Investigating the Discursive Strategies in the Language of the US Presidential Debates

Abstract

The U.S. presidential debates are rich in revealing national/international policies of the politicians. More specifically, the 2012 U.S. presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are unique in balancing and predicting the election outcome through the candidates' discourses. A Political Discourse Analysis is integrated to Ruth Wadak's (2011) Discourse-Historical Approach to investigate how the candidates employ the discursive strategies in order to gain the public support. The present study adopts a qualitative design of analyzing the candidates' speeches. The materials are particular extracts selected from the transcripts of one presidential debate. The purpose of the study is to uncover the discursive strategies in the candidates' speeches when they debate the most important issues of USA. The findings indicate that Obama's continuous use of the referential strategy indicates that there is a heavy emphasis on positive self-representation, defending the previous policy of Obama's government and presenting the record of achievement to gain the voters' support. On the other hand, Romney uses the argumentation strategy to attack Obama's previous policy and trigger the topos of threat that the same faults will take place if Obama is reelected. That is, Romney diminishes the public support surrounding Obama.