Strategic Political Communication: A Leader's Address to The Nation

CARRANZA, ISOLDA E.

Nueva Revista de Lenguas Extranjeras

Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de UNCuyo

Lugar: Mendoza; Año: 2008 p. 25 - 25

0328-9273

his paper aims at disseminating among trainees at EFL programs an approach to the study of discourse which acknowledges its local and historical situatedness. Its specific objective is to reveal characteristics of the genre ?inaugural address? and the discursive construction of the American nation through the analysis of a historically significant speech by U.S. President George W. Bush. Its secondary objective is to combat common methodological flaws in analyses of discourse which arise from a naïve conception of authorship and from reading representations and ideologies directly from single linguistic forms. The examination of the data shows the concurrence of oral performance features and powerful rhetorical resources in a carefully elaborated text that calls up selected aspects of national identity, serves complex political aims and addresses multiple audiences.