrongthey were made in what I believed at the
time to be the best interest of the Nation." He
tries validating that his actions, even wrong

ones, were done in helping the American

people as a whole.
The second example : As the effects
of the crisis are easing off, the first signs of
recovery are showing and there seems to be
a resumption of investments, I think we
should envision the future differently. In fact,
I believe that an era is coming to an end. To
be explicit, I feel that the goal we should set
ourselves is to make Cameroon an EMERGING
COUNTRY within a period of about twenty
years (President Biyas Speech, May
17, 2010).
(a) Use of the pronoun we, us and
our:
I think we should envision the future
differently.
I believe that an era is coming to an end.
I feel that the goal we should the pronoun
we in the above is a strategy of
collectivization. The choice of the verbs of
senses (think, feel and believe) suggest
passion and emotional involvement.
(b) Modal auxiliary should :
We should envision the future differently.
The use of modal auxiliaries above shows
necessity.