Barack Obama`S Speech Analysis

INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to examine the strategies of President Barack Obama, and its ideological component, also why Barack Obama use exact words and how strong is the influence. The topic has been studied before by Juraj Horvath (2010),Jana Langrova(2010) and Junling Wang(2010). Therefore, the goal of the conducted research paper is to find out which of the political are used more often in the speech of Barack Obama, and what does it mean. The enabling objectives to get the research goal are the following: ) To read and analyze the secondary sources on the research topic 2) To collect the empirical data 3) To implement the necessary research method 4) To create a table, showing the most frequent terms. The hypothesis is that convinced political terms are used more often in the speech of Barack Obama than other terms. The research methods of research applied in the study: Library research: the study of the secondary sources on the research theme. Quantitative empirical research method: corpus-based quantitative research.
The main research method applied in the study was quantitative frequency analysis. Chapter 1 is devoted to the secondary sources analysis on the research topic. Chapter 2 explains the research methodology applied in the study. Chapter 3 presents the research results and discussion on finding. Appendix contains the table presenting the most frequently used terms. Analysis of Secondary Sources (The Literature Review) Chapter I presents the literature connected with analysis of Barack Obama`s speeches.
The power and influence of Barack Obama speeches are discussed in this text; also his expressed ideology and its manipulations are mentioned then. Opinions and thoughts of Juraj Horvath “Critical Discourse Analysis of Obama`s Political Discourse” and Jana Langrova “Ideology in Obama`s Prague Speech in the Mirror of Discourse Analysis” (2010) are presented and compared in Chapter I. Juraj Horvath used quantitative method to write his analysis, and when he counted all the words, what he were interested in, he expressed the ideas, which are very remarkable. …”new”, which characterizes the strategy and ideas of the newly sworn president and his administration”, this extract is about Barack Obama`s often used word “new”. Juraj Horvath`s opinion about the use of this word is very interesting. He considers that the fact of using the word “new”, so often as Barack Obama does, shows his ideological aspects and promptitude for the innovations. Jana Langrova looked for the rhyme, speed and phonetic features of Barack Obama`s speech, but her conclusion and thoughts are very similair to Juraj Horvath.

Jana Langrova considered that his speech employs rhyme, repetition and stress. He also stresses the word “new” in his speeches very often, and Jana Langrova noticed it. “There is new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to built…”,-these are Barack Obama`s words which were analyzed by two people. To summarize, Chapter I deals with the secondary sources concerned with previous analysis of the speeches of Barack Obama. Methodology This Chapter II will deal with the methodology used in this research.
First the research method will be presented and then the research procedure will be described step by step. There are many methods to analyze the text, but theme of chosen paper will be analyzed by quantitative method. Quantitative research is used generally in social sciences such as political science. Qualitative methods construct information just on the particular cases studied, and any more main conclusions are only hypotheses. Quantitative methods may be used to verify, which hypotheses are true.
Advocates of quantitative methods dispute that only by use of such methods can the social sciences become truly scientific, also advocates of qualitative methods argue that quantitative methods tend to obscure the reality of the public phenomena under the study, because they abandon the non-measurable issues, which could be the most valuable. In this paper the author was used to gather quantitative data —to deal with information connected with numbers and anything that is measurable. Statistics, tables and graphs will be presented as the results of these methods in appendix.
The following chapter will be devoted to giving the results. Findings and Discussion The world of linguistics has been affected he and stimulated by Barack Obama`s individuality. Many new words have been created. Obamania, is linking with the passion and obsession he has been accepted and favored by many. Barack Obama`s ideology and philosophy have been referred to as one of the most confusing and difficult ideologies to analyze. In the speech of Barack Obama the strong religious content ideas can be found, for example: 1) “Thank you. God bless you.
And God bless the United States of America. ” 2) “This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. ” 3) “…on the horizon and God’s grase upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. ” 4) “…the God – given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. ” That fact that he also uses the direct and indirect speeches from Bible can all help Barack Obama to win the supporting of audience.
The fact, which was very interesting to find out was that Barack Obama uses the words “we”, “Americans”, “each of us”, “all”, “our” very often to his speech(1), and from the psychological point of view it is made to create a close relationship between the president an his honorable audience. ( From Barack Obama`s inaugural speech quantitative analysis) In order to arrive at a more quantitative result of this analysis, a keyword analysis of the most frequently used words and nuances in Obama`s speech gave the following findings.
His speech consisted of 2403 words, and the pronoun “we” – was repeated 62 times. It was the most frequently used word by Barack Obama,for example: 1) “…we must work together…” 2) “…we are bound by shared values…” 3) “…we will seek to include all nuclear weapons…” 4) “…we believe…” 5) “…we cannot succeed…” 6) “…we know the path…” 7) “…we have to insist…” Also it is important to mention that it was very interesting to found that Barack Obama uses biblical language and quotations, non-traditional speech, and his position shows his liberal stand of him, what could be found in each speech of Barack Obama.
Finally, the most important part, what I have found in his speeches is that Obama want to create a new nation which will be free from the war or other bad influence, and also he tries to get away from the old partisan divisions and looks for to be perceived as being above ideology. His thoughts and ideology about the better future without any bad elements in it show the hidden meaning of his ideas and promisses, which is logically followed from his ideas – “new” is always better, and for him the best nation is new = free nation.