The Translation of Parallelism in Arabic Political Speeches between Loss and Compensation: A Comparative Study

Political discourse is characterized by stylistic and rhetorical features that distinguish it from other text genres. When a rhetorical feature such as parallelism is used frequently in Arabic political speeches, it becomes significant to highlight the fact that this recurrence of structure is deliberate. According to Islam &Cahyani (2020: 273): [T]he deliberate use of a word or phrase more than once in a sentence or a text to create a sense of pattern or form or to emphasize certain elements in the mind of the reader or listener […] can be utilized [as] a major rhetorical strategy for producing emphasis, clarity, amplification, or emotional effect. The objective of this study is to highlight the loss and the compensation of parallelism when translated from Arabic into English in political speeches at bottom-up level: word, sentence and chunk levels. This study shows that parallelism is used very frequently in Arabic political speeches, and it is very popular among Arab political speakers as a rhetorical device to achieve persuasion, assertion and emotional effect on its audience.

SPEECH BEHAVIOR: COMMUNICATIVE AND PRAGMATIC ASPECT (ON POLITICAL DISCOURSE BASIS)

The article is devoted to the communicative and pragmatic aspect of an utterance. A review of the basic principles and maxims leading to successful communication is made by the author. The purpose of the investigation involved is to identify actively used speech tactics, their structural features to achieve the perlocution. The material of the research is the political speeches by D. Cameron, a representative of the British Conservative Party. Based on the investigation, some conclusions can be made. In the political discourse self-presentation and accusation / blame tactics are regarded as the most active ones created on the explicature and implicature basis.

Blurring the Boundaries between Real Worlds, Discourse Worlds and Text Worlds

Blurring the Boundaries between Real Worlds, Discourse Worlds and Text WorldsWhat do the article title ‘Black Widow Breaks Up With Kylo Ren’ and a Twitter message saying ‘The scene in The Departed where Mark Wahlberg shoots Matt Damon is the blueprint for how to handle corrupt cops’ have in common? Clearly, they both combine references to actors and movies, but do they combine them through the same cognitive technique(s)? This paper starts by addressing the question of how these two instances of reference differ. The line of argumentation that is supported suggests that a world-building theory needs to be employed in order to understand the difference. In doing this, the paper aims and contributes to the theoretical advancement of world-building approaches by arguing for the introduction of the concept of ‘Real Worlds’ in research on Text Worlds and Discourse Worlds. Data set sample analyses employing the Real World concept are included to verify the main theoretical premise. The analyzed texts cover traditional genres such as political speeches as well as modern-day, boundary-blurring genres such as Twitter messages. Zacieranie granic między światem rzeczywistym, światem dyskursu i światem tekstu Co mają wspólnego artykuł zatytułowany Czarna wdowa zrywa z Kylo Renem i wiadomość na Twitterze o treści „Scena w The Departed, w której Mark Wahlberg strzela do Matta Damona, jest schematem postępowania ze skorumpowanymi gliniarzami”? Oczywiście oba łączą odniesienia do aktorów i filmów, ale czy łączą je za pomocą tych samych technik poznawczych? Artykuł rozpoczyna się od odpowiedzi na pytanie, czym różnią się te dwa przypadki odniesienia. Wynikiem zaprezentowanej argumentacji jest sugestia, aby w celu zrozumienia różnicy między nimi wyjść od teorii tworzenia światów. Opowiedzenie się za wykorzystaniem koncepcji „świata rzeczywistego” w badaniach nad światem tekstu i światem dyskursu ma na celu rozwój i wzmocnienie teorii tworzenia światów. W weryfikacji podstawowej przesłanki teoretycznej w artykule uwzględniono wyniki analizy próbek ze zbioru danych, w których wykorzystano koncepcję „świata rzeczywistego”. Analizie poddano zarówno teksty reprezentujące tradycyjne gatunki, takie jak przemówienia polityczne, jak również teksty, w których dochodzi do zacierania granic międzygatunkowych, na przykład wiadomości w serwisie społecznościowym Twitter.

Study on the Correlation between Linguistic Complexity and Audience Recognition in College English Speech Contests

From the perspective of linguistic complexity, this paper explores the correlation between linguistic complexity and audience recognition in college English speech contests. By adopting the corpus construction and computer visualized data analysis, this study analyzes the speech of contestants at different levels in FLTRP Cup National English peaking Contest 2019-2020, the most authoritative college English speech contest in China. The study shows that: 1) In college English speech contests, the lexical complexity of the speech is negatively correlated with the recognition degree of the audience (i.e. the final ranking of the competition or the success of the speech). 2) The syntactic complexity of the speech exists reasonable interval to ensure good audience recognition. 3) In college English speech contests, the correlation between the lexical complexity and syntactic complexity of speeches and audience recognition is similar to the correlation between the rhetoric and audience recognition in political speeches which is obtained by previous researchers in the field of political speeches. Therefore, we think this study has a certain practical value. It provides evidence of linguistic complexity for predicting the winner of college English speech contests and helping contestants prepare for the contest better.

“Stirring it up!” Emotionality in audience responses to political speeches

Speaker-audience interaction in political speeches has been conceptualised as a form of dialogue between speaker and audience. Of particular importance is research pioneered by Atkinson (e.g., 1983, 1984a, 1984b) on the analysis of rhetorical devices utilised by politicians to invite audience applause. Atkinson was not concerned with emotionalisation in political speech-making, rather with how applause was invited in relation to group identities through ingroup praise and/or outgroup derogation. However, his theory has provided important insights into how speakers invite audience responses, and a powerful stimulus for associated research. The purpose of this article is to address the shortfall of emotionalisation research within the realm of political speeches. We begin with an account of Atkinsons influential theory of rhetoric, followed by a relevant critique. The focus then turns to our main aim, namely, how key findings from previous speech research can be interpreted in terms of emotionalisation. Specifically, the focus is on audience responses to the words of political speakers, and how different forms of response may reflect audience emotionality. It is proposed that both duration and frequency of invited affiliative audience responses may indicate more positive emotional audience responses, while uninvited interruptive audience applause and booing may provide notable clues to issues on which audiences have strong feelings. It is concluded that there is strong evidence that both invited and uninvited audience responses may provide important clues to emotionalisation - both positive and negative - in political speeches.

The use of metaphor power indices for the analysis of speech impact in political public speeches

The article examines the metaphor power related to the impact of public political speeches on the audience. The purpose of the study is to identify the potentially hidden speech impact of public discourse in order to understand the intentions of the speech messages authors. To that end, the aspects of metaphors under analysis include their density in the text, their intensity, functions and positions in the compositional structure of the text. The study tests the method of comprehensive analysis of metaphor power, which is based on the calculation of the corresponding indices MDI (Metaphor density index), MII (Metaphor intensity index), MfTI (Metaphor functional typology index) and MStI (Metaphor structural index). Each index is based on a mathematical formula: MDI reflects the average number of metaphors per a hundred words of the text; MII demonstrates the medium intensity of metaphors (new or conventional metaphors dominating the text); MfTI shows which functions are mainly performed by metaphors in the text; MStI represents the compositional parts of the text where the metaphors are concentrated. The hypothesis about the possibility of using such quantitative methods is tested on the material of three texts of public speeches by the political leaders of Russia, USA and China. The analysis shows that the greatest speech impact is achieved by the speech of the President of China distinguished by the highest metaphor density (4.07), and, the values of MfTI (2.23) MStI (2.51) indicate the intention to restructure the socio-political concepts, as well as to introduce a new content into his countrys domestic and foreign policy. This method for identifying the metaphor power can be used to investigate the potential impact of political speeches and can become an important tool for analyzing various aspects of the metaphor use in discourse.

Examining the Use of Personal Pronouns in Political Speeches by Tun Dr. Mahathir and President Trump

Personal pronouns are often used to the point they often get overlooked. Unlike content words, they do not convey meaning but portray the perception of the speaker (Nakaggwe, 2012). Looking deeper into this, personal pronouns have the power to include or exclude a person or people of the subject (Khafaga, 2021), and it is crucial to master them especially in the political context. However, cultural differences exist in the use of personal pronouns since culture affects the way a person communicates and interprets information (Gocheco, 2012). For this reason, this qualitative research attempts to identify the use of personal pronouns, specifically those that demonstrate inclusiveness and exclusiveness, in the collectivistic Malaysian and individualistic American cultures, and compare the similarities and differences in the use of personal pronouns in speeches given by Tun Dr. Mahathir who represents the collectivistic Malaysian culture and Mr. Trump who represents the individualistic American culture. The AntConc software was used to determine the speech profiles and identify the personal pronouns based on the coding schemes and guidelines. It was found that the most popular personal pronoun used in their speeches is we, while the least popular are me and the subject singular you. They was used more frequently by Tun Dr. Mahathir to indirectly address the audience, while Mr. Trump opted to directly convey his message by using the plural you. The results have practical implications for speech writing and political persuasion and negotiation skills.

Rapport Management in President Buhari and Governor Sanwo-Olu’s Speeches on #EndSARS Protest in Nigeria

Speech making in politics is an essential tool used to manage relationships between politicians and the electorate. The success of a speech depends on the content and the discourse and linguistic strategies employed to achieve speakers’ communicative goals. Political speeches have been widely studied, but extant studies have given tangential attention to the management of rapport in speeches of political office holders delivered in crisis situation in Nigeria. Two speeches delivered by President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu (GBS) on the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, downloaded from www.guardian.ng and www.premiumtimesng.com respectively, were purposively selected and analysed using Rapport Management theory. This is with the view to accounting for the linguistic elements and discourse strategies and their functions in maintaining harmonious relationship in selected texts. Linguistic elements such as the inclusive “we”, the institutional “I”, collective/possessive “us” “our” “your” and descriptive adjectives and strategies such as claiming common ground, expressing solidarity, showing empathy were employed to manage rapport and achieve communicative goals by PMB and GBS. While GBS tactically avoids utterances that are rapport threatening, some utterances of PMB have the tendency to impair rapport. He however mitigates them through hedging, personalisation, institutionalisation and testimonial argument.

The Knights of Science: Medicine and Mythology

In this chapter Taylor-Pirie examines how parasitologists invoked myths of British nationhood in their professional self-fashioning to frame themselves as knights of science fighting on behalf of Imperial Britain. Analysing scientific lectures, political speeches, letter correspondence, obituaries, medical biographies, and journalistic essays, she draws attention to the prominence of Arthurian legend and Greco-Roman mythology in conceptualisations of parasitology, arguing that such literary-linguistic practices sought to reimagine the relationship between medicine and empire by adapting historical and poetic models of chivalry. In this way, individual researchers were lionised as national heroes and their research framed as labour that could command the longevity of legendary stories like those recounted in Homeric poems and medieval romance. In acclimatisation debates, the tropics were frequently conceptualised in relation to the Greek Underworld, a suite of references that together with dragon slaying and the quest narrative helped to position parasitology as a type of ‘crusading fiction’ in the context of the Victorian medieval revival.