دراسة اجتماعية – تداولية للمنصب كقوة ديناميكية في الخطاب السياسي الأمريكي

A Socio-Pragmatic Study of Position as Power Dynamic in the American Political Discourse

The current study examines position as a significant social variable in six selected American political discourses. Position has been studied as one of the primary discourse categories in political speeches. However, there has not been much investigation on the positions taken in American political speeches, especially from a socio-pragmatic standpoint. The current study aims to close this gap by identifying position differences and their manifestations in the data under scrutiny.
The study aims at finding out the way speech acts are utilized to reflect position differences in the political speeches of the two American politicians, the president Joe Biden and the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Figuring out how politeness strategies assist these two American politicians in reflecting their position differences, and identifying how position differences can be manifested through the use of the Grice’s maxims in the political speech of the two American politicians. In association with the aims, the study proposes three hypotheses: (1) Representative speech act is the most dominant type that is pragmatically utilized by Biden in his political speech while commissive speech act is the most prominent type that is pragmatically utilized by Austin. (2) Positive politeness is the most common type that is pragmatically utilized by both Biden and Austin in their political speeches. (3) Relation maxim is the most frequent type that is pragmatically utilized by Biden in his political speech whereas quality maxim is the most recurrent type that is pragmatically used by Austin
To achieve the aims and verify these hypotheses, the study presents a model consisting of three layers for the analysis. The first layer is composed of speech acts according to the classification of Searle (1976). The second layer is based on Livenson’s politeness strategies (1978) and the third layer based on the Grice’s maxims (1975). A qualitative approach is used in data analysis that supported with tables of frequencies and percentages. Some conclusions are drawn depending on the results of the analysis. One of these conclusions is that, representative speech act is the most dominant type that is pragmatically utilized by Biden and Austin in their political discourses. The second one is that, positive politeness is the most common strategy that is pragmatically used by Biden and Austin in their political discourses, and the third conclusion is that, relation maxim, which calls for speakers to make their points relevant, is the one that is pragmatically utilized by Biden and Austin in their political discourses.
The study ends with some recommendations and suggestions for further studies.