Language of Persuasion in Bill Clinton’s Speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, 2008

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Högskolan Dalarna Concepts Course Essay Supervisor: Larissa Gustafsson Language of persuasion in Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, 2008 Autumn, 2008 Diep Bich Thi. Nguyen 850314T163 H08thing@du.se Table of contents 1. Introduction 1.1 Aim 1.2 Methodology and data 2. Analysis 2.1 Presupposition 2.2 Implicature 2.3 Parallelism 3. Conclusion References Appendices 1. Introduction Language, identifying culture and maintaining civilization of a community, has caught much attention of scholars worldwide for centuries. Studying how language is used for different purposes in society, sociolinguists have found its great effect especially in politics where language can shape and show the power (Wodak, R. cited in Crowley, Watson, and Waller, 2008, p.6). Successful politicians, through their eloquent speeches, can convince the public to act willingly as they want by exploiting different aspects of the effective language (Thomas et al. 2005, p.39). 1.1 Aim The main aim of the essay is identifying presupposition, implicature and parallelism and analysing the features in B. Clinton’s recent speech at the Democratic National Convention. To be more specific, the essay discovers how these linguistic features contributed to the former president’s support of Barack Obama in the present election campaign. 1.2 Methodology and data The speech serving as the primary data for this essay was made by Mr. Clinton to recommend his democratic candidate, Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the DNC in Denver in August 27th, 2008 (The text is retrieved from http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/conventions/videos/transcripts/20080827_CLINTON_SPEECH.html) The most illustrative examples of presupposition, implicature and parallelism are quoted

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