MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Diploma thesis

Brno 2011

Author: Bc. Peter Adamec

Supervisor: Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-

Navrtilov, Ph.D.

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and LiteraturePersuasion in Political Discourse

Diploma thesis

Brno 2011

Author: Bc. Peter AdamecSupervisor: Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrtilov Ph.D.

BibliographyADAMEC, Peter. Persuasion in Political Discourse; diploma thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2011. 83 pages, The supervisor is Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrtilov Ph.D.Annotation

The diploma thesis "Persuasion in Political Discourse"

investigates on the examples of Barack Obama's speeches which

methods are used in order to reach the main purpose of this

genre - to persuade the others about the validity of

politician's suggestions and make them willing to act according

to him. During the analysis, five speeches intended for the

domestic audience and five speeches devoted especially to the

foreign one are investigated. The speeches are evaluated either

by qualitative criteria when the main ideas and themes are

commented, as well as by quantitative approach when the content

of the speeches is evaluated in percentage on the ground of

particular paragraphs. The aim is to compare Obama's approach

to domestic and foreign audience and to find out possible

similarities or differences.

Keywordspolitical speeches, political rhetoric, domestic audience, foreign audience, persuasion, comparisonDeclaration

I hereby declare that this diploma thesis was done by my own and I used only the materials that are stated in bibliography.I agree with the placing of this thesis in the Masaryk University Brno Information system, in the library of the Department of English Language and Literature and with the access for studying purposes.

In Brno 9 December 2011

Bc. Peter Adamec

..............................................

Acknowledgement

I would like to express gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrtilov, Ph.D. for her valuable advice as well as for having been very kind and supportive throughout my work on this thesis.

CONTENT6CONTENT

81 INTRODUCTION

102 THEORETICAL PART

102.1 Pragmatics

112.1.1 Syntax, semantics and pragmatics

122.1.2 Reference, inference, presupposition and entailment

152.2. Discourse

162.2.1 Discourse Analysis

162.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis

172.2.3 The Role of Cohesion

182.2.3.1 Discourse, Context and Co-text

202.3 The Nature of Discourse and Political Speeches

202.3.1 Politics and its Theoretical Bases

212.3.2 Features of Political Participation

222.3.3 The Features of Spoken Political Speeches and their Gradual Changes

232.3.3.1 Changes of the Features of Political Speeches through the Time

242.3.3.2 The Influence of Media on Changes in Political Speeches

262.3.4 Problems of Analysis of Political Discourse

272.3.4.1 Some Features of Analysis of Political Discourse

282.3.4.2 Necessary Principles of Analysis of Political Discourse

302.3.5 The Presence of Power, Ideology and Persuasion in Political Speeches

302.3.5.1 Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion

322.3.5.2 Tolerance and Opposition to Persuasive Argumentation

332.4 The Position of the US in Contemporary World

342.5 Summary

353 PRACTICAL PART

353.1 Corpus under Investigation

373.2 Scrutiny of all speeches

373.2.1 Obama's domestic speeches

383.2.1.1 Victory Speech

393.2.1.2 Inaugural Speech

413.2.1.3 Address to the Congress on February 24, 2009

433.2.1.4 State of the Union Address 2010

463.2.1.5 State of the Union 2011

483.2.2 Obama's Foreign Speeches

483.2.2.1 Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall;

503.2.2.2 Remarks by President Obama at a New Start Treaty Signing Ceremony and Press Conference

523.2.2.3 Remarks at the Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders

543.2.2.4 Remarks by President Obama at G20 Press Conference in Toronto,

563.2.2.5 Remarks by the President to Parliament in London

583.3 Comparison of the speeches

593.3.1 Comparison of Obamas domestic speeches

673.3.2 Comparison of Obama`s Foreign Speeches

754 COMPARISON AND CONCLUSION

795 BIBLIOGRAPHY

795.1 Primary Sources

805.2 Secondary Sources

1 INTRODUCTION

People use various methods when they want to win their fight. The most traditional one is the fight in its original sense, i.e. to overthrow a rival with the help of common tools such as sword, spear or knife in the past or various modern guns more recently. The other methods are sports or various competitions where competitors fight according to exact rules in order to win some kind of price or simply to be the first in a particular area of sports or competitions. However, a man could struggle and even win an imaginary fight just with the appropriate use of words. Human speech as a whole may become an instrument which could serve for various purposes.

Speech itself is the main element which distinguishes a man from other living beings. Though also the other animals use various kinds of signs or even sounds in order to convey information and come to an understanding, only the human beings are able to decode several codes as people speak different languages. This human ability depends on the knowledge of these particular languages. If people do not know some of them it follows that they would not be able to communicate in these languages. However, in order to understand what the speaker or writer wants really to tell the hearer or reader has to be able to decode the speaker's/writer's aim in particular speech. This ability is important especially in the field of political speeches. Political speeches are just the most evident case where the exact choice of words and expressions may influence the audience to think or even do what a political speaker wants them to think or do. In this sense, with the appropriate choice of words the politicians may win their political battles and fights.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to explore how political speeches can persuade different audiences that those words which are proclaimed are really truthful and the only correct. In other words, the work tries to trace the words and phrases that move the people to do what the politician wishes them to do in various situations and various environments.

The work itself is divided into four parts: introduction, theoretical part, practical part and conclusion. The theoretical one looks more deeply into theoretical background of political speeches, how they are formed, which principles and methods may be applied and also describes more deeply these methods. The main, third, practical part of this work analyzes the form of political speeches. As a corpus for the research serve speeches by U.S. president Barrack Obama delivered either for the audience inside the United States or the speeches which are determined mainly for the foreign audience. The purpose is to compare whether the methods, phrases and words which Obama uses are relatively the same or whether his approach to a domestic audience differs from his approach to a foreign one. The corpus is described more deeply inside the practical part. In the final part, the results from the practical part are summarized as a whole and compared with the findings from the theoretical part.

Finally, a short remark on the use of citations in this thesis should be made. The basic MLA format is generally used with its general rules. The cited item is followed by the name of cited work's author or by the name of particular title if the author is unknown; such entry is then usually followed by the putting the cited page(s). Unfortunately, this is not always possible. As some of the sources are just the electronic copies of printed sources where original pagination was not preserved and it is not possible to access these sources without registration which is restricted to the narrow group of users, as a specification of the cited item it is here put just the relevant chapter. This is especially the case of the majority of the sources retrieved from The Support Centre for Students with Special Needs at Masaryk University.2 THEORETICAL PART

This part tries to introduce and describe briefly and simply the key terms that are important with regard to the practical part of this thesis. The first sub-chapter deals with the explanation of the term pragmatics. Here pragmatics is compared with other branches of linguistics; in the second sub-chapter, approaches of discourse analysis, such as critical discourse analysis, are presented and explained. The attention of the third sub-chapter is devoted to political speeches. The aim is to investigate the key principles of such speeches, their motives and main strategies that are necessary for everybody who wants to be a skilful political speaker. Consequently, the focus is shifted to the persuasion in political speeches. The purpose is to briefly introduce the methods of persuasion in the speeches of politicians and the principle that makes a political speaker also a political leader, or, at least, to scrutinize his effort to militate as such. And finally, in the fourth sub-chapter, a few remarks of the current position of the United States are made. Only after examination of these terms it would be possible to approach responsibly to practical analysis of the corpus of this work.

2.1 PragmaticsThe term pragmatics may involve various meanings when uttered for the first time. Most people would probably connect it with human behavior, i.e. such behavior which enables someone to gain what he/she wants to gain. Nevertheless, the situation with pragmatics as part of the linguistics is more complex, though some similarities may be seen.

Yule defines pragmatics as the branch of linguistics which "is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or a reader)" (ch. 1). Leech is maybe more abstract as pragmatics for him is "the study of how utterances have meanings in situations" (10). And thirdly, Fairclough connected it with the analytical philosophy of Austin and Searle of so-called speech acts and adds that "spoken or writer utterances constitute the performance of speech acts such as promising or asking or asserting or warning (10). Such more or less complex definitions exist in a quite abundant amount so it would be probably more useful to ask: what does it mean for our purpose for the analysis of political speeches?

In all three cited definitions (and also in many others) it is stressed that not only what is said but also when and to whom it is said is important when dealing with pragmatics. Each participant in communication, even passive listeners, is taken into account because even him/her is expected to decode the message that active speaker is offering. This aspect should be remembered even more precisely by politicians when they write and lecture their speeches. Such speeches should be clear and appealing; however, the politicians should be even rather careful in their expressions as these expressions may be interpreted differently according the audience to which the politician is speaking to. Pragmatics thus would be a helpful discipline in our attempt to decode the effect of political speeches.

2.1.1 Syntax, semantics and pragmatics

To distinguish and understand it more properly it would be helpful to put pragmatics among other branches of linguistics, such as syntax and semantics and try to show possible similarities and mainly the differences between these linguistic disciplines. Moreover, also the other two disciplines may be helpful in the process of decoding political speeches.

It has been stated in the previous chapter that an important aspect that has to be taken in consideration when applying pragmatics is the meaning related to concrete situation and the participants of communication. In other words, meaning in pragmatics relates to user of the language, while the meaning in semantics is engaged just with the expressions as the property of the particular language itself. Thus, dyadic relation, between the form of the word and its physical object, is applied in semantics; in pragmatics, beside this, also the relation to the situation and participants is accounted, thus this relationship is triadic (Leech 6).

Furthermore, semantics considers the relationship between forms and their equivalents in the world as unique and truthful regardless of who is speaking about them (Yule; ch. 1). It is clear from what has been already stated that this is not possible in pragmatics.

The third branch, syntax, for many laymen is sometimes confused with linguistics itself, or more often, with grammar. The situation is naturally more complex. Fairclough labels grammar as linguistics proper and distinguishes other sub-branches: phonology which studies the sound system of the language, morphology which focuses on the grammatical structures of words, and syntax dealing with the structures of whole sentences; moreover, Fairclough describes semantics as the analysis of more formal aspects of meaning (9).

And finally, how could be syntax compared with pragmatics and syntax? Syntax, unlike semantics, does not take into consideration any kind of reference to the real word and the real objects in it; nevertheless, syntax and semantics together do not consider as important the users of the utterances, unlike pragmatics which does. Or, in other words, from this triadic relationship only pragmatics admits that humans may be active agent in human analysis (Yule 9).2.1.2 Reference, inference, presupposition and entailment

It has been depicted that pragmatics uses a broader context. It means, in order to do its work properly, a skilful speaker has to count with the effects of the words, sentences and whole utterances that he is planning to deliver. In other words, the speaker presupposes the possible conditions and consequences; and thus, pragmatics works with four tools - reference, inference, presupposition and entailment - which help to decode this effort. For the beginning, it would be helpful to divide these terms into 2 groups - reference with inference and presupposition and entailment - because they are slightly related.

When a speaker says something he uses words which point to entities in the world. He reckons that a listener will recognize what is said because of the clear familiarity of the words and entities in the language they both take control of. The words just refer to concrete entities and thus, the process is called reference. During inference, the speaker is also pointing to the real person or thing; nevertheless, as he/she often does not know the proper or right name he uses expressions such as "that old man" or "this pen on the table" and thus he awaits that the listener will infer which man or pen he has in his mind. It is word pointing that as far as reference and inference are connected, people naturally do this even without knowing they do this (Yule; ch. 3).The situation with presupposition and entailment is slightly different. Firstly, it is necessary to distinguish between semantic and contextual presupposition. A semantic presupposition is bounded just to the grammatical context, i.e. grammatical structures, e.g. sentence type, in which it occurs; the contextual presupposition, on the other hand, depends also on the context in which the utterance occurs. In other words, semantic presupposition applies naturally to sentences, while contextual one applies to whole utterances (Katz and Langendoen 2). It is just logical that when doing an analysis of the speech not only the semantic presuppositions but mainly the contextual presuppositions must be taken into consideration because only the realm of syntax would not be sufficient and pure lexical and sentence semantics require also the reference to the sociolinguistic context (Keesing 16). This, of course, does not mean that when someone wants to interpret the sentences in context he would abandon semantic presupposition (Katz and Langendoen 15).

So far no mention of entailment has been made. By doing this, it would help also to distinguish it from presupposition. While presupposition is simply the relationship between two propositions which consequently makes a statement, for instance, from the statement "Barrack Obama visited the Czech Republic, it is clear that there exists a person named Barrack Obama and a state named the Czech Republic. By using presupposition, the awareness of such things comes just from presented facts and neither part of the sentence is considered to be known more than the other. Nevertheless, if someone wishes to stress some kind of information he would do it by using the focusing particular piece of statement either by pitching of the voice on some part of the statement (usually during oral communication) or by it-cleft constructions (more often in written text). With the help of entailment, the previous statement may thus be presented as "it was Barrack Obama who visited the Czech Republic" or "it was the Czech Republic that was visited by Barrack Obama". The former sentence stresses that Barrack Obama visited "something" and presupposes the Czech Republic to be a shared well-known fact, the later, on the contrary, that it was just the Czech Republic that was chosen for the visit by well-known Barrack Obama. It follows that the entailment has more powerful sense than presupposition because the producer of the message decides what should be stressed and what should be taken as a shared knowledge (Yule, ch. 5). And it would be also useful for decoding the political messages.This thesis does not undertake to offer a thorough description of all kinds of presuppositions and entailments simply due to the fact it does not aim at such descriptions. However, one distinction could be made. According to Grice, it is necessary to differentiate between the so-called conventional and conversational implicature. While the later rests on various principles that govern discourses, the former one consists in the meaning of the words in a sentence and as such it is pure semantic entailment (qtd. in Katz and Langendoen 13). It may be illustrated on the example of the sentence "she was poor but she was honest" where according to the conjunction but it is nearly automatically assumed that when a person is poor he must be also unfair and honesty is considered to be something like exception (Leech 10). Nevertheless, the key notion is that this conclusion has been made purely on account of the sentence without knowing any further details about this woman. In a public speech, however, such assumptions should be uttered very carefully and with regard to the customs of particular culture. For this task politicians should rely more on conversational implicature that observe variations of different cultures. As Lakov points out "there are culture-specific assumptions that have to be characterized in order to understanding various aspects of speech acts in a given culture" (qtd. in Keesing 17). If a politician omits this rule he may evoke useless misunderstanding and sometimes even dangerous consequences.2.2. Discourse

Our attention has been so far devoted just to the questions of pragmatics. In the following chapter and sub-chapters, the focus is shifted to the question of discourse and its methods of analysis.

The term discourse is sometimes attributed to any kind of communicated information. This description is not so far from the truth; however, attention should be paid to all of premises which influence real discourse. All of the meanings which accompany the act of communication are joined in order to form clauses, sentences and utterances. Nevertheless, these structures have sense as a well-formed discourse only in particular situational context (Dontcheva-Navrtilov; ch. 5). It means, for its analysis, not only syntactic and semantic features are important but also the pragmatic features of particular situation, as it has been stressed in the previous chapter.

Nevertheless, the discourse includes all of its possible forms i.e. spoken or written and also the monologue or the dialogue. The first pair is distinguished under the heading of the medium; the second pair, on the other side, is the result of the nature of the participation during a concrete communicative event and may be bring together under the heading of various aspects of modality. All of these four types have their typical features; nevertheless, it sometimes happens that features that are usually associated with informal dialogic speech are part of a written text, or, on the contrary, when some formal features usually ascribed to writing are incorporated into a public speech (Crystal 69).

Crystal elsewhere tells that "any piece of discourse contains a large number of features which are difficult to relate to specific variables to in the original extra-linguistic context even though the may be felt to have some kind of stylistic value" (63). The analysis thus should be done very carefully in order to catch all contextual features as much as it is possible.2.2.1 Discourse Analysis

It is not surprising to say that there are various kinds of discourse which may be characterized by various features. However, more intriguing is the question how to recognize these features and how to analyze them. In the following sub-chapter, there are examples of some of the methods of critical discourse analysis.

2.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis

The word "Critical" prompts that an analyst should be truly careful when he is trying to decode the particular discourse. Various analyses of different kinds of discourse (such as of the misrepresentation of political demonstrations, as "violent riots", or of bias in favor of the authorities) has proved that such detailed critical analyses bring the analyst to the wider context of the authorities and their power as a core for political action (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 7).Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a helpful method in multiple areas, such as education, literacy, gender, racism, ideology, economic, advertisements, institutional and media language, and, most importantly for this thesis, political discourse. In all these areas CDA focuses on issues like power asymmetries, manipulation, structural inequalities and exploitation (Blommaert 451-452).

Each critical discourse analysis usually consists of 3 steps. The first one is the descriptive stage which examines the basic formal properties of the discourse. It is also the pre-step for the next two steps. The second stage, interpretation, endeavors to link the discourse with interaction, i.e. to see the discourse as a result of process of production and also as a resource in the act of interpretation. And the third stage, explanation, which is the most important but which would not probably possible without previous two steps, attempts to find the relationships between interaction and social context i.e. which social determinants are necessary in the processes of interaction, production and their social effects (Fairclough 26). 2.2.3 The Role of Cohesion

The term reference has been explained so far with regards to pragmatics features of the discourse. It has, moreover, also a connection with the cohesive devices that join the text together and as thus they are a part of syntax which, as it has been demonstrated as well, is an aspect of language studies by CDA.

Cohesion has to be, above all, distinguished from coherence. These two features of discourse are loosely related one to another and one may predetermine the other. Nevertheless, coherence encompasses the unity of the whole discourse, i.e. the unity in the sense of meaning and communicative purpose which the reader or hearer perceives through discourse in a context of use; cohesion, on the other side, is connected with semantic and formal relations between all discourse elements which are dependent one to another because the interpretation of the meaning of one element is possible only with regards to the interpretation of the meaning of the other (Dontcheva-Navrtilov; ch. 5). Or as Halliday and Hasan have explained "we can interpret cohesion in practice as the set of semantic resources for linking a sentence with what has gone before (Halliday and Hasan 10).

It follows from what has been told that coherence relies just on the reader's/hearer's interpretation and that the coherence is, in this sense, a bit subjective; on the other hand cohesion is explicit and may be, with the help of its devices, thoroughly traced through the piece of text or discourse. This is always an objective task because there are always concrete elements to be defined. Moreover, to define cohesive devices helps also to define whether and how much the discourse is coherent.

2.2.3.1 Discourse, Context and Co-text

It has been stressed several times so far that the important element of the practical discourse analysis is the reference to the context in which the discourse is appearing. On the top of that it should be referred not only to the general context but also to so-called co-text. How may be these two terms distinguished one from the other?

Basically, everything that is referred to in the discourse is considered to be a context; nevertheless, if the referred item is inside the text or the discourse it has a linguistic reference and as that it is marked as a co-text or linguistic context. The context in its broader meaning, i.e. everything outside the text, is marked as the context of situation or extra linguistic context (Dontcheva-Navrtilov; Glossary). The co-text, moreover, helps to interpret the meaning because it simply narrows the possible interpretative meanings for particular word or sentence (Yule; ch. 3). These words or sentences would be misguiding for the analyst unless they are placed in the discourse environment; only then the analyst is able to decode their correct meaning and he may feel to be deceived otherwise (Halliday and Hassan 301).

The extra linguistic context operates within the domains of field, tenor and mode. The field, also referred as the domain, helps to narrow the interpretative meanings according to the activity (e.g. in our case political speech). The tenor defines the relations between the speaker/writer and hearer/reader, e.g. their statuses predetermine whether the discourse will be polite or familiar, formal or informal etc. And finally, the mode is predefined by variation according to the part the language is playing and according to the participants expectations in this situation; in other words, the key elements are the rules of written and spoken, interactive or non-interactive communication, but also the text structure and organization and communicative purpose of the writer/speaker (i.e. to deliver a speech). It is worth to point out that the identification of registers and styles is to a large extent dependent on domain. However, tenor and mode are highly important for both stylistics and discourse analysis (Dontcheva-Navrtilov; Ch. 2).The context of situation, or the meaning which is gained from this context, furthermore, belongs to the culture rather than to the language (Caldas-Coulthard 35). It is not thus surprising that such analysis may be a hard task to do but responsible sociolinguistic researchers have proved that the order and structure may be found even in the situations where these phenomena had been perceived to be messy and on the periphery of previous analyses. Pragmatic rules, beside the fact that they deal with cultural standards such as formality or distance, point to more general assumptions about the social and culture environment. If they would not do this, they would seem to be meaningless (Keesing 28).2.3 The Nature of Discourse and Political SpeechesIn previous chapters, the attention was devoted just to the explanation of some theoretical principles which are a part of general discourse analysis. It must be stressed here that the explanations are not exhaustive and discourse analysis is a more complex process with more disciplines and sub-analyses to be done in order to fully understand the particular discourse. The information presented in previous chapters is just the chosen elements of such process because the thorough description of the pragmatic disciplines and all methods of discourse analysis may not be listed in this thesis. Instead, in the following chapters and sub-chapters, the focus will be shifted to the definition and description of the political discourse or speech. And it is evident that the necessary features of political speeches which would be needed to know during the practical analysis of political discourse will be presented and explained as well.2.3.1 Politics and its Theoretical BasesThere are several definitions of the word politics. Above all, it represents any kind of human management of public affairs; beside this, the word politics also encompass constant debates about these affairs or, probably even more often, various disputes about the meaning of political expressions. Such disputes about the meaning of words like democracy, liberation, socialism, communism, nationalization, terrorism etc. may be attributed the status of familiar and constant aspect of politics (Fairclough 24). And even though according to Halliday and Hasan for whom the language exemplifies the whole story in the majority of formal and informal discussions on various abstract themes, e.g. politics, business and intellectual life, it is not useful to put too much emphasis just on the language while back grounding other factors; surely, Halliday and Hassan are right when they suggest that the language plays a key role in these discussions, however, it may be doubted whether the language is furthermore self-sufficient and all relevant situational factors are recognizable just from the language (Ch. 1.3.3). The term political demonstration is sometimes interpreted as riots while denoting the same event; the only difference is just in the speaker's view of interpretation and in his opinion on the matter. Thorough discourse analysis can be undertaken to decode the message with respect to the wider context of challenge of authority and power. Furthermore, it enables us to understand better various political actions (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 4: 8).2.3.2 Features of Political Participation

Political participation may be defined not only as the activity of politicians on one side and mere voting of citizens on the other, but also as the effort to persuade someone how to vote, attend a protest for a political candidate or particular cause and also to write an apologetic or protesting letter to the newspapers. Action like these may be perceived as social because unlike the act of voting which is usually in developed democracies a secret act the public participation consists of some exchange between the person who want to say or change something by particular activity and the audience to which this activity is primarily devoted to. In other words, these actions are forms of public opinion expression (Hayes, Scheufele and Huge 263).To become a skillful political speaker means to manage all aspect of intelligence: analytical, creative and, especially, practical. The last of them may be considered the most important one because, above all, practical intelligence helps to manage the so-called political skill. And this political skill which may be learnt only to some degree is presumably dependent on the so-called tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge may be defined as social skill gained through various experiences during a particular time. Tacit knowledge may be, furthermore, compared to intuition, common sense, good feeling or a snack. Politicians who have acquired a management of tacit knowledge and consequently also the political skills have a higher probability of success in their communication because they can appropriately "read the situation" and, for instance, know when to use humor to reduce the tension (Perrew et al. 117).

2.3.3 The Features of Spoken Political Speeches and their Gradual ChangesThe feature that prevails in spoken political discourse - especially with regards to the fact that it is otherwise used in the written one - is relatively high degree of formality. It is then just logical that formality is usually accompanied with more polite forms and higher degree of impersonality; such discourse is characterized with the choice of specific vocabulary and syntactic structures as well (Dontcheva-Navrtilov; Ch. 7). Examples of such speech are shown in the Practical part of this thesis; nevertheless, as it is explained later, there are some tendencies to bring political speech nearer to the everyday discourse and that is why political speeches have been becoming more informal and personal.

2.3.3.1 Changes of the Features of Political Speeches through the Time

So far just a general concept of extra linguistic reality has been stressed out. Due to the fact that it has not been described more thoroughly it might seem that this reality is dependent just on the place where the political event is held and on the public whom the political speech is dedicated to; nevertheless, within the analysis of the particular political event and in setting it into particular extra linguistic environment it should be born in, the mind furthermore, the time when it has taken place. The terms like "negroes" are generally felt as inappropriate in recent days and not only the politician, but he foremost, has to be very sensitive during his preparation of the speech. It is just not surprising that even the political environment in 1960s differs significantly from the contemporary one. Thanks to the further steps in movements like feminism or racial equality it would be felt as politically inappropriate to ascribe the role of women only as secretaries making coffees to her male bosses or to show black waiters serving coffee to white men in a fancy hotel dining room (Hirschman, Scott and Wells 43). Expressions like these are a matter of political and moral evaluation. Among the characteristics of popular features in political speeches is often an effort to empower the powerless, give the voice the voiceless, expose power and abuse and mobilize people to remedy social wrongs (Blommaert and Bulcaen 450).

2.3.3.2 The Influence of Media on Changes in Political Speeches

Though political speeches are a type of discourse with its typical features, it is indispensable that they have to more and more conform to the new media which occupy a significant space in everyday lives of people and, viewed from the perspective of politicians, the potential future voters. Undoubtedly, it must be taken into consideration that media have played gradually a more significant role because they more or less determine which interests control the government. For easier and clearer comparison, it could be expressed also in the amount of money which have been spent on political campaigns in media which constitute a considerable portion of it: while in 1952 all candidates for The House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency spent together 140 million dollars, in 2000 this number reached 5 billion (bagdigian in Stoll 256). In order to reduce the connection between money and paid political speeches, political campaigns in the United States are being financed by direct and non-direct federal and state funding systems. For instance, during the presidential election in 1988 it was expected that 170 million dollars would be raised from the candidates voluntary election fund box which was sponsored by tax payers who had checked off that they are willing to contribute from their personal tax income forms. Thirty per cent of American tax payers did it. Consequently, primary candidates for the presidency would receive up to 11 million dollars, each of them in federal matching funds. Moreover, general election candidates who had won their battles in primary election received another 40 million dollars from public funds (Caywood and Preston (208). This sum of money is used to a great extent to media campaigns. A mutual dependence of politics and media and vice versa is therefore increasingly evident.By using the term media we must recently understand not only the so-called traditional media like newspaper, radio or television but, even with the increasing tendency the Internet as well. Since there is still not extensive research on this matter, it would be interesting to investigate the impact of online or offline political mobilization efforts. It is possible just to guess that still many political mobilization efforts conducted by face-to-face communication do not directly encourage online participation while mobilization conducted online stimulates some kind of activity and in this sense some kind of political participation (Best and Krueger 188).

Although that with the emergence of the Internet and the most recently new social networks such as Facebook or Twitter it is the users of this networks who decide what they would be reading, listening or watching, or even what they would be writing in various forms of their Internet blogs, the prevailing influence on what would be presented and discussed lays in the so-called traditional or old media, such as newspapers, radios and televisions and their editors and reporters. The politicians are thus confronted not only with their potential voters but also with these media workers because politicians must catch foremost them in order to persuade them to report the politicians ideas. Thus, the political programs and speeches sometimes try to mimic the common language of televisions programs and to echo humorous sketches or publicity announcements. The critics sometimes doubt that traditional political discourse degrades and subordinates to the norms of commercial media too much; nevertheless, it should be stressed out that by using some humorous forms of communications, such as parody or television jargon, the political speeches reach the interest of more people while they simultaneously do not become less critical or les lucid than in case of the use of traditional rhetorical tools (Miguel and Resende 127). And therefore, it is not rare to find many examples of casual manners, colloquial expressions, reciprocal addresses or repetitions in contemporary political interviews (Blommaert and Bulcaen 454).On the contrary, with the knowledge that media may even feasibly influence who would win the election, a particular moral obligation of media, and therefore what is presented here, should not be marginalized and a partial self-control and control of those who want to say something there should be realized. It is also crucial to remember that media enable to create a world of cultural meanings and provide the arena in which most political debates must occur. This results in determining the types of images and styles of argumentation that will influence various aspects of life such as our subconscious desires (Stoll 256).2.3.4 Problems of Analysis of Political Discourse So far only general features and qualities of politics and political discourse have been briefly introduced. But the key question remains unanswered till now: how to undertake an analysis of political discourse correctly and with the aim to find out what would be the focus of investigation. It is crucial to remember that apart from an analysis of the wording of discourse the structure of deeper communication must be examined. The key point is not to forget that it is just an exception if all discursive exchanges are clearly understandable from pure communication. And although that politics is conducted through the language which is clearly uttered, the political goals are gained more effectively also through the speech where such acts are not necessarily articulated. And it is here again the discussed problem between what is said and what is implied. During the interpretation of political speeches it is important to choose the right meaning, because the more indirect discursive formation and the more deniable phrases are used by the speaker, the more options are left for the hearer to understand the uttered message and interpret it. Such indirectness causes substantial complexities when analyzing such discourses; however, in order to comprehend the cohesion of discourse formations correctly the indirectness must be taken into consideration (Skillington 503). It is up to the analyst to judge to what extend the situation is obscured by the so-called coloring which aims at presenting the truth in a different way depending on the event and the public for whom the event is devoted to. And it should be remembered that there is always the danger of conscious or unconscious bias. The attitudes tend to be crept in the discourse and it is up to the analyst to pay careful attention to the language vehicles which are used to for these attitudes in order not to be easily fooled (Crystal 191-192).2.3.4.1 Some Features of Analysis of Political Discourse

This sub-chapter aims at introducing and explaining the basic methods and approaches of political discourse analysis. It is evident that such a task is a hard one and this thesis cannot explain thoroughly all aspects of political discourse analysis. It is thus more accurate to say that the attention is devoted to some of the features of political discourse analysis.

Firstly, the tendency to map political speech is a domain of various disciplines which may be characterized by many studies focusing on different constitutive elements and using a variety of methods. It is, however, necessary to point out here that some of these studies and methods bear little or even no relation to any linguistic theory. For instance, content analysis, the goal of which is to map and count of themes in order to test hypotheses, is the branch of analysis typical for sociology, social psychology, media studies or political science (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 4: 43). As such, it has just little to do with linguistic theory; however, it is related to pragmatics and the tendencies in political speeches.

A different level of power and its representation is one - and for our purpose very important - aspect of political speeches. It is necessary to differentiate between two approaches - the study of the power in discourse and the study of the power behind the discourse. The first approach is characterized by a discourse where relations of power are present; behind the face-to-face spoken discourse and the mass media discourse, this kind of power is exemplified in cross-cultural discourse where its participants belong to different ethnic and social Groupings. The second approach, the power behind the discourse, investigates how orders of discourse - as the dimension of social order of societies with their institutions are themselves influenced by relation of power (Fairclough 43).Symbolically, in order to depict social change in the most traditional manner it is necessary for discourse to speak a language which should be other than the rhetorical due to the fact that its referential aspect is marked by broader cultural and political significance. Deep analysis would reveal the power relations between competing actors who occupy a common action space (Skillington 496).

It seems that between various types of discourse it is especially the political discourse that posses a pragmatic dimension because it studies the sign system and codes in terms of user relation as the significant focus of investigation. To say it, hopefully, more understandably, the focus is aimed at what language is actually used by different users. Thus, the investigation tries to find out user's consistent semantic and syntactic options in terms of the interactional strategies of individuals, groups and classes. And it is especially this aspect that differentiates the discourse analysis from traditional studies of syntax, semantics, language change, and variation which do not concern with it (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 4: 45).2.3.4.2 Necessary Principles of Analysis of Political Discourse

The question what an analyst must practically do in order to make sense of a whole discourse has still remained not satisfactorily explained; nevertheless, this knowledge or ability belongs to key competences in a task which aims at bringing coherent interpretation of discourse. The space for introduction in such a task is just here. The necessary presupposition is that the analyst already knows the meanings of its constituent parts. Then, he must try to work out how the parts of discourse are linked to each other. Consequently, he must also to find out how this particular discourse fits in with his previous experience of the world. In other words, he must be able to understand what approach to the world it represents or which aspects of the world are mostly related to. He thus investigates the relationship between the discourse and the world. The connection between text or discourse and world is also another meaning of the world coherence which primarily searches for connections between the sequential parts of a text (Fairclough 79).Surely, to discover and, furthermore, to describe structure and coherence in any discourse genre is not an easy task. It is helpful to bear in the mind that argumentation should be viewed as a discourse genre in which the individual's efforts to persuade others about the correctness of his opinions and consequently to undermine his rival's ones. This leads in the permanent negotiation of meanings. Evidently, this is possible not only due to speaker's and hearer's cooperation, but also competition (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 35).Another, as Fairclough points out, seemingly paradoxical situation lies in the fact that not only the interpretation of a text but also its production on its own poses interpretative characteristics. However, it is fairly logical because the speaker or, in other words, the producer of the text brings his speech as his interpretation of the world. It just follows that the interpretation of the speech is the listener`s interpretation of the speaker's interpretation. Thus, either the production of the speech or its interpretation should be considered to be creative and constructive interpretative processes (Fairclough 80-81).2.3.5 The Presence of Power, Ideology and Persuasion in Political SpeechesIn this sense, power may be considered as the human's ability to influence the environment of another person and to some degree available to both parties; the weaker one may consequently interrupt reciprocal relationship by withdrawal. Moreover, the use of words by a politician may be compared to a process through which he attempts to gain and also retain the sympathy and approval of his audience. Such speech aims at persuasion, i.e. to gain the authority through its establishment rather than its exercise. Persuasion and formalization can be then put at the two ends of a continuum (Borgstrom 313).

2.3.5.1 Ideological Argumentation and Persuasion

A very important aspect when presenting own power and in this sense representing also particular ideology is the fact that this effort should be done rather indirectly and not so openly because ideology is most effective when it is not so clear that to persuade others is a goal of one of the ideologies. Such indirectness could be reached when ideological cues are brought to the speech as background assumptions. They force, on one hand, the speaker to say something in a particular way and, on the other, the listener to interpret what has been said in a particular way. Obviously, presentation of ideological views is thus not among the components of the speech and it is, to the great extent, up to the hearer to recognize it behind the cues (Fairclough 86).

Generally, to end an argument means to persuade the others to accept a standpoint to which they have been opposing or at least to reach a particular compromise of mutual points of views; nevertheless, sometimes a confrontation ends up either without an evident winner and looser or without any resolution. Instead, the opponents just reaffirm the correctness of their arguments or even refocus their disagreements onto a new basis and reciprocal agreement is not reached as well (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 35). Whether such communication should be remarked as unsuccessful or not is hard to answer.However, if the speaker is able to influence the attitudes, knowledge or even to undermine recipient's previous ideology, he is obviously able to control their future actions. He may be considered to be a winner because the so-called mentally mediated control of actions of people could be marked as the ultimate form of power. Such access is the feature of various manipulations which are successful in their effort especially due to the fact that it takes place without people's awareness that they are being manipulated to (Caldas-Coulthard 90).

From various approaches to definitions of power and arguments, it may be beneficial to explain the difference between the so-called rhetorical and oppositional argument. Firstly, it must be stressed out that this distinction cannot be guaranteed by serious empirical investigation in each case, yet in most cases it is possible. A rhetorical argument may be defined as a type of discourse in which a speaker uses an intact monologue in order to support his disputable opinion. An oppositional argument, on the contrary, is a type of discourse where participants (but it also may be even one participant) strive to support openly their position; nevertheless, despite of this distinction both types usually consist of some of the same principles of discourse organization and rely on some of the same crucial assumptions (Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: 38). Since political speeches in the majority of cases are a matter of individual's monologues - not considering occasional demonstration of agreement or disagreement (sometimes even prearranged by politician's supporters or opponents) - it seems then that Political speeches may be defined as a discourse using rhetorical argument.2.3.5.2 Tolerance and Opposition to Persuasive Argumentation

In fact, some people generally tolerate all means of expression and nearly all points of view; in spite of this, it does not embarrass to deliver a speech which would and should be preferably forbidden by everyone (e.g. any kind of hate speech, speech promoting the violent overthrow of the functional political system, speech advocating the racial intolerance or approving the 9/11 attack on the United States etc.). The number of people who are willing to tolerate such extreme opinions is, with a high degree of probability, extremely small. The tolerance and intolerance of such speeches should be then measured and treated as continuous and unidimensional. Naturally, the endpoints of psychological and political measurement scales refer to individuals with various diverse views or, at least, individuals with various degree of intensity. As an example may be listed the case of some of the Democrats pertaining to the so-called "Yellow Dog" variety who are stronger than simply strong in their views. Since the proportion of people in categories like political tolerance is expected to be small no practical implications for analysis in this sense seems to be possible. The tolerance may not thus be perceived as dychotomic category; instead, variation in this sense would be best represented by a single unidimensional continuum because people differ in the degree of their willingness to dispose of opposing opinions (Gibson 318-319).

The politician shows the power which he actually possesses and which he wants to exhibit according to the particular situation and the audience before he is standing up. It is significant that the nature of the political, economical and social hierarchies together with the relations of elites influence the exhibited power. In other words, power exemplifies the form of external boundaries for the discipline which is marked as cultural pragmatics. These external boundaries parallel the internal ones which are exemplified by performance background representation (Alexander 535).2.4 The Position of the US in Contemporary World

Finally, it would be beneficial to draw out briefly the role which recent United States represent in world politics; only so it would be possible to better understand the motives that lead the US president to use various persuasive techniques in his political speeches.

First of all, he is bound to the particular political culture. Understanding it means to find a key to the "doctrinal content and ideological bases of the political system - its portrayal of national interests, its discourse about national security, public perception of the national leadership, and the arguments that fuel foreign policy (Martnez and Brena 48).Historically, the US is based upon the deep conviction that actions that they make are supported by various ideals. For instance, since the last Reagan administration in 1980 the USA has tried to convince the rest of the world of the benefits and infallibility of liberal free market ideology. Consequently, the best model of society is portrayed as: free markets competition in capital, services and goods, corporations which aims to maximize shareholder value, stock markets for buying and selling corporate control and, especially, the government's minimal intervention in the markets, i.e. only in cases of its obvious failure (Wade 201-202).

Surely, although the US is among the world's political and economic leaders, it lost its former position, national consensus and alliances that were typical after the World War II. Moreover, it has even failed to maintain its military power that it holds at the time of Gulf War at the beginning of the 1990swhen it had overcome the crisis of the 1980s and tried to hold the leadership and control of the word order after the fall of the European socialist systems and the Soviet Union. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 caused various turbulences, conflicts and contradictions in the world's politics. The US had to readjust to the new situation and, logically, this new role of the US has affected its international position and behavior. To comment it briefly, the US consolidate a new ideological theory that, although it was directed against a new kind of enemy, simply renewed the elements deeply rooted in the US political culture - to legitimize domestic politics. Instead of communism a new enemy has appeared - terrorism (Martnez and Brena 48). The US has been fighting against the terrorism and, furthermore, has been trying to persuade the others to join in the effort to overthrow it. Especially this aspect would be probably one of the most typical motives of persuasion in political speech.2.5 Summary

The theoretical part has described the aspects of pragmatics; it has also listed some of the methods of discourse analysis. Beside this, the attention was especially devoted to the descriptions of features that constitute political speeches.

It is evident that political speeches are a type of discourse which is characterized by specific features. However, it has been found out that due to the pressure of media and its effort to catch the attention of their consumers the traditional view of political speeches has been changing and is now nearer to the everyday, colloquial speech. Political speeches should therefore be not only interesting but also entertaining so as to be attractive to media holders who have the privilege of what would be presented and how.

Such approach may also make political speeches to be more persuasive. Persuasion is namely among the main purposes of political speeches. Through persuasion politicians influence others and gain their attention or even win their sympathy. Mixing of the entertaining and persuasive elements is among the main features of political speeches. How this works in everyday practice tries to investigate the practical part of this thesis.3 PRACTICAL PARTAs it has been proposed in the introduction, the practical part of this thesis tries to compare political speeches that the contemporary president of the US Barrack Obama has delivered during his presidency primary either for the domestic or foreign audience. The work aims to find some common and different features that appear in the speeches, delivered in these two types of context. The main purpose is to investigate whether the main aim of political speeches, i.e. to persuade the audience, varies in these two types of speeches.

The hypothesis is that although the style of the domestic speeches tends towards more familiarity and colloquialisms the overall devices that accompany such kind of the discourse are more or less the same.3.1 Corpus under Investigation

The corpus analyzed in this thesis consists of ten Barrack Obama's political speeches. The first five of them are primarily devoted to the US domestic audience and affairs. The other five, on the other side, are focused on foreign or even international affairs and therefore it may be expected that also the audience is spreading beyond the borders of the United States.

The first of the speeches for the domestic audience is Barrack Obama's Victory Speech which he delivered in Rally, Grand Park, Chicago, Illinois, on November 4, 2008. Although he was not yet holding the office of the president of the United States, it will be interesting to trace also the continuous development of the speeches as this may be considered as his first official speech in presidency. The second speech in the corpus is dated as of January 10, 2009, and it is Obama's Inaugural speech that he proclaimed in Capitol, Washington, D.C. The third speech records Obama's Address to the joint session of the US Congress that took place on February, 24, 2009. The last two speeches are the transcripts of Obama's State of the Union addresses for the years 2010 and 2011, which were delivered on January 27, 2010, and January, 25, 2011, respectively. Also these speeches were primarily devoted to the US Congress; however, this does not mean that they were not addressed to the US citizens as well. The reason these particular speeches were chosen is that it facilitates to trace back the possible common features of this kind of official speeches. The speeches for the international audience were selected with respect to the relative importance that particular countries play in the US foreign policy and with the aim to choose countries from various continents. The speeches are thus selected from Obama`s speeches for Canada, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. The speech aimed at American-Russian relationships is, moreover, extraordinary in the fact that the mutual arrangement of the presidents of these countries - Barrack Obama and victor Medvedev - took place in neutral territory, concretely on Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic during the act of signing new Start Treaty on April, 8, 2010. The speech that is devoted to Canada is, furthermore, held in Toronto but it may be considered as a foreign speech even for Canadians because it was delivered as the press conference which presents the results of G20 meeting in Intercontinental hotel in Toronto, Canada, on Sunday 27, June, 2010. Beside this, the speech for Frenchmen was proclaimed during Obama's visit to France at Palaiz de la Musique et Des Congress in Strasbourg, on April, 4, 2009 and deals also wit American-European broader relationships as a whole. The speech for China took place during Obamas visit of Beijing on May, 24, 2010 and the speech for Britons at Westminster Hall, in London, United Kingdom, on May, 25, 2011.Therefore, it is evident from what has been described here that the majority of the speeches is primarily dedicated for some formal occasions and for the listeners who correspond to them. On the other hand, this does not mean that also the broader audience should not be taken into consideration. As speeches are often broadcasted by various media and the transcripts of all of these particular speeches are easily available on the Internet, the politicians usually remember well that they are speaking especially for this broader audience and with this idea in the mind they are aspiring to improve their popularity. The work thus tries to trace formal and informal features of these Barrack Obama's speeches.

Each speech is firstly scrutinized in terms of description of its main ideas and characteristics one by one. Afterwards the speeches are investigated and compared in terms of their persuasiveness. The final conclusion is summarized in chapter 4. Bibliography information and links to transcripts of all speeches could be find in the bibliography section under the heading primary sources.3.2 Scrutiny of all speeches

Firstly, all speeches are described one by one, the attention is focused on the occasion during which the speech was delivered, the event and the other contextual features that are expected to be shared and also on general characteristics of the speech.

3.2.1 Obama's domestic speeches

Though the main purpose of this thesis is represented more or less by the following chapter, the following sub-chapters introduce the individual speeches and describe them more thoroughly.3.2.1.1 Victory Speech

Though it is not Barack Obama's first public speech, it may be considered as his first real political speech. The promises that he declared might be considered as mandatory because he had just won the US presidential election and his role as the presidential candidate and the president-elected were different simply in this aspect of the liability of what he was saying.

Someone might assume that the speech which was presented so near to the time when Obama got to know that he had won the election would have been spontaneous and therefore not well-arranged. Naturally, it is not the case of this speech. Not surprisingly, Obama must have expected with his victory and thus the speech was carefully prepared before the election. This suggests either the overall structure of the speech, in which the arguments are well-formed and logically ordered, or simply the impression that fall on the listener or the reader.The speech may be divided at least into four parts according to the topics. Firstly, president Obama tries to thank all persons who had helped him to gain his victory. The whole passage makes an impression of pomposity. Obama is concrete, lists all names and does not limit himself to mere general acknowledgment for all. The concreteness may be also among the characteristics of the next feature of the speech when Obama wants to list the essence of the United States, who are their members and also for whom this country is one home. The declarative sentence "...black, white, Latino American, gay, straight disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red sates and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America" therefore helps to strengthen the impression of mutual unity and solidarity.

The feeling of a greater authenticity is reached by president Obama's reminiscence on 106 years old Ann Nixon Cooper, whom he had allegedly met as she had been casting her ballot, and the comparison of the significant changes that the United States has reached since this time. Even here Obama endeavors to sound more concretely and thus he compares for instance the fact that at the beginning of her life Ann Nixon Cooper was not allowed to vote simply due to the two reasons: she is a woman and, moreover, a black; at the end of her life these reasons play no role in defining whether she may or may not vote. It is evident that this reminiscence has practically no relationship to Obama's future presidency (beside the fact that he is the first black president in the US history), however, it facilitates to build a greater feeling of solidarity and pride in the signification and key ideas of the United States - liberty and democracy - which are also the main ideas of this speech.

And finally, at least for this introductory part of all speeches, Obama's victory speech offers a clear sign of promise. Although his victory speech may be rather generally marked as summative and declarative, he even wants to offer some kind of bounding message for the future. The promises are, however, unlike the rest of the speech, rather general and not so concrete, so the speech propounds suggestions like "there is new energy, to harness and new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet and alliances to meet". There is stated a vague view of possible hindrances that would be necessary to overcome as well. This passage and the passage with promises are, as it has been previously said, more general and not so concrete. This enables Obama more free space for the future if his more concrete promises would not have been fulfilled. In such an unclear concept, it is not so easy to decide whether he does his job correctly or not.3.2.1.2 Inaugural Speech

President Obama's inaugural speech of course may not be considered to be spontaneous or that it would react immediately on some of the most actual events of those days. It was delivered more than two months after Obama's victory in the US presidential election so he had a sufficient time to elaborate his speech in order to sound persuasive and decisive. The speech appears to be really more sophisticated and to posses features of speeches for prominent occasions. And moreover, it is longer than the Obama's victory speech. Also here Obama thanks at the beginning of the speech. If he was thanking his predecessor in the office, George Walker Bush, with whose political party of Republicans Obama's democrats are on the opposite edge of political spectrum and against whose politics he had clearly and hardly stood up during the previous political campaign, it may not be expected that these words of praise are meant seriously and heartily; nevertheless, thanking the opponent is a traditional thing it tries to suggest that after the elections the new President represents the whole nation, not only his party.

The whole speech, beside this, seems to resemble an effort to encourage the listeners in his American citizenship, or, in other words, to intensify their self-esteem of America and its traditional values. Very important is also the reference to previous presidents, which places Obama as one of the series of American leader. Quoting an ex-president means associating the new presidents policy with the ideas of his predecessor. Obama lists some of the hindrances that threaten America and which American citizens should overcome and American government will try to fight against. And though the formulations like "the state of the economy calls for action" or "we will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories" sounds majestically and lofty, yet still also a bit unclearly and feebly.

On the other hand, Obama wants to be viewed as a dauntless president and tries to persuade his listeners to act boldly in case of necessity which he sees as the main feature of American society and its traditions. The explicitness of persuasion thus seems to reach a high degree of appearance.

Even here, Obama reminds the audience to recall the past times and the changes that have happened during that time. It may seem to be inappropriate because he himself has not made anything special for to be meant, on the other hand, these recalls strengthen the sense of mutuality and solidarity. Moreover, Obama becomes even a bit personal when he is comparing the situation from 60 years ago when black people were not welcomed to serve in the restaurant and the situation of that moment when he is standing in front of the American nation as his first black president in the office.

Among the other characteristics of this speech may be named a relatively high proportion of short sentences. Although the use of simple sentences and compound or complex sentences is not the matter of interest of this thesis, it may be stated here that such methods facilitates to build an effect of drama and the change in anticipation. This suggestion gains more credibility if we take into the consideration the fact that the speech was delivered in spoken form and therefore the change of the pitch of the voice may intensify the attention of the audience. As the corpus of this thesis consists just of the transcripts of the speeches, this feature, however, is not taken into consideration during the analysis and comparison.

3.2.1.3 Address to the Congress on February 24, 2009 This speech, originally marked as Non-State of the Union Address, is the first that Obama delivered officially in his presidential office. It means it was at the time when he has real responsibility for the actions he has made. On the other hand, the speech was proclaimed only one month after Obama was officially inaugurated as US president. This gives him a possibility to be truly critical because the critical words do not concern his own actual politics yet. And it also gives him the opportunity to introduce his plans and to try to persuade the others that fulfilling of this plan is the necessity for America.

It would be beneficial to remind that the speech was primarily dedicated to the members of the US congress. He began his address by: "Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States". This is conventional opening of an address delivered in front of the Congress and it is probably also the reason why such direct addressing is not a part of two previous speeches.

The most characteristic feature of this speech is its effort to portray the real state of affairs in the US, its critics and unlike the two previous speeches the appearance of factualness and concreteness; Beside the fact that the address serves as an evaluative annual state of the union and that such statements were expected, it is also necessary to be aware when the speech was dated, i.e. at the beginning of 2009 when the world, and especially The United states, was affected by the consequences of financial crisis from 2008. The effort to hide something or not showing everything in its true contours would not supposedly be accepted by the audience either in the congress or everywhere where American people were watching it.

Obama depicts the real situation in which the United States and its economy presently occur. He also introduces the steps that he and his government have undertaken since his presidential inauguration till the day of this speech in the US congress and the steps that it will be necessary to do in the future as well. A considerable proportion of the speech therefore is occupied by an apology and explanation of the so-called Recovery plan that Obama's administration has actually approved and which goal is to offer a new incentive for the restart of the US economy. The description is relatively thorough and makes an impression of sincerity and genuine tendency to bring some improvements. There are not so much direct appeals and persuasive urge (although even the expressions and suggestions like "so I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary" are explicitly articulated), the general tone of the speech lies especially in the tendency to indirect appeal by drawing out of the state in which the US has appeared and explaining the key areas that need to be reformed. So the reform of lending fund, housing plan or improvements of bank-s confidence are analyzed. The appeals are thus rather indirect such as: a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years".

Obama's task is not easy because such plans as the help to banks which have contributed not a little to the world's financial crisis by their bad financial politics would not belong to the popular steps. However, Obama is fully aware of that and therefore he has not the other possibilities than to confess it openly and sincerely.

Furthermore, even the part devoted to the changes which will be necessary just to do is also rather more explanative than directly urging. The passages dealing with the contemporary state of the US education system, health and social care and the reforms that should be made is persuasive just indirectly. Still, it might work even though it should be still remembered that the speech was primarily aimed at congressmen who are more familiarized with these topics than "the ordinary laymen" and would expected rather the presentation of facts than an attempt on emotions. This is the reason why the speech appears to be quite factual with elaborated wording and longer compound or complex sentences.

3.2.1.4 State of the Union Address 2010

As the preceding one, this speech was also delivered to the common session of the US Congress in Capitol. Yet the speeches differ from one another in a few aspects.

The first one is just the matter of the transcript; the record of the State of the Union of 2010 contains even the records of the audience's reactions such as an applause or laughter. However, as the source is retrieved from the Internet sites which goal is to bring all Obama`s speeches together and thus it may be expected that they are administered by his supporters, it is not probably only the coincidence that the transcripts notes just the signs of approval and no disapproval.

The second aspect of difference deals with the overall tone of the speech. To understand it, it must be remembered that it was proclaimed at the time when Obama had been just the first year in his office; he had thus made some steps that he needed to advocate; moreover, it was also the election year to the Senate and therefore a greater publicity was an important and desirable goal that he wanted to gain. The tone of the speech is thus more entertaining and full of direct persuasion, urges, encouragements and it is also more amusing, although the passages focusing on deep analysis of the contemporary situation and the necessary changes and reforms in the future are quite extensive as well.

Obama is beginning the speech again with direct greeting, this time he does not forget even to the audience that may watch him on TV. The state of the union`s addresses are traditionally televised and this has affected their style they tend to be less formal and more entertaining. Persuading the whole nations seems to be of similar importance as providing facts to convince the senate. On one hand, it is not something extraordinary that should be stressed out, on the other hand, as it has been explained this influenced especially the fact that it was before the election to the Senate and that Obama wanted to speak to all citizens more than the year before. The speech then follows by shifting the attention again to the past and stressing the glory and authority that United States deserves. This passage may seem to be superfluous in terms of informative value; on the other side, to emphasize the tradition of such evaluative speeches of the Union which appear not only in peace times but also during the wars could raise the importance of this particular speech and everything what will be presented in it.

Only then, the speech continues with the recapitulation of all significant steps that had been made during previous year and after that with the steps that would be desirable to implement to the recent US system. Yet the speech tries to offer concrete details it is beside this full of clichs and declarative phrases, e.g.: "Again we are tested. And again, we must answer history's call. Except this, in some passages, Obama supports his suggestions by repetition of such clichs, for instance, in: "Now let me repeat: We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. (Applause.) We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. (Applause.) I thought I'd get some applause on that one. (Laughter and applause.)" No doubt, such approach belongs to the key oral performances that may gain more popularity not only in the masses of the supporters in the hall (who drew it out) but also in the mass of the wider audience.

The pressure of hard times and the approaching Senate election contribute with a high degree of probability not only to the effort to highlight the steps during the Democratic Party's government, but also to openly promote the steps that will only become true in the future. The speech thus posses features that resemble electioneering e.g.: "So tonight, I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat . (Applause.) I'm also proposing a new small business tax credit / one that will go over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages. (Applause.) While we're at it, let's also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment and provide a tax incentive for all large businesses and all small businesses to invest in new plants and equipment. (Applause.)" Again, the delivered statements are followed by conventional manifestation of agreement of the audience in the hall. Together with the fact the promises are attractive and pleasing the speech may be perceived as highly persuasive. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that even though the speech may be considered as such, it also tries to bring together some concrete facts and details and thus may be considered to be a bit informative as well.

3.2.1.5 State of the Union 2011

The Analysis of this speech revealed some similarities and also differences as compared to Obama's State of the Union from previous year. Both speeches are highly motivated to urge people to do something as there are lots of examples of direct commands, such in: "So, yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us."

There are lots of encouraging and positive evaluation which purpose is to depict the United States as the most powerful and mighty place on the Earth, e.g.: "We're the home for to the world's best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth." However, this passage may be seen just as rhetorical one as elsewhere in the speech Obama criticizes the recent state of the education system in the United States: "Think about it. Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require the education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree." In a similar way, Obama has also expressed his anxiety in the State of the Union from 2010; so it seems evident that the words about the strength of the United states in the field of education are only one of the rhetorical devices how to evoke the listener's interest, pride and consequently mutual solidarity, unity and willingness to do something for their might nation.

The speech was delivered at the year when no elections in the United States are planned, so the overall tone is not so "swollen" as in that of previous year. It might be just guessed that this kind of electioneering will have to be part of the speech of 2012 when the election campaign will be more or less slowly in the progress.It is a relatively major effort to bring real stories to the listeners that could be found instead of the clear electioneering in this State of the Union, though some hints of open agitation could be found here as well. The allusion to the concrete, real people who wrote him or who did some of the extraordinary fact makes the speech to be more attractive and entertaining and therefore it suits better for media with their passion for such stories. It also emphasizes an impression that the president of the United States is reading all letters that American citizens have sent him or simply that he is not indifferent to the ordinary problems of the ordinary people. An example of such presentation may be exemplified by this passage: "one mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she's earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams, too. As Kathy said: "I hope it tells them to never give up"." It could be guessed whether such person really lived or whether she had said what Obama proclaimed; nevertheless, it could be acknowledged that it might have an effect of successful persuasion.

It must be added here, that also this transcript of the speech is noted down with all marks of consensus, i.e. applause or laughter, as in the previous speech. Both speeches, furthermore, resemble in the effort to explain some steps that have been done and the steps that should be undertaken just in the future. However, as some of the steps, for instance in the field of reform of US education system, have not been fully realized it seems that both passages dealing with this topic are repeated in both speeches.3.2.2 Obama's Foreign Speeches

First of all it is beneficial to realize one simple and clearly logical thing but one that should be born in mind: although the audience of all domestic speeches may slightly differ, it has a common feature that it was consisted of the members of one nation. The foreign speeches have also the common feature that they are simply devoted to foreign audience; however, this audience consisted of the members of various nations each time. The approach to these audiences might be probably influenced by different relationships of the United States to different nations; however, for the purpose of this thesis, it is crucial to remember that all speeches should be considered to be international and with this regard they are analyzed.3.2.2.1 Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall;This speech was delivered in front of a broader audience at Strasbourgs sport Arena. It thus follows that not only the official representatives of France were presented, but also especially the young students. The most characteristic feature of the speech is not so much the effort to take a greater fancy by using more humorous hints but rather the relatively high degree of sincerity and concreteness.

At the beginning, however, the typical greeting cannot be omitted and also commemorations of mutual bounds are overhauled. In this case, not only the relationships with France, but ass the event took place in Strasbourg, the residence of European Union's institutions, the American-European contacts were taken into consideration. It must be noted that this commemoration was not too long and it was not especially original with comparison of such nearly obligatory diplomatic remarks at the beginning of the majority foreign speeches. These references to the past serve as the support for the encouragement in the future, e.g.: At the crossroads where we stand today, this shared history gives us hope - but it must not give us rest. This generation cannot stand still. We cannot be content merely to celebrate the achievements of the 20th century, or enjoy the comforts of the 21st century; we must learn from the past to build on it success. We must renew our institution, our alliances. We must seek the solutions to the challenges of this young century."

As it has been denoted a few lines earlier, the speech is quite remarkable by its will to admit that these deeply rooted relationship among the United States and the whole Europe is not without shadows and as good as it should to be: "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times, where America shows arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe, there is an Anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious". Such openness and sincerity is not used so often in diplomatic speeches, usually due to the fact that politicians do not make worse yet more unstable and uncertain bounds; with this notion in the mid, Obama's attempt to describe and explain some misunderstandings might be appreciated. It also seems that this approach was positively accepted by the members of Strasbourgs audience who expressed his position by burst of applause. All reactions of the audience are recorded in this transcript of the speech as well.

Further in the speech, Obama tried to explain the reason of unpopular steps that American government had been enterprising, such as the war in Afghanistan. In this case, true sincerity was accompanied with a bit of enhancement, as in: "As president, I can tell you there's no decision more difficult, there's no duty more painful, than signing a letter to the family of somebody who has died in war." Although it truly would not be easy to do such a thing, it may be hardly expected that the president has a deeper feeling towards the man who has died, especially when the text of universal letters of this kind was written before this man died nevertheless, of course, such matter is highly sensitive and may differ according to individual presidents how they express their personal regret. It is understandable that Obama said this but it was rather a bit of overused soothing.

At the end, Obama offers some space for the audience to ask him questions. His effort to be familiar when he gave the space for the questioner to put him a question may be appreciated positively as well as his immediate reaction o the questions. He was even sometimes quite concrete, providing proves which American government had taken in order to solve particular situation that he was been asked on.3.2.2.2 Remarks by President Obama at a New Start Treaty Signing Ceremony and Press Conference

As it has been stated in chapter 3.1, this Obama's speech is extraordinary in that although it deals especially with America-Russian relationships, it was delivered on the so-called neutral territory, in Prague, in the Czech Republic. This might cause an impression that the speech seems to be a bit more formal than if it had been delivered on territory of one of these two concerned countries. On the other hand, the ceremony of signing a New Start Treaty was a formal occasion on its own as possible hardships had been negotiated in private long before the final signature was made publically and therefore the whole ceremony act was just a formal public demonstration of consensus that had been reached to. It is necessary to add here that the act was consisted not only of Barack Obama speech but also the speech of Dmitrij Medvedev, or, to say it more accurately, both politicians were taking turns. The analysis, however, deals just with president Obama`s words. Furthermore, also this transcript notes down all kind of reactions that come from the audience, however, unlike the case of domestic State of the Union speeches, these reactions seem to be more natural and not pretended, though they are not so frequent.

As a greeting Obama chose simple "Good morning". Then he followed with the necessary formalities, for instance, to thank their Czechs hosts or to highlight the beauties of the Czech Republic, Prague and Prague castle. The most interesting thing in this part of the speech is that Obama says that the USA and the Czech Republic are old friends and that it is not his first visit to the Czech Republic this creates ethos he shows involvement with and in-group belonging with the audience.Afterwards, Obama thanked also to president Medvedev to his will to come to an agreement to mutual treaty. As all debates dealing with the topic were finished and al conditions pre-negotiated, also this part of the speech may be marked only as a rhetorical device which purpose is to show that mutual relationship between these two countries are without any mutual disagreement. Of course, this is not fully true but the purpose is to present it as such.

The speech as a whole tries to highlight the importance of the treaty that was signed up on that day and to persuade others that it was only possible and right thing for the future as both nations will continue in their effort to reduce their arsenal. Obama used s