AN ANALYSIS OF PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES IN BARRACK OBAMA’S KEYNOTE ADDRESS IN THE 2004 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the language used by Barack Obama as a keynote address in the 2004

Democratic National Convention. The speech is considered as a successful political speech in America and a milestone in his political career. Moreover, how he uses particular persuasive strategies makes audience believe

that he should be the next American president. The objectives of this study are to identify the types of persuasive strategy, to elaborate the factors of motivating audience, to describe the topic choices, and to explain

the social values in Barack Obama’s speech.

This research used descriptive qualitative method with the researcher as the primary instrument and the data sheet as the secondary instrument. The method included the description of the data in the form of words,

phrases, and utterances delivered by Barack Obama. In conducting this study, the researcher downloaded the speech transcript and the video. In order to have correct data and to achieve more understanding of the textual

and contextual meaning of the speech, the accuracy of both transcript and video were checked. Then, the data were selected based on theories of persuasive strategy. The discussion of the selected data is presented in descriptive way. Also, this research employed a discourse analysis as a tool of inquiry to explain forms and

functions in the speech event.

The  results  of  this  research  show  that  the  dominant  types  of  persuasive  strategy  are  association, maximization, inclusion, disassociation, and simplification. Moreover, the factors of motivating audience’s

attention are used more prominent than factors of motivating audience’s emotion and of speaker’s credibility.

Audience’s attention is reached through employing extended examples, extended comparison, serial example,

and isolated comparison. Furthermore, Obama raises audience’s emotion by applying figurative languages such as parallelism, repetition, alliteration, metaphor, and simile. Also, he demonstrates his credibility by indicating his similarity, good will, competence, trustworthiness, idealism, and dynamism. Then, there are some issues chosen by Obama as his topic such as political issue, geographical issue, economical and professional issue, age and gender issue, racial and ethical issue, and religious issue. However, as an American citizen, he reflects American social values. Those values are equality and egalitarianism, individualism and privacy, action and work, future orientation, change, and self-help concept.

Keywords        : Discourse, persuasive strategy, factors of motivating audience, topic choices, American social

values, Barack Obama’s keynote address, the 2004 Democratic National Convention.