The pragmatic features of text two are similar to those of text one. As this text is a speech from two days after the attacks, it is fair to assume that the level of knowledge the American government has of the attacks will have increased, hence why statistics of death counts are now starting to appear. Although this speech is a communication to the national press, it is by that form of media a communication to the American public. The tone of this piece in comparison to the speech on the day of the attacks is far more sombre, as the reality of the devastation of the attacks has surpassed the initial shock stage, hence ‘a great loss of life and tremendous damage,’ the adjectives used to convey the scale of loss.
Text 3 is an altogether completely different text and shares almost no similarities through its frameworks with texts 1 and 2. Where the other texts are carefully dictated to a select group of people, text 3 finds George Bush standing on ground zero with a megaphone thanking the American services. Whilst the other speeches are written for him (as stated on ) this third speech comes from the heart, hence the large use of the first person pronoun ‘I,’ and what he says comes as a direct reaction to the reaction of the people he is with. After the seriousness found in the other speeches this one contains cheering and laughter. Pragmatically these factors draw it into more of a conversation with the masses than a speech. It is important to note that whilst speeches 1 and 2 are speeches in their own right, text 3 is a transcript of a speech.
Prosodic Features
Probably the most important factor of a speech is its prosodic features and phonological devices. Text one capitalises on this with the use of varied sentence length providing different degrees of information. Long sentences such as…
‘’The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger.’’
Contrast greatly in their effect too.
‘’Our country is strong.’’
Where the first sentence is full of emotive adjectives such as ‘disbelief, sadness and anger,’ which in turn inspire the readers own personal emotion, the second sentence is much more hard hitting. The sentences themselves differ in purpose, the first providing information in an indirect, descriptive way and the second providing a reassuring statement of national strength. In fact the only real similarity in the content of these sentences and in fact throughout the entire speech is the use of second person pronouns such as ‘us,’ and ‘our,’ to bring Mr Bush down to a personal level with the people of his country. This is a common feature used in speeches of national emergency where people want to hear the truth and in fact was also used by Tony Blair after the June 7th Terrorist attacks. It can also be noted that the first sentence uses the repetition of the past participle ‘ing,’ to give the text immediate impact.
Where the prosodic features of the first text gave the speech a sense of hope, text two has more of a focus on the second person, strong adjectival sentences and metaphorical language to modify the tone. The use of the second person, and the collective pronouns; ‘we, our and they,’ give the speech a much more universal appeal and a sense of segregation with the ‘civilised world,’ on one side and the ‘terrorists,’ on the other. Also apparent in this text is a separation of positive and negative adjectival sentences for emphasis on the good and evil divide. The passengers on flight 92 are described as having made ‘a heroic effort,’ where as the terrorists are accredited with causing ‘a series of despicable acts of terror.’ The differences in connotations in ‘heroic,’ and ‘despicable,’ are enough that any person of any age or intelligence will be able to understand the main focus of the speech. If you take these words right down to the simplest level and their phonological devices, the adjective ‘despicable,’ is a very harsh sounding word that you almost spit out rather than simply saying it.
Text 3 also relies on prosodic features. The speech starts with the crowds’ cheer of U.S.A! U.S.A! An exclamation usually only heard in times of national celebration, however in this case as a sign of national unity. As a phonological device this simple repetition of an acronym is a physical sign of unity. President Bush uses clever wordplay to interact with the audience, and so when one person proclaims ‘I can’t hear you,’ Mr Bush uses repetition of the verb hear ‘I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon,’ as a show that the world is not a big place and that America and her allies will hunt down the terrorists. Where texts 1 and 2 take the role of a stereotypical, cautious presidential speech, this speech is a direct verbal attack to the terrorists showing that although America is physically bruised, its resolve stands strong. This text is also the only one of the three investigated that sticks to the first person throughout, giving it massive personal impact.
Lexical Features
Looking at lexis, again within all three of the speeches that I am in depth analysing the lexical field is clear cut and purposeful. All of the texts centre on the lexical fields of –
War and Peace – With strong reference in the text to; ‘War, Evil, Terror, Burning,’ in contrast to; ‘Freedom and Light,’ particularly text 1.
National Unity – Immediately you are struck by the obvious patriotism within the text with focus on not only ‘America,’ as a country as the ‘brightest beacon for freedom in the world,’ but also the reference to the ordinary American people such as the ‘Moms and Dads,’ Texts 1 and 3.
Victimisation – In the sense that America has been a ‘victim,’ as a country just as the people in the towers have been victims of a terrorist attack. There is also reference to America being directly ‘targeted,’ and a need to ‘Bring to justice,’ those people who have committed the crimes, Text 2 in particular shows this theme.
Religion – The lexical field of religion can be relevant in almost any text written for any occasion and in this case the use of religion is to try to bring comfort to the people. Hence the use of field specific lexical terms such as; ‘God,’ ‘bless,’ and ‘psalm.’
Furthermore these Lexical fields develop through the texts and the language changes from that of desperation and despair to that of national unity and resolve. One common theme throughout is the statement ‘God Bless America,’ which is very individual to George Bush’s addresses and shows that to some degree he is looking to God for answers as much as people are looking to him for answers.
In terms of Lexical fields, the second text is far more focused on positive factors. Every negative lexical field such as those of terrorism and death are overshadowed by those of national unity and remembrance. A particularly strong lexical field in this text is American history, communicated through the American ‘constitution,’ and American ‘independence.’ This gives the text more of an air of internal tragedy and although Mr Bush goes on to thanks the support of the civilised world; the use of archaic American lexis creates a feeling that it is an American problem and therefore requires an American solution.
Lexis is one of the only real similarities between the texts with all of them having a similar core lexical field. In text 3 the main lexical fields are of mourning and national pride both present in texts 1 and 2 also, however it is important to note that the way the lexical fields are incorporated couldn’t be more different. Where in text 1 you will find some small references to American pride, in text three the whole audience cheering U.S.A! U.S.A! In unison gives it a much stronger field specific lexis. In the third text even the secondary lexical field of mourning has elements of national unity in it, for example the quote ‘America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people who lost their lives,’ shows that those who did lose loved ones are not alone in their plight. Compared to texts 1 and 2 I feel this text has a much more specific lexis and this in turn makes the speech much more effective and hard hitting.
Grammatical and Semantic Features
The Grammatical features of text 1 are important as they are powerful conveyances of emotion. The use of second person, collective pronouns ‘our, we’ provide a feeling of national unity, which is then contrasted greatly with the use of the first person pronoun ‘I.’ For example the statement ‘Our Country is strong,’ has a completely different purpose and inspires a completely different reaction to ‘I implemented our country’s emergency response plans.’ The simple swap from second to first person takes the speech away from the collective and moves it towards the direct, personal. The preposition ‘Terrorists attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundations of America,’ offer a strong negative followed by an even stronger positive, almost suggesting that the negatives are not important because the positives outweigh the negatives.
The simple swap from second to first person takes the speech away from the collective and moves it towards the direct, personal piece. The contrasting of physical nouns such as ‘Steel, Concrete, Buildings and the suchlike,’ with the adjectives ‘Burning and Collapsing,’ gives the piece a strong sense of realism. The use of threes ‘our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom’ which is also an example of internal repetition and the collective pronoun ‘our,’ is a powerful speech device for communicating a point. The use of alliteration ‘biggest buildings,’ metaphors and strong imagery ‘Fire’s burning, huge structures collapsing…,’ gives the events a sense of undeniable reality and a movement for recovery.
Looking at the grammatical features of text 2, there is an increase from the first text in verb and noun use. This is due to the nature of this text being more heartfelt and therefore verbs such as brutal in ‘brutal attacks,’ and enormity in ‘enormity of their evil,’ are used to qualify the general anger of the American public, where as nouns such as ‘strength,’ and ‘comfort,’ are used as an aid to help peoples grief. The interchangeable second/first person persona is again used to put George Bush into the position of an American citizen and also the American President, thus meaning his language can be both direct and indirect. Strong alliteration carries throughout the text for example ‘carnage,’ ‘caused,’ ‘collapse,’ or ‘prayer,’ ‘places,’ ‘people,’ and although these words may not directly follow each other one by one, the use of alliteration within a sentence makes it easier to understand and more flowing. This speech contains a rarely seen speech device in the speech within a speech. The fourth paragraph of this speech begins with ‘Now, therefore, I, George W. Bush, President of the United States ...’ as a language feature this is very powerful and gives the speech a new direction and the first line that has just been quoted is commanding, like a direct verbal attack against the terrorists.
The semantics or word meanings of this text are equally as interesting as the first text. Bush in no way tries to use euphemisms in the first paragraph (full description of the attacks) as the attacks themselves were so public, with video evidence and constant news feeds, and so there was no need to try to sugar-coat the truth. The combination of physical nouns such as ‘passenger jet, twin tower and Pentagon’ with hard, descriptive verb ‘killing,’ and the noun ‘carnage’ with real statistics ‘killed more than 250 airplane passengers,’ leave no room to try to deny the reality of the event. Looking further on in the text where we find words with negative connotations such as ‘evildoers,’ in almost all cases there is a show of American strength within the next few lines so ‘evildoers,’ is followed by ‘punished severely,’ with the adverb ‘severely’ showing the severity of American resolve.
The grammatical features of text 3 are harder to fully investigate because the text itself is a transcript, however some grammatical devices can still be found. In the first main section of speech immediately there is a strong use of personification in the line ‘America is on bended knee,’ as this not only suggests the American people are in prayer, but America itself as an object/person. There is also alliteration in the quote ‘workers who work here,’ yet more personification ‘this nation stands,’ and also repetition ‘I can hear you, I can hear you.’ Mr Bush uses his position as the person giving the speech as much as the voice of the people ‘the nation sends its love and compassion to everybody who is here,’ as he does personally ‘I want you all to know...’ The use of the first person in this speech allows more feeling and thoughts to be presented rather than facts and data which would by now have probably saturated the media.
Continuing from the grammar and looking at the semantics of the speech, I felt that the biggest change was the tone of the piece, and with it the type of word classes used. Mr Bush references the twin towers as being ‘knocked down,’ making the physical damage almost irrelevant as a sign to the terrorists that they have failed to bring anarchy to America. The piece contains laughter, something that we have not seen in any of the previous texts. ‘Good people, love, compassion, hard work, proud,’ words you wouldn’t expect to see four days after the ‘deadliest’ terrorist attacks in history. The amount of positive completely outweighs the negative in this speech showing how quickly the initial recovery has been in America and although some would argue text 3 is only a speech, I would argue that its content makes it a direct attack against the terrorists.
Discourse and Structural Features
My Final area of investigation with speech 1 is its discourse features. The structure of the text with its different paragraphs for different meaning shows a progression through the text. Every paragraph gets more and more positive, and where they start analysing the events themselves, as we read through the speech it goes on to be more and more about the solutions, about national unity and about how the events will not ‘dent the steel of American resolve.’
In terms of sentence structure just as in the first text a mixture of long and short sentences are used to convey both strong points and issues that require more explanation. An example of a shorter, strong sentence used for effect comes after the call to punish the terrorists with the sentence ‘the enormity of their evil demands it.’ The full structure of the paragraphs within this speech flow in a chronological order starting with the attack, the call for punishment, a prayer, the call for national mourning and finishes with a statement of American pride. This is the style that almost all leaders use for their speeches when the full facts have come in about a particularly pressing event.
Where texts 1 and 2 were set out in simple paragraphs with no interaction or stage directions, text 3 is much more conversational. Text 3 is also far shorter than the other texts filling only a real time slot of three minutes, and yet content-wise it is equally as rich as either of the other examined texts. Text 3 is a non planned speech that evolves to suit the reaction of the audience, and contains pauses to allow for applause and for the crowd to cheer. In terms of sentence structure, again it varies from the other texts as this text is a transcript of spoken text, and so almost all pauses are indicated with a full stop rather than a comma, especially where Mr Bush is interrupted by the audience. Finally this text both starts and finishes with the crowd, however the dominant figure in the speech is Mr Bush as he is the one making the address and all cheers are directed at him or his speech.
Conclusion
My initial hypothesis was ‘Do the speeches given by George Bush on the day of the September 11th terrorist attack and the speeches of the days following change in tone and impact, and if so how do they change and what effect does this change have?’ I do believe the speeches change in tone and impact however I must admit even I did not expect to see such a vast shift in such a short space of time. When investigating I was shocked to see how after only four days the country was already recovering from the physical damage and the mental scars were being healed. It was impressive to see how the language changed from sombre and downhearted on the day of the attacks to so upbeat, with cheering and applause on the 14th. If I was to alter anything I would have liked to have looked at one more text, just to complete a day to day transition from the 11th to the 14th of September. Although I feel my investigation hasn’t suffered without this, it would have been personally interesting for me to be able to see that progression through the frameworks on a day to day basis. Looking at my hypothesis I don’t think anything unexpected came up to the same extent that it appears there are no blanks where factors remain unanswered in the investigation.
Evaluation
I personally enjoyed my investigation. Although I do not personally like George Bush, I feel that it has been an interesting topic to investigate. The reaction of Mr Bush and of America to the terrorist attacks show an unprecedented event affecting a world superpower and this made the topic much more than just looking at the language of a series of speeches. I can say that I am satisfied with my investigation and I feel I have learned a lot from the independent nature of study, as the decisions from the topic, the hypothesis and the content have all been my decisions and therefore positive in regards to my understanding. What I investigated was just a small part of what could be the source of many different investigations, and numerous hypotheses’. I feel this investigation may have been slightly damaged by my choice of studying a political topic, as much of the information I have worked with has been opinion based rather than factual and so this swayed my investigation in certain places, however overall I am pleased with the investigation, the course it has run and the final product.
Bibliography
All speeches drafted from the most trusted source I could find, the White House Archives
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