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An Intra-cultural Analysis of Interpersonal Metadiscourse Markers Used in Obama and Trump’s Speeches on the Iran Nuclear Deal

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Abstract

In an attempt to investigate the impact of interpersonal and contextual differences on the use of metadiscourse in political rhetoric, the present corpus-based study sought to examine the similarities and differences between Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the two most recent presidents of the United States of America (USA), in terms of interpersonal metadiscourse markers used in their speeches on the Iran nuclear deal. To this end, Dafouz’s (J Pragmat 40:95–113, 2008) classification of interpersonal metadiscourse was used to compare the two presidents’ general and specific preferences for interpersonal metadiscourse markers. Based on the results drawn from quantitative analysis of the data, no significant difference was found between the two presidents in the use of macro-categories of interpersonal metadiscourse markers. Nonetheless, the results revealed a statistically significant difference between the two presidents in terms of their specific preferences for interpersonal metadiscourse use. The findings implied a significant association between interpersonal and contextual differences and the use of interpersonal metadiscourse on a micro level. The study results may profit those interested in rhetorical analysis of the leading politicians’ discourse to either replicate the success or avoid the failure of their discourse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Elnaz Mirzaeian

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  1. Elnaz Mirzaeian
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Correspondence to Elnaz Mirzaeian.

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Mirzaeian, E. An Intra-cultural Analysis of Interpersonal Metadiscourse Markers Used in Obama and Trump’s Speeches on the Iran Nuclear Deal. Corpus Pragmatics 4, 191–205 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-019-00076-7

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