Critical discourse analysis of political speech delivered by Barack Hussein Obama at Cairo University, Egypt

Abstract

This thesis entitled Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Speech delivered by Barack Hussein Obama at Cairo University, Egypt aimed at analyzing the speech in terms of lexical aspects namely, nouns, pronouns, and conjunctions. Along with that, it aimed at analyzing seven specifically identified issues, and also the social, religious, political, ideological, and educational aspects dealt in the speech. Fairclough’s approach of critical discourse analysis was used as the design of the study. Observation and text analysis tools were used to analyze the speech. The speech was famously delivered by Mr. Obama on June 4th of 2009, right after he got elected as a president of the United States of America. Findings of my study are that the politicians use different nouns, pronouns and conjunctions to persuade their audiences. They put their messages and intentions across intertwining their language with emotional, socio-cultural, historical, religious connections or contexts. Powerful politicians have the ability to establish new opinions, social beliefs and ideologies through their speeches. They can lead and shape the future of different domains of society. This study consists of five different chapters. The first chapter includes six different topics namely, background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the study, and operational definitions of the key terms. The second chapter comprises different topics of review of related literature and conceptual framework namely, review of related theoretical literature, review of related empirical literature, implications of the review for the study, conceptual framework, and Fairclough’s three dimensional framework. The third chapter contains methods and procedure of the study, it basically deals with the design of the study, populations, sample and sampling strategy, sources of data, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedures, Data analysis and interpretation procedures and ethical considerations. The fourth chapter is all about the analysis and interpretation, which consists mainly analysis of lexical items used in speech, analysis of issues, problems and purposes, and analysis of the social, religious, political, ideological and educational aspects. The fifth or last chapter provides the conclusions and the implications of my study.