Syntactic Analysis of Political Speeches

Abstract

The present study ‘Syntactic Analysis of Political Speeches’ was carried out to find out the major syntactic features of the native English and the native Nepali political leaders’ extempore speeches. It is a qualitative research as it explains the problem to be analyzed. Prerecorded audio clips of Nepali and English political speech were the main tools of analysis. The data comprised of thirty judgmentally selected audio clips of political speech (fifteen Nepali and fifteen English). Analysis of the data revealed that the Nepali political speeches included a maximum number of complex sentences whereas the English political speeches included more compound sentences than any other types. Similarly, the Nepali political speeches consisted of a number of informal expressions whereas the English speeches were far less informal in degree. The Nepali speeches were found informal in that they contained grammatically ill-formed sentences, clichés, pauses, dialectal vocabulary, switched codes and frequent use of deictic expressions. The other feature of study was grammaticality of sentences. The study revealed that the Nepali political speeches consisted of significantly large number of grammatically awkward sentences. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter presents a detailed theoretical background, introduction of the area of study, review of the related literature, objectives of the study and the significance of the study. The second chapter includes the sources of data, population of the study, sample population, sampling procedure, research tools, process of data collection, and the limitations of the study. Similarly, the third chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data using qualitative method under three headings. Summary of the findings of the research and recommendations including the pedagogical implications are presented in the fourth chapter. The reference section consists of the list of books, journals, former researches and the websites cited. The enveloped CD appended at the backside cover page consists of the audio text of the speeches and the full text of the present research work.