The identity and power reflected in Joe Biden’s speech to the U.S. Congress: a critical discourse analysis

This item is published by Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya

Lonteng, Rinneke Priscilia (2022) The identity and power reflected in Joe Biden’s speech to the U.S. Congress: a critical discourse analysis. Undergraduate thesis, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya.

Text
Rinneke Priscilia Lonteng_A93218126 ok.pdf
Download (2MB)

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the identity and power of Joe Biden through his speech at a joint session of the United States congress on April 28, 2021. The speech is to mark his 100 first days in the office. Overall the speech tells about Joe Biden's ambition as president to further advance his country, America. There are three formulations of the problem: (1) What are the language features used by Joe Biden in his speech based on textual analysis from Thomas Huckin? (2) How does Joe Biden build identity in his speech? and (3) How does Joe Biden reveal his power through speech? This research uses a qualitative approach to a clear and systematic description and pays attention to the ongoing phenomena. This research applies the three steps Critical Discourse Analysis theory by Thomas Huckin (1997), starting with feature analysis at the whole text level, then analysis at the sentence and word level, and last is contextual interpretation. The results showed that there were ten linguistic features used by Joe Biden: genre, framing, coherence, foregrounding, topicalization, insinuation, connotation, register, presupposition, and modality. The genre of the speech is argumentative, in which Biden expresses his opinion. The framing of the speech follows the structure of writing speech: opening, content, and summing up. Coherence between sentences with other sentences and paragraphs with each other in speech are interconnected and related correctly. He mentioned the topic of the speech and then explained by adding allusions and using the connotation word to support the meaning conveyed. Then Biden also uses presupposition and modality to express the intended message. From those explanation, Joe Biden can construct his identity by showing his caring for America or how he belongs to America. Then, he reveals his power by mentioning his position as president.