Rhythm and Rhetoric: A Linguistic Analysis of Barack Obama's Inaugural Address

• Main Author: Batluk, Liilia
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM) 2011
• Subjects: rhetoric; rhythm; lexical chain; parallelism; alliteration; foregrounding; political speech; personal deixis; context; semantics; Barack Obama; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-15601

In this essay I shall analyze Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, January, 2009 from the perspective of various linguistic techniques. More specifically, I shall propose and focus on the idea that the composition of the speech has an aim to create a unity of the speaker and the audience in order to deliver the message. Moreover, the speaker maintains the atmosphere of unity throughout the speech, so that the speech produces an effect when the audience becomes a co-author of it. My thesis will also discuss some aspects of persuasive strategies employed in the speech from those dating back as long as Ancient Greece to temporal discourses. The aim is to analyze how the use of a number of linguistic approaches creates a speech which senses an agreement and co-operation between the orator and the audience.