America is strong, America is proud and America is free : A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s State of the Union Addresses
Räikkönen, Tuomas (2021)
2021
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2021-11-29
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202111038149
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202111038149
Tiivistelmä
This thesis analyzes the State of the Union Addresses by former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The State of the Union address is a constitutionally mandated speech which the president shall address to the congress annually. The material consists of the first four speeches by Obama and four of Trump’s.
The study has two foci: Firstly, it focuses on the concordance lines of “America is” in order to analyze which traits the presidents assign to America.
Secondly, this study analyzes the collocates of “America*” that are work and economy-related. The purpose of this is to find out which aspects of the economy are valuable to the speaker, and whether the collocates reveal anything of the target audience of the speech.
The results show that Trump used “America is” significantly more often than his predecessor. Obama’s instances referred mostly to strength and power while Trump’s, in addition to strength and power, also referred to making allies, productivity and the American exceptionalism. Trump’s instances also shifted from making allies and strength and power to the American exceptionalism and productivity toward the end of his term.
The collocate analysis shows that Trump referred to America significantly more often than Obama. Obama also seemed to address white-collar workers more, since he used more words referring to skills and businesses. Trump, however, seemed to address the blue-collar workers, since he repeatedly used the word worker and had collocates such as grit, labor and taxpayers.
The study has two foci: Firstly, it focuses on the concordance lines of “America is” in order to analyze which traits the presidents assign to America.
Secondly, this study analyzes the collocates of “America*” that are work and economy-related. The purpose of this is to find out which aspects of the economy are valuable to the speaker, and whether the collocates reveal anything of the target audience of the speech.
The results show that Trump used “America is” significantly more often than his predecessor. Obama’s instances referred mostly to strength and power while Trump’s, in addition to strength and power, also referred to making allies, productivity and the American exceptionalism. Trump’s instances also shifted from making allies and strength and power to the American exceptionalism and productivity toward the end of his term.
The collocate analysis shows that Trump referred to America significantly more often than Obama. Obama also seemed to address white-collar workers more, since he used more words referring to skills and businesses. Trump, however, seemed to address the blue-collar workers, since he repeatedly used the word worker and had collocates such as grit, labor and taxpayers.