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Levels of explicitness in political speeches

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Published/Copyright: June 15, 2006
Multilingua
From the journal Volume 25 Issue 1-2

Abstract

Political speeches are a special kind of discourse that ‘produce and reproduce beliefs, opinions, and ideologies’ (Wodak 2004: 381). One way of studying such discourse would be to look into the use of the grammatical category of performatives. As analysts seek to interpret a text, they must not forget the reality that political discourses are more about beliefs, opinions and ideologies constructed from a partisan perspective than an individual choice. The variety of hegemonic power practised by the political leaders determines to a large extent their exploitation of performatives: in an explicit or implicit manner. In this study, the researchers examine the use of performatives produced by two different political leaders in two political settings. The analysis of the use of performatives by the current Prime Minister of Malaysia is the mainstay of the study. The performatives found in the speeches of the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh are also analyzed for comparative purposes. The differences in style as well as the level of exploitation of performatives by the two leaders are examined exhaustively using the discourse-historical approach (Wodak 2001; Wodak et al. 1999) as the theoretical framework.

Published Online: 2006-06-15
Published in Print: 2006-05-19

© Walter de Gruyter

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Preface
  2. Negation and the role of gender and ethnic identity in the discourse of Malaysian children
  3. Requests: Voices of Malaysian children
  4. On learning to be assertive: Women and public discourse
  5. Malay ESL college students' spoken discourse: The use of formulaic expressions
  6. Function and role of laughter in Malaysian women's and men's talk
  7. Patterns of repeats in Malaysian English
  8. Some peculiarities of Malaysian Iyer English
  9. The first keynote address of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi at the UMNO general assembly
  10. Levels of explicitness in political speeches
  11. Talking to older Malaysians: A case study
  12. Linguistic resources as evaluators in English and Chinese research articles
  13. Book reviews
https://doi.org/10.1515/MULTI.2006.010

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Preface
  2. Negation and the role of gender and ethnic identity in the discourse of Malaysian children
  3. Requests: Voices of Malaysian children
  4. On learning to be assertive: Women and public discourse
  5. Malay ESL college students' spoken discourse: The use of formulaic expressions
  6. Function and role of laughter in Malaysian women's and men's talk
  7. Patterns of repeats in Malaysian English
  8. Some peculiarities of Malaysian Iyer English
  9. The first keynote address of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi at the UMNO general assembly
  10. Levels of explicitness in political speeches
  11. Talking to older Malaysians: A case study
  12. Linguistic resources as evaluators in English and Chinese research articles
  13. Book reviews
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