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3.1 Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle 7
3.2 Horn’s Quantity Principle and Relation Principle 10
4 Pragmatic Strategies Used in Political Speeches 11
4.1 Lexical Pragmaric Strategies 11
4.2 Sentential Pragmaric Strategies 13
4.3 Contextual Pragmaric Strategies 15
4.4 Pragmatic Functions in Political Speeches 18
6 Conclusion 21
Bibliography 23
1 Introduction
Speech is a special form of conversation. Although there are no questions and answers to each other just like the daily life conversation, the speaker in the speech continually conveys to the audience various information. The purpose of the speech is to transfer the messages to achieve the speaker’s goals. As an important part of the speech, the study of political speech is becoming increasingly popular among English learners. The researchers find it a good resource of appropriate, accurate and fluent English which can enrich the ways of expressions and usage. Furthermore, those classical political speeches win universal praise throughout the world and some of them such as I Have a Dream, by Martin Luther King, Jr. even are quoted in people's daily conversations. Among those classical political speeches, American presidential inaugural addresses are extensively influential and have great significance. Some of the classic inaugural speeches have become the masterpieces of the American literature and inspire generations of Americans who gain enlightenment from the speeches. This study examines pragmatic strategies applied in political speeches from the perspective of pragmatic principles, through analysis of President Obama's inaugural speech in 2013, his speech in Fudan University and his victory speech in 2012, and Prime Minister Carmeron's inaugural speech in 2010 and his speech in Beijing University.
This study examines major pragmatic strategies applied in the political speeches mentioned above. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of the research. The second chapter is a literature review of political speech. Chapter 3 discusses the theoretical review of two major pragmatic principles——Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Horn’s Q-, and R-principles. After that, Chapter 4 examines the pragmatic strategies used in political speeches from three levels——lexical level, sentential level, and contextual level and the function of pragmatic strategies. The last chapter is conclusion of this study.
2 Literature Review
“A public speech is usually considered to be a unified strategy aimed to achieve a special effect, informative, persuasive, or others, to the extent that it is clear, interesting, credible and appropriate for the audience within a given time limit.” (Wilson 1994). As a special form of public speech, political speech is the one that concerns about the internal affairs of the country and foreign relations. It is a kind of speech that shows the speaker’s position, standpoint and opinion toward the country’s domestic affairs and diplomatic relationship. As one of the most important weapons in political conflicts, political speech becomes the most important form of all kinds of speeches which has a wide range, deep meaning and influential affects. There are different types of political speeches——diplomatic speeches, military speeches, government reports, political debates, inaugural speeches, election speeches, press conference speeches and so on.
2.1 Definition of Political Speech
Depending on their general purposes, public speeches fall into three categories: informative speech, entertaining speech and persuasive speech. As persuasive speech, political speech can be on questions of fact, questions of value or questions of policy. People make full use of political speech to defend their positions, make points and propagate ideas. It is the important weapon for political struggle. Politicians make this kind of speech because of some kind of motives to reach certain political goals. Generally speaking, the political speech has three specific goals, which include to spread the political opinions of the speaker, to attack opponents and to win the audience’s support. According to formality of speeches, speeches can be formal speeches and informal speeches. As political speech is usually delivered on formal occasions, it is formal in terms of formality.