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Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

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The socio pragmatic functions of inaugural speech: A critical

discourse analysis approach
Reza Biria*, Azadeh Mohammadi
Department of English language, Islamic Azad University (Isfahan), Khorasgan Branch, P.O. Box 81595158, Isfahan, Iran
Received 3 October 2009; received in revised form 11 May 2012; accepted 26 May 2012

Abstract
Inaugural speech as the first formal presentation of a new president plays highly persuasive and ideological functions in the political
scene of a country. This study adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to investigate the typical discursive characteristics
underlying the inaugural address. To this end, George Bush's (2005) second term and Barack Obama's (2009) first term inaugural
speeches were analyzed to explore the potential ideologies signaled by the discursive strategies and rhetorical devices which these
presidents employed to express their political views. The results revealed that the speakers possessed a rich repertoire of discursive
mechanisms such as the positive self and negative other-presentation strategies for influencing the addressees. The findings also
attested the intricate relationships existing between language, power and ideology.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Inaugural speech; Critical discourse analysis; Discursive strategies; Rhetorical devices; Positive self-presentation; Negative other-
presentation

1. Introduction

Within the remit of general sociopragmatic enquiry, it is suggested that the relative power and status of language users
has a direct bearing on the way language forms are combined for achieving a particular rhetorical purpose. Hatim and
Mason (1990) maintain that the complex ways by which language elements are interconnected in discourse create a
precondition for the speakers’ representation of their communicative intent. In fact, by the meticulous manipulation of
linguistic resources, speakers delivering a public speech can actualize their ultimate goal which is to make the audience
believe what they are asserting is worthy of whole hearted and unconditional support (Duranti, 2006).
Among public speeches, political discourse is characteristically unique in that the speakers tend to make an appeal on
both personal and emotional levels. Then, to be convincing, they must not only appear sincere and fully committed to their
cause but also must sound plausible, fair and on the side of the good. In fact, in this mode of expression, the speakers
should move beyond plain exposition into the labyrinthine realm of argumentation whose primary purpose is merely
building a case for persuading a given audience (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004).
It is evident that in making a case, the speaker's main objective is to substantiate the validity of the propositions he is
making by utilizing believable, unassailable and defensible reasoning. As a consequence, by marshalling evidence and
exerting vigorous evidential support, the speaker can turn his speech into a mode of oration wherein he tries to prove that
he is right and well-meaning, and in so doing, he tries to win the audience to his side. It follows, therefore, that linguistic

* Corresponding author at: Assistant Professor of applied linguistics at the Post graduate School, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch,
Isfahan, Iran. Tel.: +98 311 5354042.
E-mail address: r_biria@yahoo.com (R. Biria).

0378-2166/$ -- see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.05.013
 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1291

elements should not merely be considered as acts of referral but as a system of units by which different speakers
formulate their perceptions of the world, their beliefs and ideologies (Capone, 2010; Fairclough, 1989).
Until 1960, the main concern of discourse analysts interested in investigating the inaugural address was the power and
role of the president holding office. Neustadt (1990) defines Presidential Power as a tool for persuasion. He believes that
power is a function of personal politics rather than of formal authority or position. Interestingly, the core elements of his
argument about presidency center on people, politics, and leadership which have long been the essence of relevant
research concerning political speech. Denton and Hahn (1986:10) view the presidency from a different perspective. In
fact, they think of it as a rhetorical and persuasive institution that ‘‘constitutes social action, provides a context for collective
action, and contributes to the oral history and definition of the nation’’. Likewise, Cheng (2006) asserts that a president's
speeches are his major resource for leading the country and convincing the public. Therefore, the rhetorical style adopted
by a president can unquestionably influence his degree of success in achieving his political goals. On this basis, following
the analytical frameworks adopted by Van Dijk (2004) and Cheng (2006), the present study aimed to fathom out the major
discursive characteristics of inaugural speech by focusing on the positive self-presentation and negative other-
presentation strategies which are believed to be linked to the ideological values of the speakers.
It is a commonly held belief that individuals with different social roles may use language for achieving specific
communicative goals. To interpret the situated meanings in political discourse, therefore, demands a profound knowledge
of the existing social, political and economical contexts. Naturally, politicians as social actors are the main focus of the
media and present their ideas and claims through political discourse. Thus, by using this type of speech, they try to control
the public and inculcate their ideologies. There have apparently been many research reports on political texts and talks
which have been analyzed by using various types of CDA frameworks (Sarcaceni, 2003; Ruud, 2003; Van Dijk, 1997,
2004).1 For instance, Van Dijk (1997) argues that one of the primary tenets of CDA is to show the sources of existent
dominance and inequality in the society through analyzing written or spoken texts. He believes that by adopting a CDA
approach, we can identify the discursive strategies employed by the speakers who intend to construct or maintain
meaning in sociopolitical contexts. Furthermore, he states that a text ‘‘is merely the tip of the iceberg and it is the
responsibility of the discourse analyst to uncover the hidden meaning of the text’’ (1997:9).
While most CDA studies focus on the representation of racism in media discourse (Wodak, 1996; Teo, 2000; Van Dijk,
2001), only a few have been reported to adopt a critical discourse analysis approach to the investigation of inaugural
speeches. As such, the main objective of the present study is to fill the gap in the literature related to CDA in order to
indicate how language users employ a set of sociocultural and psychological frameworks to create and maintain
differences in power. This is actually what the majority of CDA studies normally do. In fact, by focusing on particular
sociopolitical contexts, they aim at shedding light on the links between textual structures and their sociopragmatic
functions in the intricately intertwined interactions within a given society. All in all, one of the significant objectives of CDA
is to unearth and examine the complex mechanisms of discursive practice utilized by the speakers.
It is clear that by reviewing some definitions of inaugural address, we can clarify the applicability of the CDA
perspective for explicating the real meanings hidden in the political discourse. According to Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia
(2009), an ‘‘inaugural address’’ is the presidential speech given to inform the people of the president's intentions as a
leader. Notably, political inaugurations often feature lavish ceremonies in which the politicians publicly take their oath of
the office in front of a large crowd of spectators. Campbell and Jamieson (1990) state that an inaugural speech is actually
designed to set the tone for new beginnings when a new office holder assumes responsibilities. Then the inaugural
address, it may be said, is a specific kind of discourse targeted at unifying the audience by reconstituting them as the
people who can witness and ratify the ceremony, practice shared values drawn from the past and determine the political
principles that will govern the new administration. Each of these objectives must naturally be attained through discursive
tools that appropriately actualize the speaker's intentions. As such, Graber (1981) believes that political language is a
complex kind of discourse which must meet a variety of functions and requirements; namely, information dissemination,
agenda-setting, interpretation and linkage, projection for the future and the past, and action stimulations.
Similarly, Cheng's (2006) study concerning the inaugural speeches of Taiwan's president analyzes how President
Chen Shui-bian applies linguistic rhetoric to achieve his sociopolitical goals. She believes that the principal aim of the
presidential inaugural address in the democratic societies is traditionally to ease the transition of power and to unite the
country after an election. Consequently, the newly elected president proposes solutions for the country's problems and
tries to express his goals by means of the rhetorical devices that can effectively contribute to his success in making people

1
Van Dijk as one of the key figures in the field of CDA has approached it from a sociocognitive perspective. The focus of his critical studies is
mostly on prejudice and racism in discourse. For Van Dijk, CDA is not a branch of discourse analysis, instead he suggests that researchers should
look at CDA as an interdisciplinary approach and follow an emic approach towards it by considering the realities of other cultures, countries, and
other disciplines in human sciences. Based on this interdisciplinary approach to CDA, he labels his methodology as socio-cognitive discourse
analysis.
1292 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

to believe in him and the ideology he represents. Hence, Van Leeuwen (2008) focuses on the stylistic analyses of political
discourse by investigating the main traditions in which it is formulated.
Naturally enough, in the political realm, shaping the notions of self and other is one of the vital strategic goals of political
actors. As such, in analyzing the presentation of self and other, the purpose and function of discursive practice is crucial.
To put it differently, what is important is not to discuss perceptions of self and other and how they are created; rather, why
they are created and what the intended functions of behind these concepts are. The reason is that political speech as a
form of public discourse plays a pivotal persuasive function and its major objectives are: to convince the public of the
political measures taken, to win the campaign, and to win the public support for future political actions. It is worth
mentioning that persuasion is done subtly and has a close relationship with the notions of ideology and identity which are
interlinked in political discourse. According to Van Dijk (2002:1) ‘‘political discourse is eminently ideological’’ and in order
to construct ideology ‘‘the concept of identity’’ is essential.
Since the audience of a political discourse is usually heterogeneous, the speaker who intends to win such audience will
not be precise and singular in the construction of identity. Van Dijk (2002) maintains that politicians enact their multiple
identities in different ways. In fact, they not only speak as politicians, but they also adopt a wide variety of roles such as
conservatives or liberals, men or women, feminists or anti-feminists, racists or anti-racists, etc. Naturally, if political speech
is aimed at affecting and articulating basic beliefs and ideologies, it will be necessary to first define the group for whom the
beliefs are valid. Thus the speaker has to determine the borders of the group by defining its members. At the same time, he
has to claim his membership and clarify his own position in order to articulate his basic beliefs effectively.
Engel (2004) discusses how the images of self and other are used to represent the nature of membership in
political speech and how they contribute to the construction of cognitive discourse models in social cognition. He
analyzes the radio addresses delivered by the U.S. president George W. Bush from January 2001 to September 2003
to detect the images of self and other, and their discursive functions in a sociopolitical context. He maintains that the
image of self is not confined to the persona of the speakers; rather, it may also include groups of people associated
with them. But the favorable presentation of the persona of the speaker has a significant function in political speech.
The construction of a mental model of self in these terms, and conveying this model to the audience is invariably part
of the discursive events involved in political speech. In addition, he maintains that delegitimization as a rhetorical
strategy can be employed to present those in the periphery or the others negatively. Therefore, certain techniques
including the use of ideas of differences and boundaries, and speech acts such as blaming, accusing and insulting
are used to negatively portray the other/them members. He further concludes that before 9/11 Bush works mainly on
the image of self and tries to convey positive connotations to consolidate national unity and rapport. Comparatively,
the image of other is used much more implicitly and strategically and is employed to subtly coerce administrative
bodies to cooperate with a weak president. The analysis of his speech indicates how the personalization of other
used by the president after 9/11 provides an explicit distinction between the model of self and the model of other and
the way these conceptual models are polarized.
In another study, Leudar and Marsland (2004) analyze the public addresses delivered by the U.S. president George W.
Bush, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda after the 11 September 2001 attacks on
World Trade Center and Pentagon. Their study aims to investigate public presentations of violence and of participants in
the violence. They show that each speaker distinguishes us from them and formulates this distinction in order to justify
past violent actions and to prepare the grounds required for recognizing those which may happen in the future. Basically,
Bush and Blair both distinguish us from them in social, political and moral terms, whereas bin Laden does much of the
same by utilizing specific religious expressions. For instance, in Bush's speeches words like freedom and opportunity are
attributed to America and America is introduced as the intended victim of the attacks. The implication is that they are the
enemies of freedom and opportunity. In fact, the attackers are depicted as the worst of human nature but we, the victims,
are represented as caring individuals. Then, the us/them distinction certainly has an intricately interwoven moral, social
and political nature.
In the same vein, Van Dijk (2005) analyzes the speeches delivered by the Prime Minister José María Aznar in Spanish
parliament in 2003 and indicates how he legitimized his support of the U.S. and the threatening war against Iraq. In his
insightful analysis of the prime minister's speeches, he identifies three types of positive self-presentation strategies;
namely, when the speaker speaks for his group or organization, when the speaker speaks for his country, and when the
speaker speaks for himself. Whereas the first two strategies are typically political, the last is personal since it mainly
emphasizes the good character of the speaker. He further suggests that all these forms of positive self-presentation are
interactionally occasioned, and form the expected responses to real or possible criticisms of the real or potential
opponents.
By conducting a critical discourse analysis of euphemization and derogation in emails on the late Pope, Rahimi and
Sahragard (2006) also try to explain how a single event like the death of Pope can be viewed differently by the people with
different religious backgrounds. The main concept of their study concerns the macro strategies of positive self-
presentation and negative other-presentation, which they believe, can be manifested through different micro strategies
 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1293

such as euphemization and derogation. They conclude that CDA can be an appropriate approach for detecting biased and
manipulative language use. In addition, they indicate how the email writers’ religious backgrounds can affect their choice
of words for expressing condolences and how such influence is deeply rooted in their differing ideologies.
In another interesting study, Bakhtin (1986) explains that in constructing meaning, speakers may use polyphony to
minimize their dominating role for making an intended audience feel and share the significance of the topic and the
situation they are discussing. In fact, by gaining the collaboration of the addressees they present themselves as members
of the in-group rather than the out-group. In this way, the audiences hear their own needs and sentiments from the person
who is delivering the speech.
Similarly, Suleiman and O’Connell (2008) provide a critical analysis of the CNN Lary King's interview with male, female,
black and white politicians to discover whether variables like ethnicity and gender have any discernible impact on the way
these speakers organize their speeches. Focusing on the existence of inter and intra group relations in America, they point
to certain commonalities existing in the responses which these black interviewees (e.g., Barack Obama, Condoleezza
Rice and Colin Powel) provided to the reporters. In brief, they claim that race and gender have a predominant role in
political discourse.
Finally, Capone (2010) analyzes Barack Obama's South Carolina Speech from a particular pragmatic perspective
basing his argument on Goffman's (2007) notion of footing2 and Bakhtin's (1986) notion of polyphony. He argues that
Obama utilizes a complex set of rhetorical mechanisms which are strongly associated with the historical and cultural
context in which his speech is situated, and within such sociocultural context, the president tries to inform his audience of
America's present financial crisis and Iraq's war events. As a matter of fact, Obama skillfully uses a type of discourse
which is characteristically similar to Afro-American sermons. Consequently, by changing the rhythmic structure of his
speech and repeating the main idea, he tries to evoke specific sensitivities and heightened emotional responses in his
audience. In this speech, the president also employs personification as one of his effective strategies. By alluding to
certain relevant stories, he actually tries to personify his ideas through multiple voices. To sum up, Capone (2010)
maintains that, in South Carolina speech event, Obama acts as a ventriloquist to represent the voices which reflect both
the in- group and out- group members.

2. Data Collection and analytical framework

The rationale behind selecting the inaugural speech as the corpus of analysis was justified for three main reasons. The
first reason was recency. The inaugural speeches made by the two presidents, one immediately succeeding the other,
were more likely remembered by the American public because they had just been involved in the heat of presidential
elections. As such, the transcripts of their political talks seemed to be more appropriate for the analysis. Secondly, these
presidents as major political actors employed different strategies to pursue specific political, social and economic goals
concerning the current sociopolitical situation in America. The last and perhaps the most important reason for selecting the
inaugural address for the study was its highly persuasive sociopragmatic texture since a newly elected president tries to
persuade his audience to believe him, to cooperate with him, to perform his plans for the future and to feel convinced that
they have made the right choice.
As a consequence, Bush's second term and Obama's first term political speeches were retrieved from Wikisource
Online Free Library (2009) for analysis. The analytical framework utilized in the study consisted of two CDA models
adopted by Van Dijk (2004)3 and Cheng (2006). The former placed a great emphasis on two main strategies of positive
self-presentation and negative other-presentation as the principal basis of discourse analysis because the discursive
strategies of positive self-presentation (i.e. semantic macro-strategy of in-group favoritism) and negative other-
presentation (i.e. semantic macro-strategy of derogation of out-group) were materialized through such discursive moves
such as ‘authority’, ‘categorization’, ‘comparison’, ‘euphemism’, ‘evidentially’, ‘lexicalization’, ‘metaphor’, ‘nationality’,
‘self-glorification’, and ‘victimization’. By contrast, the latter focused on the rhetorical devices used by the president of
Taiwan in his two inaugural speeches and included such rhetorical moves as ‘lexicalization’, ‘parallelism’, ‘anaphora’,
‘antithesis’, ‘victimization’, ‘identification’, and ‘metaphors’. Overall, these analytical models were employed for the critical
analysis of the inaugural speeches under investigation.

2
Erving Goffman (1981:128) proposed the general concept of ‘‘footing’’ to explain the ‘‘changes in alignment we take up to ourselves and
others’’. Footing is a relationship of speakers to the act of speaking, and we often shift from one foot to another in interaction. We can signal
changes of footing in various ways. According to Goffman (2007), various roles can be distinguished in relation to what people say in their
utterances.
3
Van Dijk (2004) identifies categories in ideological discourse analysis. Some of these categories are as follows: actor description,
categorization, authority, burden, comparison, consensus, counterfactual, euphemism, etc. We have used the same categories in this study,
because inaugural speeches as a type of political discourse are ideological as well.
1294 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

To indicate the exact nature of discursive strategies and rhetorical devices utilized by the speakers and to compare
the discursive characteristics and underlying ideologies of the intended inaugural speeches, we considered each
paragraph of the text as a macro unit4 and analyzed it according to the parameters defined by the selected models. The
main concern of the study was the way us or the in-group and them or the out-group were depicted by the American
presidents. In this analysis, special attention was paid to the existing contexts which were exclusively different for each
president. As a matter of fact, for Bush, 11 September 2001 events formed the political context affecting America's local
and foreign policies. For Obama, however, these events marked the time of a great economic crisis in America. Naturally,
the newly elected president's major goal was to calm down both his people and the people of other parts of the world like
Iraq and Afghanistan. To capture the differences in the political views and the ideological strategies exercised by the
presidents, a wordlist analysis was used to calculate the absolute frequencies of the contested words in these speeches.
It should be mentioned that by keywords we mean those high frequency tokens which contributed to the creation of
positive self and negative other-presentations. In a nut shell, the prevailing socioeconomic and political contexts had to
be considered in the analysis because they affected the choice of lexical items, discursive strategies and other related
rhetorical tools.
Below you will find the main results of the study as well as the critical analysis of certain discourse samples followed by
the discussion of the obtained results.

3. Results and discussion

The CDA approach to the analysis of inaugural address led to several insightful results. First of all, both presidents
followed a predetermined format in the opening and closing parts of their speeches. Evidently in both cases, the beginning
and opening words aimed to win the attention and good will of the audience. In other words, the presidents started their
speeches by giving thanks to the ex-presidents, official members and the guests participating in the inaugural ceremony
before introducing their cases in an interesting and favorable light. Likewise, they closed their speeches by making sure
that the audiences have not been misunderstood and by giving a peroration-that is, a final, heightened appeal for support.
Interestingly, both presidents finalized their speeches by a ceremonial deism which is a common expression about God.
Secondly, to achieve their intended goals, the presidents under study employed different discursive strategies to confirm
their case by refuting and condemning opposing views demonstrating that they are untrue, illegal, and self-contradictory.
At times, they also tried to offer concessions of points to the opposition by answering their questions and offering
alternative positions.
It is evident that the speakers handled the body of their speeches differently. The results of the word count analysis
revealed that Obama employed more words to convey his message compared with Bush. In fact, his inaugural speech
included 2406 words, while Bush had enlisted 2083 words in his speech. The results also indicated that the speakers had
made a differential use of pronominals or personal diectics.
As Wales (1996:50) points out, pronominals ‘‘are rarely neutral in reference’’. This proposition has been substantiated
in several interesting studies. For instance, Muhlhausler and Harre (1990) assert that among personal pronouns, the first
and second person pronouns are discursively significant because one of the functions they perform is to index social
relations. In fact, these linguistic elements can mirror relative status, deference, and distance on the one hand and
solidarity and intimacy on the other. It is clear that such functions play a crucial part in social interactions in general and
political discourse in particular. As an illustration, in English the first person plural pronouns may have either an exclusive
or an inclusive function. By employing inclusive pronouns such as we or our, the presidents used a discursive strategy
whose aim was to create identification and rapport between themselves and their audiences. However, by using exclusive
pronouns like they and them they tried to draw a distinct demarcation line between America and her friends and those in
the other-group. This is what Coe et al. (2004:234) explain as the construction of binary communication that represents the
world as a ‘‘place of polar opposites’’.
Column chart 1 presents the occurrence of the pronoun we with its different representations like our, ourselves and us
as well as the occurrence of the exclusive pronoun I in Bush's and Obama's speeches: (Fig. 1)
It was observed that the inclusive pronouns of we and our were among the highly frequent tokens in both speeches;
however, their occurrences were higher in Obama's speech. The tendency of the speakers to apply inclusive we can be
attributed to the kind of discourse they employed. In fact, in political discourse, the inclusive we implies and reinforces
national and ideological boundaries. Therefore, both Bush and Obama implicitly exercised their power and corporate
ideology by speaking on the behalf of their people and putting the government and the people in the same group to create
unity and solidarity.

4
For accessing the complete inaugural speech scripts and for checking the paragraph/macro unit analyses refer to Wikisource Online Free
Library (2009).
[(Fig._1)TD$IG] R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1295

Occurances of Personal Pronouns in Bush′s and Obama′s Speeches

80
70
60

Frequency
50
40
30 Bush′s Speech

20 Obama′s Speech
10
0
We Our Us Ourselves I
Personal Pronouns

Fig. 1. The frequency Profile of inclusive/Exclusive Pronouns in Bush's and Obama's Inaugural Speeches.

As Column Chart 1 indicates, the application of the pronoun I is comparatively less than we in both speeches. In fact,
the corporate and national ideologies encourage such discourse-based exclusivity. What is remarkable is that the
exclusive pronoun I occurs 7 times in Bush's speech, while in Obama's speech it occurs only 3 times. Considering the fact
that the length of Obama's speech is longer than Bush's, such a difference is significant because it shows that Bush puts
more emphasis on himself as a person who holds a highly influential position in the country. This may be due to his belief in
the strict individualistic values which makes him distinct from his audience.
Kim et al. (1994) define individualism and collectivism as cultural traits which are used to describe the common
attitudes belonging to the individuals rather than the group. The individualism/collectivism framework is commonly used to
describe personality characteristics, habits and traits rooted in the cultures in which certain individualist and/or collectivist
traits occur. Likewise, the concept of power distance proposed by Hofstede (1991) is somehow related to the
individualism/collectivism distinction. Power distance represents the degree to which the less powerful members of
organizations and institutions try to accept the unequally distributed power. Therefore, the cultures that approve of a low
power distance are expected to take side with more consultative or democratic power relations. In such cultures,
regardless of the existing formal positions, people tend to relate to one another as equals.
Bush as a person who values individualism implicitly emphasizes the uniqueness and independence of himself as an
individual among his group. On the other hand, Obama strategically attempts to minimize the use of I showing respect for
collectivistic values to implicitly promote cooperation and solidarity for both himself and his American audience. Although
individualism is positively viewed in American culture, resorting to collectivistic values by Obama reflects his knowledge of
political discourse and its requirements.
Tables 1 and 2 indicate the occurrences of potential keywords which denote positive self and negative other
presentations in Bush's and Obama's speeches respectively:
A word of caution is in order here. The potential key words with a frequency equal to 7 or more were labeled as first
group tokens while those occurring 4 times or more were categorized as second group tokens. Consequently, as Tables 1
and 2 indicate, words like freedom, America, nation, American and liberty are among the highly frequent keywords in
Bush's speech. By contrast, Obama's first group tokens include nation(s), new, America, generations, people, world and
common. The over-lexicalization of such terms contributes to the underlying ideologies of the speakers. On the other
hand, Bush's overemphasis on moral values like freedom and liberty reflects the strategy of positive self-presentation. He
intends to show America and its people as the vanguard of human values. In addition, by reiterating America 20 times and
American 10 times, he employs the discursive strategy of naming to evoke a sense of Americanism.5 It is clear that the
belief in Americanism is enshrined in the president's nationalistic and professional ideologies. Apparently, Bush's racist
ideology is evident in his employment of words with positive connotations like free, freedom, liberty and hope. However, he
uses words such as tyranny, tyrants, dictators, terrorists and mortal threats with negative connotations to magnify the bad
nature of the other-group and to convince his people that American wars against countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are
for the sake of supporting human values.
Additionally, identification is achieved not only by the application of inclusive pronouns but also by employing terms like
America and nation on various occasions. All these techniques create senses of solidarity and identification between the
newly elected president and his people. According to Denton and Hahn (1986:89) ‘‘The concept of identification is central

5
Ricento conducts a study on the construction of American national identity during the Americanization campaign. One of the most salient
themes that he finds is ‘‘the idea that Americanism requires, or is constituted by, thought-sharing. That is, Americans know who Americans are
because they ‘think alike’; they ‘see eye to eye’ on the essence of Americanism, they share the same ‘ideas’ about national identity.’’ (Ricento,
2003:617).
1296 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

Table 1
Occurrences of first group and second group potential keywords in Bush's inaugural speech (2005).

First Group tokens Frequency Relative frequency Second group Tokens frequency Relative frequency

Freedom 25 1.20 Citizen 6 0.28

America 20 0.96 Government(s) 6 0.28
Liberty 15 0.72 Human 6 0.28
Nation(s) 12 0.57 Ideal(s) 6 0.28
American 10 0.04 Work 6 0.28
Own 9 0.43 United States 6 0.28
World 8 0.38 Presidents 5 0.24
Country 8 0.38 Rights 5 0.24
People 8 0.38 Choice 5 0.24
Free 7 0.33 Tyranny 4 0.19
History 7 0.33 Great 4 0.19
Hope(s) 7 0.33 Fire 4 0.19
Justice 7 0.33 Generation(s) 4 0.19
Peoples 7 0.33 Good 4 0.19
-- -- -- Life 4 0.19

Note: The total number of words in Bush's speech was 2083.

Table 2
Occurrences of first group and second group potential keywords in Obama's inaugural speech (2009).

First group tokens Frequency Relative frequency Second group tokens Frequency Relative frequency

Nation(s) 15 0.62 Common 6 0.24

New 11 0.45 Work 6 0.24
America(’s) 10 0.41 American(s) 5 0.20
Generation(s) 8 0.33 Spirit 5 0.20
People(s) 8 0.33 Crisis 4 0.16
World(’s) 8 0.33 End 4 0.16
-- -- -- Father(s) 4 0.16
-- -- -- God 4 0.16
-- -- -- Government 4 0.16
-- -- -- Greater 4 0.16
-- -- -- Men 4 0.16
-- -- -- Peace 4 0.16
-- -- -- Power 4 0.16

Note: The total number of words in Obama's speech was 2406.

to presidential rhetoric, for one of the important jobs of a president is to persuade the audience that he identifies with their
interests and thus it is in their interests to identify with him’’. Conversely, for Zheng (2000), identification is a targeting
strategy employed by politicians to stimulate particular sections of the community. He adds that presidents apply this
technique for the groups which are held together by the common ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, and vocation in
order to convince them and to win their support (see also Suleiman and O’Connell, 2008).
The findings of the study also indicated that compared with Obama, Bush tried to choose strategies and tactics which
presented the other group more negatively. By contrast, in Obama's speech the category of other included the people of
the world as well as the ex-president (i.e. Bush) and his republican government. In addition, he cunningly used certain
negative terms and expressions to describe the wrong policies of Bush which had pushed America into an undesirable
economic situation.
To clarify the point further, the following paragraphs/macro units were analyzed to shed light on the importance of
political and ideological orientations of these presidents in choosing what to say and how to say them. The analyses
revealed that Bush categorizes the people of the world into two groups: the us-group with positive qualities and the them-
group with negative characteristics.
 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1297

(3): We have seen our vulnerability --- and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world
simmer in resentment and tyranny --- prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder --- violence will
gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is
only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants,
and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and
common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty
in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

In macro unit (3), the euphemistic term vulnerability is used as a rhetorical device to mitigate the weakness of America
in dealing with terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.Through euphemization, the positive self-presentation strategy is
reinforced. Similarly, through lexicalization, he tries to attribute negative characteristics such as resentment, tyranny,
murder, violence and destructive power to the out-group or the periphery members. The adjective whole classifies all the
regions of the world in the out-group signifying Bush's discriminatory ideology. While the phrase destructive power is
attributed to the terrorists, the most defended borders refer to the borders of America, which were broken by September 11
attacks. In addition, mortal threat is used to prophesy that similar attacks will happen in the future and it is the duty of the
government to prevent them. Then, he finds a rhetorical method to rationalize America's initiation of war against Iraq and
Afghanistan to fend off the rising criticism against his foreign policy. He employs the metaphor one force of history in
combination with positive characteristics like rewarding hope of decent, tolerant and human freedom to implicitly introduce
America as having such a force. Here, the term force is used to imply the unique power of America in which all American
governments strongly believe.
Unsurprisingly, Bush's speech is similar to other American presidents who claim that America is the savior of mankind,
the vanguard and supporter of freedom and that other nations are fraught with tyranny and violence due to their ideologies.
Such a national self-glorification move is obviously derived from a racist ideology. As an American president, regardless of
his republican orientations, Bush certainly knows how to handle and display his professional ideology. At the end of this
macro unit, he concludes that the liberty in America is intertwined with the success of liberty in other lands. He again
rationalizes his war-like policy through the application of the term liberty. He contends that America's peace depends
largely on the freedom existing in other parts of the world. Clearly, utilizing moral explanations may be the most influential
way of convincing both Americans and their opponents of why American soldiers have to take part in wars in remote areas
like Afghanistan and why the American government must pay astronomical costs for such wars.

(9): Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the
United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will
stand with you.

Again in macro unit (9), the people of the world are portrayed negatively through the application of words such as
tyranny, oppression and oppressors. This negative-other presentation strategy is apparently related to Bush's racist
ideology that prevents him from observing the positive aspects of other countries as well. Evidently, using the term
peoples which semantically encompasses all people of the world from every race and nation in one group is highly
ideological. Although he intends to persuade people to believe that he empathizes with the oppressed people, his biased
and racist categorization of people in the out-group is evident in every word he employs. He introduces the United States
as the supporter of liberty by addressing other nations and saying When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
The question is: why do American soldiers slaughter unarmed people including women and children in Iraq and
Afghanistan, if they are supporters of liberty? Does liberty present a privilege that is to be imposed on nations? These are
amongst the many questions that presidents like Bush must answer to rationalize their foreign policies.
Classifying people into us/them groups is not something new in Bush's speeches. Mayhall (2009) in the textual
investigation of the pre and early post 9/11 shows how President Bush in response to the attack on the U.S. World Trade
Center attempts to change the financial and consumer product markets into battlefields against terrorism. According to
this study, most President Bush's speeches during this time are markedly characterized by us/them distinction. As an
illustration, he tries to stimulate American dynamism by employing relevant imagery in order to highlight the conflict
between the radicalized other and the patriotic self. In fact, by placing the United States on a pedestal and by calling it the
civilized West, he downgrades the Middle East, which is largely associated with Islam, by defining it as uncivilized.
Another important point about Bush's speech is that his religious-based republican ideology can be detected in some
parts of his speech (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 1, 4, 5, 11, 15,16,17,18, and 22 respectively). In macro unit (1), he gives
his thanks to the reverend clergy. The inclusion of clergy in his address described by the positive term of reverend reveals
his religious tendencies which are intricately interwoven with his republican ideology. Similarly, in macro units 4 and 5, he
employs metaphors such as the day of our founding and when the soul of a nation finally speaks to allude to his religious
beliefs as a republican president. Clearly, the second metaphor is employed to give a spiritual aspect to America's war in
1298 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

Iraq. The words God and sacrificed in macro units (11) and (15) are also associated with his religious-based ideology.
Then in macro unit 16, Bush states ‘‘In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise
of liberty’’. Naturally, we here refers to all Christians.
According to Yurica (2005), Bush's speech reveals his plans to export his political agenda to other nations, and in the
process, build an American Christian empire. He categorizes Christians in the in-group (us) and people with other religions
in the out-group (them). The objective is to introduce the us-group as those who are implicitly designated by God to show
the meaning and promise of liberty to the people of the world. Interestingly, the texture of his speech is also characterized
by such rhetorical devices as parallelism and anaphora (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 2, 5, 17, 18, 19, and 23). While
parallelism is the application of similar syntactic structures, anaphora is the repetition of a word or expression at the
beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially used for creating rhetorical or poetic effects.
For example, the repetition of the phrase years of in the sentence: ‘‘After the shipwreck of communism came years of
relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical --- and then there came a day of fire’’ gives harmony and power to the
speech. All in all, the textual analysis of Bush's speech showed that identification, euphemization and lexicalization were
among prominent discursive strategies which provided the necessary ground for the actualization of the positive self-
presentation and negative other-presentation moves.
On the other hand, the study illustrated that the most frequent strategies utilized in Obama's speech were identification,
euphemization, metaphor and victimization. These strategies were utilized to establish the group boundaries and depict a
positive picture of us and a negative picture of them. Identification was manifested in the use of high frequency tokens of
we (62 times), our (67 times) and us (23 times) as well as nation (15 times) and people (8 times). Macro units (3), (6), and
(20) represent parts of Obama's use of identification strategy respectively:

(3): That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network
of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the
part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too
many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and
threaten our planet.

(6): We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time
has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble
idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all
deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

(20): To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters
flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we
say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's
resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

It is clearly observed that the priorities of Obama's government are American values like peace, freedom, and
friendship as well as the principles of humanity which are employed in a number of places: ‘‘those values upon which our
success depends --- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism --- these
things are old, these things are true.’’ The concept of freedom used by Obama is a principle on which the American
liberalism is built (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 2005:343). In part of his speech (macro unit 25), Obama as a democrat
venerates the rights of citizenship to demonstrate his opposition to all kinds of inequality observed in his society including
segregation, racial and religious prejudice, etc. At the same time, he tries to prove that his government is supportive of the
us-group:

(25): This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence --- the knowledge that God
calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed --- why men and women and children of every race and every faith
can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might
not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

In macro unit (17), he extends the semantic domain of the word nation and tries to create a kind of religious solidarity by
putting the followers of different religions such as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and even non-believers in the same
group. Cady (2009) maintains that for centuries Muslims have been treated as the ‘‘menacing other’’ in the formation of
Western identity. However, Obama as a new president fabricates a new scenario in which the role of Muslims as evil
 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1299

people has greatly been changed to the people who deserve to be included in the in-group and even counted as the
members of the super American society. This strategy is justifiable because Obama's intention is to relieve the tension
existing between the Muslims and the Western world.

(17): For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and
Muslims, Jews and Hindus --- and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from
every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged
from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday
pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal
itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

At the same time, he cunningly tries to differentiate between his people and himself or the us-group and those in the
them-group. He attributes negative qualities like threat, corruption, destroyer and violence to the members of the other-
group (e.g., paragraphs/macro units 16 and 19). In a part of his speech (macro unit 16), he calls the members of the other-
group as foes that pose nuclear threats, induce terror, and slaughter innocents:

(16): We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that
demand even greater effort --- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to
responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former
foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not
apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by
inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you
cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

Similarly in micro unit 19, he once again subtly addresses the non-democratic leaders around the globe as those who
sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West. He uses the word destroy to describe what they do in their societies.
Rating these leaders as those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, he places
them in the periphery and tells them that ‘‘they are on the wrong side of history’’.
Obama's reference to the crisis in the following sentences extracted from paragraphs/macro units (3), (4), (9), and
(13) pinpoints to the existing bad economic situation affecting the lives of many Americans. He wants the American
public to know that the major concern of the new president is to cope with the undesirable downward trend of American
economy:
‘‘That we are in the middle of crisis is now well understood’’

‘‘These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics’’

‘‘Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began’’

‘‘This crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control’’
As can be seen, Obama as a democrat skillfully articulates derogatory terms such as grievances, false promises,
recriminations and worn-out dogmas to refer to the wrong policies of Bush and his republican government. In the expression,
‘‘Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some’’, the quantifier some
collocating with derogatory terms greed and irresponsibility is implicitly used to refer to the ex-president and his republican
aids who have been responsible for the bad economic crisis in America. In the same vein, he labels Bush's policies as childish
things: ‘‘the time has come to set aside childish things’’. In these examples, Obama clearly tends to categorize Bush and his
republican government in the other-group. Obviously, this strategy is not seen in Bush's speech.
It is generally agreed that image-based rhetoric is more effective and influential than concept-based rhetoric because
imagery can evoke powerful emotional reactions. Pointing to the close relationship existing between emotion and
imagery, Emrich et al. (2001) found that certain lexical items like root, heart, explore, grow, journey, frontier, path, dream,
etc.. . . have a widespread application in political discourse. For instance, the word path implying action was one of favorite
metaphors of President Reagan (see his second inaugural address, 1985) and was also one of G.W. Bush's lexical
choices (see his nomination acceptance address, 2000). Likewise, President Obama aims to enlist image-based rhetoric
and makes frequent use of metaphor in his inaugural speech (see paragraphs/macro units 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 17, 21, 22, 23,
and 25). Exemplifying this would be expressions such as rising tides of prosperity, still waters of peace, gathering cloud
and raging storms.
1300 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302

(2): Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of
prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging
storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office,
but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding
documents. So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

Journey, Obama's favorite metaphor, is repeatedly used in macro units (7), (9), and (26). He purposefully employs this
metaphor to remind Americans of the conquest of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the immigration of their
ancestors to the continent. The journey metaphor not only appeals to the addressees’ emotions but it also evokes their
patriotic feelings and prepares them for action:

(7): In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our
journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling-for-less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted --- for
those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-
takers, the doers, the makers of things --- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor,
who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

In macro unit (23), the metaphors of levees break, darkest hours, firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with
smoke and a parent's willingness to nurture a child are similarly strategic devices which act as a persuasive tool calling
Americans for action.

(23): For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American
people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the
selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our
darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to
nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Victimization is another important rhetorical strategy employed by Obama (paragraphs/macro units 1, 14, 15, 17, and
26). Fjellstrom (2002:103--4) states that victimhood has a religious-sacrificial meaning. The rhetorical technique of
victimhood is implicitly used by Obama for appealing to the addressees’ emotions because it not only ensures unity but it
also represents the nationalistic ideology of the president. For example, in macro unit (1):
‘‘My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed,
mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the
generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.’’
The term ancestors is used in combination with the term sacrifices to materialize the rhetorical tactic of victimization. By
using the imagery of victimhood, he tries to link the past to the present. Like macro unit (15) in which he resorts to the
discursive strategy of victimhood, once again he tries to remind his addressees of the struggle of the earlier generations
with fascism and communism. Considering the negative attitude of Americans toward fascism and communism, he
frequently employs these culturally loaded terms to portray a victimhood image of the past in order to evoke the public's
readiness for patriotism in the present and the future.

(15): Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with
sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Additionally, he refers to his programs for the future by employing terms like new, reforms and restores which have
positive connotations and show his professional competence as a politician. The term new is among the first high group
keywords in Obama's speech, while reform and restore belong to the second high group tokens because their frequency
of occurrence is less than 4. Through using phrases like prepare the nation for a new age, a new life, to create new jobs, to
lay a new foundation for growth, a new era of peace as well as a new way forward and a new era of responsibility, he tries
to win the audience's affection and win their support for his plans.
Evidently, the findings were consistent with those of Rahimi and Sahragard (2006). It is worth mentioning that CDA is
appropriate for analyzing a political genre like inaugural speech because it can detect biased and manipulative language.
Furthermore, in this type of discourse, the choice of lexical items is highly controlled by the underlying ideologies of
speakers. It should be noted that the findings were also consistent with Van Dijk's(2004) ideas about political ideologies. In
fact, they attested that political ideologies are not only included in the production or understanding of political discourses
and other political practices but also are (re)produced by them. The political discourses analyzed in this study unearthed
 R. Biria, A. Mohammadi / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 1290--1302 1301

the racist, nationalistic, professional and democratic/republican ideologies of the speakers. In addition, the results
supported the findings of Leudar and Marsland (2004) since the results revealed how each speaker distinguished us from
them to justify their past actions and to prepare the people for future. For instance, in our study, Bush used the macro
strategy of positive self-presentation to rationalize his war-like policies and Obama used metaphors to propose his
promises for future. However, by enlisting the simultaneous application of two analytical frameworks, we found that the
results did not support Van leeuwen's (2008) view about the unsystematic nature of most CDA studies because it seems
that systematicity and CDA have a natural inherent relationship.

4. Conclusion

This study has viewed inaugural address from a critical discourse analysis perspective. We tried to illustrate that the
speakers have access to a wide range of discursive strategies and rhetorical devices including semantic and lexical
choices which enable them to represent their underlying ideologies. Although positive self-presentation and negative
other-presentation were the ultimate goal of the speakers, Bush and Obama employed them differently due to their
different political ideologies. In other words, Bush employed these rhetorical strategies to hide his nationalistic and
republican ideologies and made an attempt to present a negative picture of the members of the other group including both
non-Americans and non-Christians. At the same time, he tried to present a positive picture of the in-group; namely,
Americans and their government. On the other hand, by categorizing America's previous government in the out-group and
by attributing negative qualities to them, Obama tried to offer a different image of his party's political agenda. The
application of such discursive strategies was most likely rooted in his partisan ideologies. Interestingly, the speakers at
times employed similar argumentative strategies because they both belonged to the same macro culture and shared the
same sentiments on specific issues like Americanism and professionalism. Indubitably, the results of CDA studies can
demystify the intricate relationships existing between language, ideology and power. It is clear that linguistic resources
can be used as a guise for covering the intended meanings of the speakers who often find themselves in face threatening
situations. Generally speaking, political realm is a highly conflicting sphere, and it seems that, successful politicians are
those who try to avoid embarrassing situations because they do not want to lose the public trust and their support.
Needless to say, our study indicated the complex nature of political discourse and its various syntactic, semantic and
lexical intricacies. Consequently, the practical value of CDA with its diverse analytical tools cannot be denied and its
insightful rigorous methods can certainly improve various aspects of language pedagogy including teaching, learning,
developing teaching materials and even testing. Considering the limitations of the present study in terms of size and
content, further research is needed to confirm whether CDA is indeed an appropriate framework for doing sociopragmatic
research. Following, you will find some suggestions for future research:

(1) Further research needs to be conducted by focusing on the application of other CDA frameworks. This would have a
great practical and evaluative value since it can alleviate conflicts and minimize possible incompatibilities between
theory and practice in CDA research.
(2) Concerned researchers may find it interesting to conduct a CDA study to explore the upcoming America's presidential
election in 2012, along with its presidential debates. Such debates characteristically reflect different rhetorical
strategies that the candidates may use to win the public support.
(3) Other studies can investigate the students’ awareness of the dichotomous nature of positive self-presentation and
negative other-presentation strategies and its possible impact on their writing and reading comprehension skills.
(4) Studying the positive presentation of the self and the negative presentation of the other in the discourses of male and
female political speakers can be another line of research which can be investigated by interested researchers.

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Reza Biria is an assistant professor of applied linguistics with a particular interest in sociopragmatic research teaching at the Post graduate
School, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran.

Azadeh Mohammadi is currently a PhD student studying applied linguistics and teaching at the English Department of Islamic Azad University,
Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran.