Studies in Critical Discourse Analysis are concerned with current political and social issues. Because of its interdisciplinarity, Critical Discourse analysts were investigating issues like 'racisim' and 'legitimization' in discourse. However, most of these studies have analyzed western discourse, and even those which analyzed Arabic data were in most cases analyzing the translation and not the Arabic text. This study can be seen as an additional contribution to this field, as it investigates the words of four major speakers (George Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin), related to the War in Iraq between 2002 and 2006. In this study we highlight some of the major discursive and formal strategies used by these four speakers, in addition to the local and global meanings and the structure and argumentation used in their speeches. Through this analysis, we investigate the speaker's methods of persuading, manipulating, and reassuring their audience, and the shifts in their discourses which accompany their political position at the time. We also study the nature of these speeches when delivered to audiences in the West and the Middle East. The study highlights the exercise of power and the effect of the speakers' ideologies in their discourse. It compares these speakers, who come from four different cultural backgrounds and traditions. We concentrate on the power markers used by the speakers, and two ideological aspects of their speeches: the ideology of religion and the ideology of the 'state' and the way these are implemented through the speeches. This comparative study concludes that despite the different rhetorical traditions of these fours speakers, none of them hesitates during an international conflict to depart from their tradition in order to achieve a greater effect on the audience.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:498571 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Balfaqeeh, Muna Abdulla |
| Publisher | SOAS, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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