An Analysis of President Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech

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The origin of my essay is the victory speech of Barack Obama in 2008. The essay is an attempt to illustrate the correlation between discourse and politics in varies of aspects and perspectives. I hope the reader can enhance the skills of persuasive power in discourse. Since in the political views, nothing is coincident. We can use the persuasive power to assure the thing is going to the right track of your plan. I found there are varies persuasive appeals in the victory’s speech. Language is powerful. Besides, politics is based on the influencing power. If the politicians master persuasive strategies well, the audiences may take act and believe the politician’s moral, political and cultural values. Discourse is one of the greatest means that may alter the audience’s thinking and behavior. “Politics is one of the social domains whose practices are virtually exclusively discursive”(Discourse and Politics, 2009). Discourse construction has a vital role in politics. In the Obama’s victory speech of 2008, he used the paragraph structure, lexical and tones with a formal form to eye-catching the listeners. The victory speech is different from our daily dialogue, which has a clear and accurate message of changing the state. To enhance the efficiency of delivering message, he used a tight structure and sophisticated lexical. There are mainly three positions in the politics field. They are the dominant hegemonic positions, the negotiated positions and oppositional positions. Take the Article 23 in Hong Kong as an example. The left wings supported it; therefore, they held the dominant hegemonic positions. The right wings are the oppositional positions. However, there are a few people seem apathetic about it. They are the negotiated... ... middle of paper ... ...n the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.” (Transcript: 'This Is Your Victory,' Says Obama, 2008) “ New deal, new jobs and new sense” were the positive and energetic words, which implied the bright future. The triple was a method to create emphasis. The usage of “New” was echoing the theme of change and bringing the belief of reborn. The orator had a prudent lexical selection to strengthen the ideology. In addition, the alliteration was also a persuasive strategy, which was used to reinforce the ideas and main theme. Its feature was repeating the identical first letter, in this case, they were despair, dust and depression. He could choose “gloomy” or “ lowered” to express, however, he chose “despair”, “dust” and “depression “ to make alliteration.

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