The Pragmatics of Bias in American Political Speeches

Abstract

This study deals with analyzing bias in selected American political speeches from a pragmatic perspective. The study aims at finding out the pragmatic strategies that American politicians exploit to issue bias in their political speeches. For the sake of clarification, this aim can be sub-divided into the following aims: (a) Specifying the speech acts that are utilized by American politician to issue bias, (b) Showing to what extent American politician exploit Grice’s maxims to realize bias, (c)Shedding light on the categories of presupposition that are available in the selected data, (d) Identifying the impoliteness strategies and sub- strategies that are used to issue bias in the political speeches uttered by an American politician, and (e) Specifying the tropes that are utilized to realize bias in the selected data. To achieve the aims of the study and test the validity of its hypotheses, the following procedures are adopted: three random speeches for an American politician have been selected to be analysed according to the adopted eclectic model to identify the types of bias and the pragmatic strategies utilized to issue bias in the selected data. At the end of the research, there are the major findings that the researchers arrived at.