Language Investigation: Barack Obama Inaugural Address

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Language Investigation

Introduction

The inauguration speech itself is one that comes after the oath that swears a President into office, which has been undertaken by any person elected into office. In his speech, Obama intended to raise the morale of the American people in times of the economic crisis, and he did not feel threatened to ignore it in his speech. On the contrary, he acknowledged the crisis they were in, but remained positive in order to keep the country strong. The main objective of the speech was to get confidence from the public that he would be a successful president, who would do all he could to restore the country to the stature it should be.

What interests me about this speech in particular was the background. Barack Obama had just been elected to be the first black president of the United States, and the Democrat leader took over from George Bush – former leader of the Republican Party. It would be interesting to see how Obama referenced this, as Bush was one of the most unpopular US presidents in history. Furthermore, it came at a time when the economy was left in its biggest crisis since the Great Depression, while America was still locked in several conflicts with countries in the Middle-East. For this reason, I decided to choose this text to analyse to see how Obama would still be able to set out his purpose of restoring confidence to the US people, and what techniques he would use to try and do this.

The purpose of the speech itself was to outline some plans and ideas for the future, as well as trying to convince people that they made the right choice in electing him. Therefore, it is a persuasive speech, but also informative.

The question for my task is:

“What devices are used in Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address and how do they help his purpose?”

Therefore, it should be analysed whether or not he succeeds in this task, and what devices – both linguistic and rhetorical – he used to make his speech sound both credible, persuasive and meaningful. I believe he would have employed several techniques, including metaphors, sophisticated but not overly complicated lexis and noting examples of repetition. The sentences used may well have been imperative, but would mostly be declarative and sometimes (since it is persuasive) interrogative. He may well have referenced other speeches, mainly the most famous ones in existence (such as Martin Luther King), so it will be interesting to see whether or not he did this.

Methodology

The data will be collected during the Barack Obama inaugural address of January 20th 2009. I will watch it live, and transcribe it, or an official transcript of it. Furthermore, I will repeatedly watch the video after this date, noting features relative to my investigation. In particular, I will look into these aspects of the speech:

Lexis:

  • Frequency of certain words are used, including the most common words used and why this was the case.
  • Amounts of concrete and abstract nouns used throughout and picking out specific examples of these and why they were used.
  • The adjectives Obama uses and whether they are mostly superlative or comparative.
  • The lexical fields that are used, how commonly they change and why they are used.
  • Lexical complexity. Obama would have to find a fine line between sophisticated language, without alienating people who are not as strong linguistically.

Semantics:

  • Is the language Obama uses concise or ambigious.
  • Does Obama use hyperbole, irony, oxymorons, euphemisms, dysphemisms.

Grammar:

  • What pronouns are commonly used? Will Obama prefer to use “I” as opposed to “we”?
  • I will look into the sentence syntax, seeing whether he prefers active or passive voice, and determining why he does this?
  • Is active or passive voice used?
  • What sort of sentences will Obama use? Will he use interrogative statements in the form of rhetorical questions, or will is remain declarative?

Pragmatics:

  • Does Obama reference to other texts, such as other inaugural addresses, Martin Luther King’s.”I Have A Dream”? Is there any intertextuality?

Discourse:

  • What order is Obama focusing on each of the subjects he sets out to discuss and why was this done.
  • Was there any use of cohesion use?
  • I will also see if there is any anaphoric or cataphoric reference used, whether to other parts of his inaugural address or any of his other speeches

Analysis

Lexis:

  • Frequency of words

Figure 1: The most commonly used words of Barack Obama. The larger the word, the more times they were used in his inaugural address.

The first thing that struck me was the number of times he repeated similar words. The ten most used words were: Nation, America(ns), New, Must, Generation(s), Let, People, Common, Today, Every. Interestingly, when compared to George Bush – Obama’s predecessor – and his ten most commonly used words, four of these were most used in Bush’s initial inauguration. Those words were Must, America(ns), Common, Nation. Again, in another inauguration speech by Bill Clinton, Must, America(ns), Common, People and Let were all most commonly used. Interestingly, Common, Must and America(ns) were consistently one of the ten most commonly used words in each of these.

Of these words, the most interesting is “must”. It is understandable why America(ns) is so commonly used, however must is a modal auxiliary verb, one that is imperative and often found in instructions. Of all the eight times where must is used in the Barack Obama speech, seven of these were referring to things that the American people and the government should do. These imperatives are used to show power and authority, but also the use of the pronoun “we”, which often precedes “must”, means that he reiterates that it will take the help of everybody to change the country, while also emphasising the need to get out of the situation they’re in.

Interestingly, one word that is not used throughout is the word “Black”. This is vastly contrasting to Obama’s acceptance speech, where he would often reference it to show what a vast meaning it has. However, in the inaugural address, it was important that he emphasised less on himself and the historical consequences, and more on the future, and the crisis they faced.

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  • Abstract / Concrete Nouns

The majority of the nouns are actually pronouns, but outside this they are split between abstract and concrete. Upon totalling these, they were split, with 69% of the nouns being concrete, and 31% being abstract. This surprised me, as I was expecting a higher proportion of concrete nouns. However, commonly used abstract nouns such as “hope” are used to portray more emotions and to express the qualities of the nation and their people.

  • Superlatives / Comparatives

I was amazed to find that Obama only used four superlatives throughout the entire speech. ...

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