English Personal Pronouns as a Manipulation Strategy in Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Authors

  • Raid Muhammad Jasim MA. Candidate
  • Sabah S. Mustafa University of Baghdad , College of Languages, Department of English Language, Baghdad, Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36586/jcl.2.2021.0.44.0001

Keywords:

Ideological Influence, Ideological Square concept, Manipulation, Political Discourse, Personal Pronouns

Abstract

Manipulation is a discursive concept which plays a key role in political discourse by which politicians can impose some impact on their recipients through using linguistic features, most prominent of which are personal pronouns (Van Dijk, 1995). The aim of this study is to investigate how politicians utilize the personal pronouns, namely; We and I and their possessive forms as a tool of manipulating the audience's mind based on Van Dijk's  "ideological square" which shows positive-self representation and negative-other representation (Van Dijk,1998:p.69). To this end, American President Donald Trump's 2020 State of the Union speech was chosen to be the data of analysis. Only (8) examples out of (226) extracts of his speech involving the use the personal pronouns along with their indications were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results reveal that Trump uses these pronouns to exercise an ideological influence on his audience, basically to present himself positively. The study concludes that Trump strategically uses personal pronouns as a functional indication of collectivity, nationalism, and direct/shared responsibility. Findings might help linguists and political analysts to understand how politicians have the ability to exploit the linguistic characteristics in their language to fulfill their ends manipulatively.

Author Biographies

  • Raid Muhammad Jasim, MA. Candidate

    in the Department of English, University of Baghdad, College of Languages. His areas of interest are discourse analysis and pragmatics.

    Email: [email protected]  

  • Sabah S. Mustafa, University of Baghdad , College of Languages, Department of English Language, Baghdad, Iraq

    About the authors:

    Dr. Sabah S. Mustafa is a professor of Linguistics and Translation in the Department of English, University of Baghdad, College of Languages in which he has been teaching English since 1987. He has published several articles in the area of Linguistics and Translation. His research interests are contrastive linguistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. He is currently Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Languages.

    Email: [email protected]

References

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- Blass, R. (2005). Manipulation in the speeches and writings of Hitler and the NSDAP from a relevance theoretic point of view. In de Saussure, L., & Schulz, P. (Eds.), Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century. Discourse, language, mind (pp.169-190). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Published

2021-06-01

Issue

Section

Department of English language

How to Cite

English Personal Pronouns as a Manipulation Strategy in Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis. (2021). Journal of the College of Languages (JCL), 44, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.36586/jcl.2.2021.0.44.0001

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