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5.1 Major Findings
The thesis of this paper is to analyze the pragmatic strategies applied in Obama’s Speeches. The research target is speeches made by Obama covering different topics. As a result, the analysis and conclusion of the strategies are only responsible for Obama’s speeches.
According to the study of the speeches, following pragmatic strategies were found. The first of which is the strategy of choosing personal pronoun. Obama varies the use of person deixis to achieve communicational effect such as shorten the distance between him and the audience and establish common ground. The second strategy is proper redundancy. It seems this strategy violates the Maxim of Quantity, but the result of this violation is positive. Obama tends to use this strategy to convey his idea to the public. Last but not least is the strategy of using special sentences such as those with religious coloring and the "I think", "I believe", "I know" sentences. The application of this strategy makes the speech language more vivid and convincing.
Moreover, in this study the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle were applied to public speech, which proves the probability of these two theories of studying speeches. It is obvious that these two theories have some overlap. Actually, the publish of the Politeness Principle was on the foundation of the Cooperative Principle. They are compliments to each other, as a result, only one of them is not enough to analyze the public speeches. Considering both these principles helps us have a more reliable result.
Lastly, the violation of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle does not necessarily mean not cooperative or polite. Generally speaking, these two principles teach people how to avoid communication breakdown by demonstrating the principles such as the maxim of quantity , quality, relation and manner in the Cooperative Principle and the maxim of tact, generosity, approbation, as well as modesty, agreement and sympathy in the Politeness Principle. However, in this study we find that Obama deliberately violated these principles but he did not break down the communication. On the contrary, he has strengthened his ideas and achieved special effects by violating these principles. As a result, we may have the conclusion that proper violations of the principles such as parallelism and repetition, are pragmatic strategies aim to make the speech more effective.
After studying the speeches from the pragmatic point, we can find a link between the discourse of Obama’s speeches and pragmatics. The speeches are the realization of pragmatic theories especially the Politeness Principle and the Cooperative Principle.
5.2 Implications of the Study
This study provides a new way to do speech research. By reading this paper, the English learners can take a glance of the deep reasons of the success of Obama’s speeches from the prospective of Linguistics. They can not only know the grammatical use of English but also know how to use English in different situations. At the same time, the learners of pragmatics can practice the theories by studying Obama’s speeches so that they can have a better understanding of the theories.
5.3 Limitations and Suggestions
To make an excellent public speaking, the speaker should not only pay attention to his literary language but also know how to use other elements such as gestures and intonation. In the study, factors like body language, pace of the speech and political intention, are not discussed. However, these factors can also influence the communicational effect of public speaking. As a result, in further studies importance should be also attached to these elements.
Moreover, pragmatic strategy is an open subject, which can hardly be concluded in a single paper. There are still many theories still to be considered. Also, the choice of the speeches is far from complete. The strategies analyzed can only be applied to some of Obama’s speeches. Some special cases are not included in this study. Therefore, in the future study, more theories and cases should be considered to make the study more completed.