A Discursive Comparison of Trump’s and Al-Kazemi’s Speeches: Investigating Terrorism from Two Perspectives

Abstract

Considering the prevalent use of political discourse in the politicized world today, especially the ever-existing east and west polarities, any attempt to conduct a critical discourse analysis can be worth considering. Knowledge of the underlying thoughts and intentions of politicians in the discourse they present to one or more nations can be interesting and useful to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners too, as they are supposed to be prepared to face authentic text types. In the present research, the samples of the speeches made by two political leaders talking about terrorism were analyzed. One speaker was Donald Trump, the president of the U.S. and the other was Al-Kazemi, the prime minister of Iraq. These two could very well represent the two opposing perspectives to terrorism, the western and the eastern. For this purpose, Van Dijk’s theoretical framework was used which originally consists of 40 strategies, among which 12 were analyzed in this research. Among these strategies, some were more commonly used to influence the audience than the others (e.g. repetition). The qualitative analysis also showed that both parties attempted to exempt the self from the prevalent terrorism and instead blame the other for promoting terrorism. The western party even showed instances of putting part of the blame on his political rival in the U.S. (Hillary Clinton) for the promotion of terrorism. Finally, the findings were discussed in further detail and several conclusive remarks were made. Suggestions for further research followed the conclusion.