Suggestive potential of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential speech ‘Annual Address to the US Congress’

Abstract

The article deals with suggestive potential in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech devoted to the issues of confronting World War II threats and proposing aid to those European countries where it broke out. The speech was addressed to the United States Congress. The rally of congressional representatives opposed the government to propose assistance to the countries in need having faced the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus, the politicians considered the war on another continent was unlikely to have а detrimental effect on the country’s interests. Suggestive influence is based on the inculcation of information to affect an interlocutor’s uncritical perception to alter their attitudes and actions. Implementation of such a phenomenon in Roosevelt’s speech is realized through variative repetitive information about the potential threat from the aggressor to US liberty and confrontation of the New Order Hitler wants to impose on democratic societies. Moreover, Roosevelt appeals to the congressional representatives’ awareness through the system of images that makes it possible to describe actions and regimes of those who put the world order under threat. It goes in contrast with the USA’s system, order, and democracy. Suggestive influence in Roosevelt’s speech presented by linguistic units at different levels to indicate the potential threat to America. Discourse strategies in the analyzed speech are expressed with the help of tactics of opposition and tactics of sacralization. They are implemented by multilevel linguistic units of evaluative semantics, units that bear sacred meaning, as well as epithets, metaphors, comparisons, and truisms.