Communicative intention in George W. Bush's presidential speeches and statements from 11 September 2001 to 11 September 2003

Abstract

The purpose of this article is a pragmatic interpretation of utterances. In particular, the analysis aims at apprehending illocutionary intention, as understood by Bach and Harnish (1979), in George W. Bush's speeches and statements. I also investigate how the speaker carries his discourse during the time period analysed. Here, I point to Scollon and Scollon's (2000) discussion of the theory of anticipatory discourse (the four variables – rapport with the audience, hostility towards the enemy, positive self-presentation of the government and the speaker and rapport with the people of Iraq – measured in the course of the analysis and illustrated in the figures make the problem in question clear). Additional comments are also made concerning some distinctive features of the speaker's discourse strategies which belong to the area of rhetoric as broadly understood. The time period chosen, covering Bush's principal speeches and statements, enabled me to investigate the communicative action of the speaker during the recent conflict between Iraq and the US. I analysed altogether some 44 speeches and statements delivered during the given time period. That makes up for the 2,229 communicative acts identified for the total of 2,203 sentences analysed. The framework used for the analysis is the one proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979), i.e. the intention and inference approach, according to which communicative acts are classified in terms of the kind of attitude each act expresses. Thus, each utterance was classified as a particular subtype of the four broad types of communicative illocutionary acts. Finally, I conclude by trying to gather and comment on the crucial entities found in Bush's speeches and statements.