Interpersonal meaning analysis of Donald Trump’s remarks on COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

This study is conducted to reveal the types of mood, speech function realizations, and the persuasion strategies applied to Donald Trump‟s clauses in his three remarks regarding the issue of COVID-19. Discourse analysis is applied to analyze the data. The applied mood types and speech function realizations are then correlated with Cialdini's principles of persuasion to see the persuasion principles applied in the three remarks. The results show that the President's three remarks are dominated by declarative mood with three most frequently used speech functions: statements of fact, statements of opinion, and statements of the assertion. In terms of Cialdini's persuasion principles, the speaker uses all of the six principles in his three remarks, except the principle of preference employed only in the third remark. The other five principles, namely authority, consistency, social-evidence, reciprocity, and rareness/scarcity, are contained in the three remarks with their persuasive purposes. In Cialdini's persuasion principles, the clauses used by President Trump reveal the strategies of taking advantage of his powerful authority in his remarks, showing his consistency while delivering the remarks, expressing his best efforts for his inhabitants, and showing successful evidence in overcoming the pandemic compared with other countries‟ endeavors. © 2021, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.