A Pragmatic Study of Barak Obama's Political Propaganda

Abstract

This study investigates, pragmatically, the language of  five electoral political propaganda texts delivered by Barak Obama.  It attempts to achieve the following aims:(1) identifying the speech acts used in political propaganda, (2) showing how politicians utilize Grice's maxims and the politeness principle in issuing their propaganda, (3)analyzing the   rhetorical devices used in  political propaganda. To achieve the aims of this study, it is hypothesized that:(1) The speech acts of  statement, assertion,  and advice   can be used  in political propaganda, (2) the cooperative principle and the politeness principle are frequently observed in political propaganda, (3) persuasion, metaphor, repetition, and manipulation are the rhetorical devices used in  political propaganda.  The following procedures have been followed:(1) reviewing the literature about political propaganda  along with  some pragmatic notions such as speech acts, the cooperative principle, politeness strategies, and some rhetorical devices such as persuasion, metaphor, repetition, and manipulation that are relevant to the aims of the study, (2)  analyzing  five electoral political propaganda texts according to a model developed by this study.    The findings of the analysis verify the above mentioned hypotheses.

Keywords: Propaganda,  election, pragmatics, rhetoric