Intonation Analysis of the Self/Other Representation in Bush’s Speech

Abstract

Intonation is one of the most important suprasegmental features, which conveys communicative strategies in political language. It is essential in reflecting the implicit meaning since it shows the movement of pitch or patterns of melody as well as the multiple movements used by people’s voice in speech .This study fills the gap in a literature as it aims to investigate the types of information tones used in shaping the discursive strategies of other/self in Bush’s speech after September 11 attacks based on an eclectic model of Van Dijk's (2006) model of ideological square and Brazil’s (1997) model of discourse intonation. The data is collected qualitatively and a mixed method is used to analyze the results of this study. The major findings show that Bush used commonly the proclaiming with a (fall) tone in shaping many discursive strategies to represent the image of “US” (selves) positively than the image of “THEM” (others) negatively in order to add more and new information and attract the attention of Americans and manipulate and motivate them against terrorists, particularly Muslim people. It is hoped that such a study helps to enhance learners’ understanding of speakers’ intended meaning, since it focuses on showing the tonal types of the social and cognitive traits of the politician in question.