Article
Political Discourse Analysis: Analyzing Building Tasks in Trump’s Speech in Saudi Arabia
Arab World English Journal
(2022)
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate how the tasks of significance and identities are built in President Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia to find how President Trump employs language to perform these two building tasks. President Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia was analyzed qualitatively according to Gee’s (2011) building tasks model. It has been found that President Trump enacts and builds the significance task by carefully selecting lexical items, cooperative patterns, lexical choice, and compliments. Furthermore, President Trump enacts particular identities and attributes specific identities to others in his speech, such as political, social, and cooperative identities. The analysis shows that President Trump shifts between the identities such as President of the U.S., a representative of the American People, a fighter and defender of American citizens and the world’s safety and security, a businessman, a well-educated and knowledgeable person. This study recommends that future research investigate other political speeches delivered by President Trump based on any of the seven-building tasks of language that did not cover in this study.
Keywords
- political discourse,
- building tasks,
- identities,
- significance,
- Trump’s speech
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer June 24, 2022
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol13no2.32
Citation Information
Aied Alenizi & Atef Odeh AbuSa’aleek. "Political Discourse Analysis: Analyzing Building Tasks in Trump’s Speech in Saudi Arabia" Arab World English Journal Vol. 13 Iss. 2 (2022) p. 462 - 472 ISSN: 2229-9327 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/arabworldenglishjournal-awej/1365/