Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 13:3 (2014) ► pp.538–562

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Bush, Obama

(in)formality as persuasion in political discourse

 | Washington and Lee University |
Published online: 22 December 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.13.3.08rey
This paper, framed under the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), explains social processes by analyzing discourse practices. It proposes (para)linguistic variables employed in the creation of (in)formality in discourse in relation to two Aristotelian persuasive modes: Ethos and Pathos (Kennedy, George A. 1991. Aristotle, on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). These modes of persuasion reveal different ways to convey a political message in the current U.S. political scene.
This paper compares the stylistic differences in speeches given by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to justify escalating troops in the conflicts of Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2009), respectively. I propose (para)linguistic indicators of formality associated with Aristotelian modes at the level of linguistic choices (“lexical variables” [Schilling-Estes, Natalie. Natalie Schilling-Estes2004. “Investigating Stylistic Variation.” In The Handbook of Variation and Change, ed. by Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and , 375–401. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar] and “marked register usages” [Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2001. “Calculating Speakers: Codeswitching in a Rational Choice Model.” Language in Society 301: 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar]), textual organization (structure and predictability), non-verbal communication (i.e. laughter; Jefferson, Gail, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff. 1987. “Laughter in the Pursuit of Intimacy.” In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by Graham Button and John R.E. Lee, 152–205. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and intertextuality (Blackledge, Adrian. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John ­Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2003. Analyzing Discourse. London: Routledge.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) by means of new voices (Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (ed. by M Holquist). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) into the here-and-now moment of discourse.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Formality, Style and Aristotelian modes of persuasion
  • 3.Linguistic and paralinguistic indicators of (in)formality andmodes of persuasion
    • a.Lexical choices: Referential indexicals and marked register usages
    • b.Textual organization: Structure and predictability
    • c.Supporting voices
    • d.Key elements (e.g. Joking vs. Serious)
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (63)
References
Attenborough, Frederick. 2010. “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Rhetorical Construction of ‘Bad’ Scientific Work.” Public Understanding of Science 19 (6), 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (ed. by M Holquist). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 2001. “Genre.” In Key Terms in Language and Culture, ed. by A. Duranti, 79–82. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1984. “Language Style As Audience Design.” Language in Society 131: 145–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Back in style: Reworking audience design.” In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. by P. Eckert and J. Rickford, 139–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. Coral Gables, PL: University of Miami Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John ­Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan.2008. “Bernstein and poetics revisited: Voice, Globalization and Education.” Discourse & Society 19 (4), 425–451. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bonnin, Juan E. 2011. From Discursive Event to Discourse Événement: A Case Study of Political–religious Discourse in Argentina. Discourse & Society 22 (6): 677–692. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Capone, Alessandro. 2010. “Barack Obama’s South Carolina speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 2964–2977. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, Lane. 1932. The rhetoric of Aristotle. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duranti. Alessandro. 2006. “Narrating the political self in a campaign for U.S. Congress.” Language in Society 351: 467–497. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eggins, Suzanne, and J.R. Martin. 1997. “Genres and Registers of Discourse.” In Discourse as Structure and Process, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 230–256. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 1972. “On Sociolinguistic Rules: Alternation and Co-occurrence.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics, ed. by John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 213–250. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Analyzing Discourse. London: Routledge.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1972. Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1999. “What are Discourse Markers?” Journal of Pragmatics 311: 931–952. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gal, Susan, and Kathyrn A. Woolard. 1995. “Constructing Languages and Publics: Authority and Representation.” Pragmatics 5 (2): 129–138. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. “Footing.” Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 1979. “Formality and Informality in Communicative Events.” American Anthropologist 81 (4): 773–790. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, Howard, Donald M. Taylor, and Richard Bourhis. 1973. “Towards a Theory of Interpersonal Accommodation through Language: Some Canadian Data.” Language in Society 21: 177–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, Howard, and Peter Powesland. 1997. “Accommodation Theory.” In Sociolinguistics a Reader and Coursebook, ed. by Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, 232–239. New York: St. Martin’s Press, INC.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haiman, Franklyn. 1948. An Experimental Study of the Effects of Ethos in Public Speaking. Diss. Northwestern University. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hart, Roderick P. and Bartholomew H. Sparrow. 2001. Politics, Discourse, and American Society: New Agendas. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield publishers, INC.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hovland, Carl I., Irving L. Janis, and Harold H. Kelley. 1953. Communication and Persuasion. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff. 1987. “Laughter in the Pursuit of Intimacy.” In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by Graham Button and John R.E. Lee, 152–205. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 1996. The linguistic individual: Self-expression in language and linguistics. NewYork: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. “Lingual Biography and Linguistic Variation.” Language sciences 211: 313–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “The Individual Voice in Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 291: 405–424. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Stance, Style, and the Linguistic Individual.” In Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Stance, ed. by Alexandra Jaffe, 29–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joos, Martin 1959. “The Isolation of Styles.” Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics 121: 107–113. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kennedy, George A. 1991. Aristotle, on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koven, Michèle. 2002. “An Analysis of Speaker Role Inhabitance in Narratives of Personal Experience." Journal of Pragmatics 341: 167–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax.” Language in the Inner City, 354–396. Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCroskey, James C. 1966. Scales for the Measurement of Ethos. In Speech Monographs. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCroskey, James C., and Thomas J. Young, 1981. “Ethos and Credibility: The Construct and Its Measurement after Three Decades.” Central States Speech 321: 24–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2001. “Calculating Speakers: Codeswitching in a Rational Choice Model.” Language in Society 301: 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor. 1979. “Planned and Unplanned Discourse.” In Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, ed. by Talmy Givón. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pels, Dick. 2003. “Aesthetic Representation and Political Style: Re-balancing Identity and Difference in Media Democracy.” In Media and the Restyling of Politics, J. Corner and D. Pels, 41–66. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Philips, Susan. 2004. “Language and Social Inequality.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 474–495. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2006. Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reyes, Antonio. 2008. “Discursive Strategies in Chávez’s Political Discourse: Voicing, Distancing, and, Shifting.” Critical Discourse Studies 5 (2), 133–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Power, Emotions and Agency in Political Discourse.” In Readings in Language Studies, Volume 2: Language and Power, ed. by M. Mantero, P. Chamness Miller, and J.L. Watzke, 201–218. Wilmington, DE: International Society for Language Studies.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011a. Voice in Political Discourse: Castro, Chavez, Bush and their Strategic Use of Language. London: Continuum. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011b. “Strategies of Legitimization in Political Discourse: From Words to Actions.” Discourse & Society 22 (6): 781–807. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011c. “Palin v. Biden: The Fight for Credibility in Political Discourse." Issues in Political Discourse Analysis 3 (1): 75–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rickford, John R., and Penelope Eckert (eds). 2001. Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. Natalie Schilling-Estes2004. “Investigating Stylistic Variation.” In The Handbook of Variation and Change, ed. by Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and , 375–401. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1995/1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings, ed. by B. Blount, 187–221. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. “The Uses and Utility of Ideology: A Commentary.” In Language Ideology: Practice and Theory, ed. by B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard and P. Kroskrity, 123–145. NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Talking Politics: The Substance of Style from Abe to “W”. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
.2004. “‘Cultural’ concepts and the language–culture nexus.” Current Anthropology 45 (5): 621–652. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 2004. Introducting Functional Grammar. (2nd ed.). London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2002. Sociolinguistic Variation and Change. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown ­University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2008. “Introduction: Discourse Studies – Important Concepts and Terms.” In: Ruth
Wodak, Ruth and Michal Krzyzanowski (eds). Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–29.
. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolfson, Nessa. 1976. “Speech Events and Natural Speech. Some Implications for Sociolinguistic Methodology.” Language in Society (51): 189–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Luarsabishvili, Vladimer
2025. The Composition and Communication of Political Discourse: A Methodological Approach. Política y Sociedad 62:1 ► pp. e92812 ff. DOI logo
Ponton, D.M.
2022. Corporate Feminism? Emma Watson and the UN’s #HeForShe Movement. Language and Text 9:2 ► pp. 76 ff. DOI logo
Jaworska, Sylvia
2021. Competence and collectivity: The discourse of Angela Merkel’s media communications during the first wave of the pandemic. Discourse, Context & Media 42 ► pp. 100506 ff. DOI logo
Reyes, Antonio & Andrew Ross
2021. From the White House with anger: Conversational features in President Trump's official communication. Language & Communication 77 ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Song, Yonsuk
2020. Ethics of journalistic translation and its implications for machine translation. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 66:4-5 ► pp. 829 ff. DOI logo
Theodoropoulou, Irene
2020. Speech style as political capital: Barack Obama’s Athens speech. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 15:3 ► pp. 325 ff. DOI logo
Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer
2018. Euphemism as a discursive strategy in US local and state politics. Journal of Language and Politics 17:6 ► pp. 789 ff. DOI logo
Mayaffre, Damon & Ronny Scholz
2017. Constructing ‘the French people’ – On Sarkozy’s populism. Journal of Language and Politics 16:5 ► pp. 683 ff. DOI logo
Reyes, Antonio
2015. Building intimacy through linguistic choices, text structure and voices in political discourse. Language & Communication 43 ► pp. 58 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue