Political Discourse Analysis: Analyzing Building Tasks in Trump's Speech in Saudi Arabia

Arab World English Journal. 10602 Davlee Lane, Richmond, Texas, 77407. e-mail: editor@awej.org; e-mail: info@ASELS.org; Web site: https://awej.org/

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11

Discourse Analysis; Political Attitudes; Speeches; Presidents; Language Usage; Models; Speech Acts; Social Influences; International Cooperation; Professional Identity; Foreign Countries; Self Concept

2229-9327

This study aimed to investigate how the tasks of significance and identities are built in President Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia to find how President Trump employs language to perform these two building tasks. President Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia was analyzed qualitatively according to Gee's (2011) building tasks model. It has been found that President Trump enacts and builds the significance task by carefully selecting lexical items, cooperative patterns, lexical choice, and compliments. Furthermore, President Trump enacts particular identities and attributes specific identities to others in his speech, such as political, social, and cooperative identities. The analysis shows that President Trump shifts between the identities such as President of the U.S., a representative of the American People, a fighter and defender of American citizens and the world's safety and security, a businessman, a well-educated and knowledgeable person. This study recommends that future research investigate other political speeches delivered by President Trump based on any of the seven-building tasks of language that did not cover in this study.

As Provided

2022

EJ1357801