Chapter 1
Introduction
1.0.
Preliminaries
The objective of this chapter is to state the research problem, hypothesis,
aims and objectives of the research, research methodology, rationale for
selecting Barack Obama’s speeches, data collection, literature review,
significance, scope and limitations of the research.
1.1. Statement of the Problem
Language is the principal medium for human discourse. It is a means to an
end and the end is the accomplishment of conversational goals or doing
things with the help of words. Thus, language can be viewed as an action
accomplishing tool as human beings get their things done via language.
When individuals use language, they perform various actions like promising,
requesting, ordering, betting, accusing, agreeing, etc. through their words.
These are termed as linguistic actions or speech acts.
Since the dawn of civilization, human language has been used as a tool to
control human behaviour. Language is the most subtle and powerful
technique for influencing and controlling people. Language as a technique
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of control or an agent of change can exert powerful control over people’s
thoughts and actions. This technique of control can make people do things
that they would never think of doing otherwise. It can change people’s
opinions and beliefs and can also be used to misrepresent facts or deceive
people. It can put new ideas into the minds of people and make them demand
things which they do not have. One can even use language to control oneself.
Thus, language is an enormously powerful tool with a universal range of
applications.
It is assumed that when two or more interlocutors are communicating, they
are cooperative in their talk exchanges by being truthful, informative,
relevant and perspicuous. This adherence to H.P. Grice’s (1989) Cooperative
Principle and its maxims of Quality (being truthful), Quantity (being
informative), Relation (being relevant) and Manner (being perspicuous)
makes
communication
exact,
straightforward
and
objective.
But,
interlocutors cannot be direct and objective in all situations. Every now and
then, they have to be indirect in their talk exchanges and also communicate
more than is said. To achieve this effect they have to camouflage their
utterances as per the type of discourse and context. In order to camouflage
their ideas or utterances, they have to violate the Cooperative Principle.
Speakers flout the Cooperative Principle for various reasons like context,
type of discourse, relation between the interlocutors, conversational goal,
politeness (face saving strategy), implicature, etc. Thus, purposeful violation
of the Cooperative Principle makes communication more effective, dynamic,
deep and holistic. In addition to the above fact, the violation adds a quality of
aestheticism to human discourse. Thus, communication takes place not only
through the observance of the Cooperative Principle but also through its
violation.
2
The selected speeches of Barack Obama come under the domain of political
discourse. There is a distinct and peculiar use of language in political
discourse. Words or utterances are used very meticulously, diplomatically
and strategically in it. J. L. Austin’s (1967) theory of ‘How to Do Things
with Words’ is very much embedded in every political discourse. Political
leaders skilfully get their things done via language. They employ words or
utterances for achieving their conversational goals which in turn achieve
their political goals. While doing so, they cannot be direct, upfront and
objective in their speech all the time. Many a time, they have to be indirect,
diplomatic and convey more than what is actually said. Simultaneously, they
have to be polite as well in their utterances. To achieve this effect political
leaders camouflage their utterances and to do this they use violation of the
Cooperative Principle as a strategy in their discourse.
Barack Obama’s victory as the first Black President of the United States of
America is the manifestation of J. L. Austin’s (1967) theory that language is
used to perform action. He has used this powerful action-tool called
‘language’ to influence people, to put new and promising ideas in the minds
of people and to foster a sense of hope in the Americans. Barack Obama,
through his speeches did change the beliefs and opinions of the Americans Whites and Blacks and made them vote for him. He brought about a positive
change in America via language. His speeches testify language as an action
accomplishing tool and an agent of change, exerting powerful control over
people’s thoughts and actions.
It is observed that the violation of Cooperative Principle is one of the main
strategies used to achieve the above charm, magic and elevating effect in his
speeches. There are many marked instances of violation of the Cooperative
Principle and its four maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner in
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his powerful and hopeful speeches. As a political leader, he cannot be direct
and explicit in his discourse with the people of the United States of America
in particular and the world in general. Obama has to be strategic, polite and
convey more than is said through his words and for this he has to camouflage
or veil his utterances. And, he achieves this effect by flouting the four
maxims of the Cooperative Principle. It can be inferred that Obama violates
the Cooperative Principle to achieve his conversational goals and political
goals. This connection between Obama’s speeches and the violation of
Cooperative Principle poses a problem worthy of research. The interplay of
political discourse and the violation of Cooperative Principle opens up vistas
for understanding language use (Parole) as distinct from language as a
system (Langue) for achieving conversational goals. Therefore, the
researcher would like to examine this phenomenon of the violation of
Cooperative Principle in the speeches of Barack Obama.
1.2
Hypothesis
The hypothesis of the present research is as follows:
Violation of the Cooperative Principle is a strategy
commonly used by political leaders in order to implicitly
achieve their political goals. This is highly marked in
Barack Obama’s political speeches.
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1.3
Aims and Objectives
The following are the aims and objectives of the present research:
Aims:
1. To study the violation of Cooperative Principle in political
discourse, specifically in Barack Obama’s political speeches.
2. To discover / find out the motives behind these violations and to
examine the functional aspects of these violations.
3. To highlight the significance of the violation of Cooperative
Principle in Communication.
Objectives:
1. To examine the theory of Cooperative Principle and to
develop a model for present research.
2. To read Barack Obama’s speeches in the light of the theory
of Cooperative Principle.
3. To identify the instances of violation of Cooperative
Principle in the speeches.
4. To classify and group these instances according to the
features they share.
5. To reconstruct the background information (context) of
these violations.
6. To analyse these instances particularly in order to find the
reasons / motives behind the violations.
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7. To relate the violations to the hidden political goals.
8. To evaluate the functional role of these violations.
9. To examine the trade off relation between the Cooperative
Principle and the Politeness Principle.
10.To evaluate Barack Obama’s violation of the Cooperative
Principle as a successful strategy.
1.4
Research Methodology
The research methodology
has been formulated keeping in view the
hypothesis of the research problem. Theories and concepts central to the
research like Linguistic Pragmatics, Context, Cooperative Principle,
Conversational Implicature, Politeness Principle, Political Discourse,
Rhetoric, Oratory, Political Speech, biography of Barack Obama and
American Dream are studied to form a theoretical framework for the present
research study. Thus, theoretical framework provides the basic tools for the
research and also defines the scope and limitation of the research. H.P.
Grice’s theory of Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature are
the main tools for conducting the research. After this, the speeches are
scanned in the light of the violation of Cooperative Principle and highly
marked examples of violation are identified. Then, the identified utterances
are classified according to the maxims they violate. Thus, the collected data
is classified into the following four groups for systematic analysis:
.
1. Violation of Quantity Maxim
2. Violation of Quality Maxim
3. Violation of Relation Maxim
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4. Violation of Manner Maxim
The context in which the utterances and speeches are generated is
constructed with the help of social, historical, economic, political,
autobiographical and biographical information related to Barack Obama’s
political discourse in particular and American political discourse in general.
The classified utterances are then analyzed against this background i.e.
context and certain observations are made with reference to the motives and
effects of the violation of Cooperative Principle. Audio-video recordings of
the speeches, reports of print and electronic media, websites, internet blogs,
research papers, etc. are referred to for validation of the observations made
during the research. In the end, certain conclusions are made based on the
analysis and observation of the data.
The following Gricean pragmatic model is adopted for the analysis of data:
1. Identification and classification of the maxim violated in
the utterance.
2. Exploring into the context in which the utterance was
generated.
3. Identifying the purpose and conversational / political
goal behind the violation of the maxim.
4. Finding out the pragmatic meaning and how more is
communicated
than
is
said
via
conversational
implicature.
5. Stating the effect of the violation on the audience or the
uptake.
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1.5
Rationale for Selection of Research Data
Barack Obama - a tall, skinny mid-western politician, became a promising
presidential contender overnight for the Democratic Party only because of
one passionately eloquent speech which put him on the road to the White
House.
The speeches of Barack Obama are rich in pragmatic meaning. The
pragmatic orientation of his speeches makes them very effective for
achieving conversational goals. His speeches have become a subject of
scholastic inquiry for language researchers. At the same time, his speeches as
a socio-political discourse have become an area of serious investigation for
social and political scientists. Apart from specialized investigators and
researchers, the common man is also mesmerized by Obama’s speeches.
They are curious to listen or read the speeches of a one time common man
who rose to become the world’s most powerful man – the President of the
United States of America.
Thus, the speeches offer a rich area for pragmatic analysis because according
to George Yule (2002: 3):
(i) “Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning”.
(ii) “Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning”.
(iii) “Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than
is said.”
(iv) “Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative
distance.”
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As per the above definition, every speech of Barack Obama offers its
contemporary context and conveys more than what is said. According to
Maureen Harrison and Steve Gilbert (2009), the most important and thought
-provoking speeches trace the evolution of Obama’s use of powerfully
persuasive political language which includes speeches like:
1. 2002’s anti-Iraq Dumb Wars Speech
2. 2004’s We Are One People
3. 2006’s This Is Our Time
4. 2008’s Yes, We Can!
5. the Election Night 2008 thrilling Victory Speech and
6. the culminating Inaugural Address 2009
Action packed, inspiring in content and eloquent in delivery, the speeches –
now a legacy of the American Dream, changed the American politics for
ever. The great speeches of Barack Obama underpin the importance of
language use, the interplay of the Cooperative Principle in ‘public
communication’ and the subtle art of how to do things with words.
Therefore, the above features of the speeches justify their selection for
research data.
1.6
Data Collection
The data for the present research comprises of the speeches delivered by
Barack Obama from 2002, beginning with anti-Iraq ‘Dumb War Speech’, to
2009, culminating with the first ‘Inaugural Address’. The data is collected
from the following three main sources:
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1. Books
The following books are referred for collecting the transcripts
of Barack Obama’s speeches:
i.
‘The Great Speeches of Barack Obama’ (2009)
ii.
‘Change We Can Believe In – Barack Obama’s Plan
To Renew America’s Promise’ (2009)
2. CDs/DVDs
The following CDs / DVDs are used for collecting the audio
data:
i.
Selected Speeches of Barack Obama (MP3), Jaico
Publishing House, Mumbai
ii.
Barack Obama: Yes We Can- The entire Acceptance
and Concession Speeches (DVD), Jaico Publishing
House, Mumbai
3. Websites
The following websites are referred for collecting the
transcripts and video recordings of the speeches:
i.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0
ii.
http://www.c-span.org/video
iii.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/barackobamaspeec
hes.htm
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iv.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77030
v.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
vi.
http://obamaspeeches.com/
The list of selected speeches which forms the data for the research is given in
the appendix: Speech Dates. Harrison, M. & Gilbert, S. (2009) have edited
the speeches of Barack Obama according to their eloquent essentials in the
book ‘The Great Speeches of Barack Obama’. For the full transcripts and
videos of Barack Obama’s speeches one can visit the above websites.
1.7
Literature Review
The cursory review of literature in the concerned area is as follows:
Jonathan Charteris-Black (2014) in his book, ‘Analysing Political
Speeches-Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor’, enhances the reader’s ability
to understand the various ways in which political speeches excite and inspire
people and gives perspectives to recognize the various linguistic means used
by politicians to misrepresent and manipulate. According to Charteris-Black,
‘hope’ is a social necessity and the political speeches to achieve their
purposes need to satisfy emotional, moral and social needs. In short, the
politicians through their speeches need to persuade. Thus, Charteris-Black
in this book helps the readers understand how politicians persuade their
audience. The book is divided into three parts. Part I describes traditional
approaches to oratory and discourse and part II describes critical approaches
to discourse and public communication from the 1990s onwards. This
section gives an account of one of the most well-known critical linguistic
approaches- the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). The DHA is
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integrated with an account of argument theory in this section. Part III deals
with Critical Metaphor Analysis, an approach that has developed in the last
ten years.
The speeches chosen to illustrate particular discourse theories are seminal
ones by British and American politicians and military leaders (both real and
fictional). Thus, speeches of important political leaders like David Cameroon
and Barack Obama are used for analysis as ‘core texts’. All the speeches are
related to contemporary issues of social, cultural and political importance.
The selected speeches illustrate effective persuasive strategies. This seminal
work on how politicians persuade their audience to achieve their
communicative and political goals has given insights for the present research
to use Gricean pragmatic approach for analyzing the political discourse of
Barack Obama.
Sam Leith (2012) in his book, ‘You Talkin’ to Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle
to Obama’, gives an effective analysis of what rhetoric is and how it works.
According to Leith, rhetoric gives words the power to inspire or bamboozle
others. It is not just the politicians who use rhetoric but everyone uses it in
his or her life. The author traces the art of rhetoric from ancient Greece
(Aristotle) to its modern zenith (Barack Obama). He provides a basic survey
of the field of rhetoric by tracing how people have taught, practiced and
thought about rhetoric from its ancient origins to its 21st century apotheosis.
The book introduces verbal heroes and villains from Homer Simpson to
Hitler and explains how rhetoric works in their speeches. Leith has divided
the art of oratory into five parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory and
delivery. He also discusses three branches of oratory: Deliberative Rhetoric
exemplified by Martin Luther King Jr., Judicial Rhetoric exemplified by
Barack Obama and Epideictic Rhetoric.
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Leith, in the section titled ‘The Second Branch of Oratory: Judicial
Rhetoric’, analyzes Barack Obama’s speeches in the light of figures of
speech like alliteration, anaphora, parallelism, syntheton, tricolon, and the
ethos appeal. Thus, though stimulating for the present research, this analysis
of Obama’s speeches is from the rhetoric point of view and not from the
pragmatic point of view.
Ashok Thorat (2002) in his book, A Discourse Analysis of Five Indian
Novels, analyzes conversations in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, Raja
Rao’s Kanthapura, Kushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Chaman Nahal’s
Azadi, and Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli. The author uses three models
based on Speech Act theory, Politeness Principle and Cooperative Principle
for analyzing the conversations in these novels. He highlights that different
cultures and speech communities observe or flout these principles in their
own typical ways.
The section dealing with the violation of Cooperative Principle and its
maxims by various characters in the novels, brings to the fore the intentions
and functions underlying the flouting of the maxims. The author highlights
that the instances of the violation of the maxims of Manner and Relation are
very few. This observation has given some insights for the present research
in relation to the flouting of the maxim of Relation by Barack Obama.
Karmarkar Muckta Anand (2014), in her thesis, ‘Discourse Analysis of
Indian Parliamentary Debates with special Reference to Wit and Humour’,
investigates and analyzes the Indian Parliamentarians’ use of wit and
humour, the function of humour in their speeches delivered in the Lower
House of the Indian Parliament- the Lok Sabha and the effect on
communication.
13
The macro findings reveal that the Members of Parliament (MPs) during the
course of their parliamentary debates use various conversational implicatures
when they use humour to say more than what they actually want to say. It is
also pointed out that the MPs violate the Cooperative Principle when they
use humour on the floor of the House. The application of the Cooperative
Principle and Conversational Implicature to the Indian Parliamentary debates
brings to the fore the effect of these theories on the political discourse. Thus,
the study analyses the political debates in the Lok Sabha with major focus on
wit and humour.
Wulan Rahayu (2012) in his study titled, ‘The Realization of Grice’s
Cooperative Principle in Obama Exclusive RCTI Bersama Putra Nababan:
Presidential Interview’, identifies the flouting of Grice’s conversational
maxims and investigates the function of the violation of the maxims in the
presidential interview titled ‘Obama Exclusive RCTI Bersama Putra
Nababan’. The data collected from www.youtube.com is analyzed in the
light of Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1975) and Politeness Strategies
proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987).
The findings of the study show that Obama flouts all the conversational
maxims. The study shows that there are 27 occurrences of violation of the
Quantity maxim, 24 occurrences of the violation of the Relation maxim, 9
occurrences of the violation of Manner maxim and 3 occurrences of the
violation of Quality maxim. In terms of politeness strategy, Obama uses the
strategies to reduce the intensity of face-threatening acts (FTAs). The study
brings to the fore that there are four politeness strategies used in the data
which are off-record (23 out of 46 occurrences -50%), negative politeness
(17 out of 46 occurrences -36.96%), positive politeness (6 out of 46
occurrences -10.87%) and bald on record strategy (1 out of 46 occurrences 14
2.17%). The
conclusion highlights that off-record, negative politeness,
positive politeness, and bald on-record strategies of politeness principle
correlate with the violation of Grice’s conversational maxims in saving
Obama’s self-image.
WangShao (2012) in his master’s thesis, ‘A Pragmatic Analysis of
Rhetorical Vagueness in American President Obama's Political Speeches
in 2011’, studies the vague language from the pragmatic point of view. The
author has classified rhetorical vagueness into logic vagueness, semantic
vagueness and figurative vagueness. The author has used a pragmatic
framework which consists of concepts like context, Cooperative Principle
and Politeness Principle for the analysis of rhetorical vagueness in Barack
Obama’s political speeches. The study points out that Obama employs
various types of rhetorical vagueness in his speeches which include vague
words and expressions, hedges, metaphors and euphemisms. It also points
out that the use of rhetorical vagueness has special pragmatic functions like
avoiding some sensitive information, shifting responsibility by citing other’s
standpoints or comments, expressing politeness, creating a desirable
blueprint for the American people by use of vague adjectives, etc. which
make Barack Obama’s political speeches more convincing and trustworthy.
Riyadh Tariq Kadhim Al- Ameedi and Zina Abdul Hussein Khudhier (2015)
in their paper titled ‘A Pragmatic Study of Barak Obama's Political
Propaganda’, investigate the language of five electoral political propaganda
texts delivered by Barak Obama by using the pragmatic model of analysis.
This paper deals with identifying the speech acts used in the political
propaganda of Obama, illustrating the way politicians use Grice's maxims
and the Politeness Principle in issuing their propaganda. This paper also
15
analyzes the rhetorical devices used by Obama in his political propaganda.
The findings of the study show that the speech acts of statement, assertion,
and advice, are used in Obama's political propaganda. The findings also
show that the adherence to the Cooperative Principle and the politeness
strategies is very important. It is concluded that in all the political
propaganda texts, Obama adheres to Grice's maxims and the politeness
strategies for maintaining the effectiveness of communication. It is shown
that Obama adheres to the maxim of Quality 100%, Quantity 80%,
Relevance 80%, Manner 60% and positive strategies 60%, negative
strategies 20%, bald off record 20%. Thus, the authors prove that the above
findings confirm the second hypothesis of their study that the Cooperative
Principle and the Politeness Principle are frequently observed in political
propaganda.
Khalid Wahaab Jabber and Zhang Jinquan (2013) in their paper titled,
‘The Modal Verbs: A Speech Act of Request in the Speech of the President
of the United States Barak Obama’, have studied the speech act of request
in the speech of Barak Obama delivered at the Ronald Reagan Building and
International trade Center Washington during the U.S.A - China Strategic
and Economic Dialogue on July 27, 2009. In this study, Searle’s speech act
theory is applied for the analysis of the speech. Modal verbs like Can, Will,
and Must are selected for the analysis of the speech acts of request. This
paper concludes that the speech act of request occurs most frequently in the
political speech and the speech acts of request mostly happen in an indirect
way.
Fareed Hameed Al-Hindawi and Basim Jubair Kadhim (2013) in their
paper, ‘A Pragmatic Study of Irony in Political Electoral Speeches’, have
16
studied ‘irony’ in the electoral political speeches from pragmatic point of
view represented by two American candidates: Barack Obama and George
W. Bush.
The paper attempts to investigate ironic strategies, stages, the
possibility of understanding irony in relation to the illocutionary force, and
explicating the gradualness of the ironic insincerity where no enough
contextual clues exist. To achieve such aims, a model is developed for the
analysis of irony in political electoral speeches. The findings of the analysis
verify the hypotheses represented by the process of ironic stages, strategies,
ironic insincerity of the speaker, and irony is an ostensible speech act. On the
contrary, it rejects the hypothesis of not conveying irony where no enough
contextual cues exist.
Thus, it is observed that researchers have applied the theories and concepts
of Pragmatics to literary genres like novel, short story, drama, etc. on a large
scale.
But, the application of Gricean model of pragmatic analysis to
political discourse has been a rare phenomenon in the area of Linguistic
Pragmatics. No full- fledged research on Barack Obama’s speeches seems to
have been done, especially with reference to the violation of Cooperative
Principle. This justifies the need for more research in this area. Therefore,
the analysis of Barack Obama’s speeches in the light of the violation of
Cooperative Principle is an attempt to bridge this gap and add value to the
research area.
1.8
Significance of the Research
This research brings to the fore that human language is a very common dayto-day phenomenon with a range of uncommon applications and extra
17
ordinary results. Words, when used skilfully and passionately can change the
world upside down.
This research highlights the importance of language as an action
accomplishing tool and Barack Obama’s skilful use of it. The utterances in
his speeches are not just to ‘say things’ but rather actively to ‘do things’.
The research shows how language is used by Barack Obama to achieve his
conversational goals by violating H. P. Grice’s Cooperative Principle. One
more factor which makes this study stimulating is its endeavour to illustrate
how more is communicated than is said through the deliberate violation of
the Cooperative Principle by Obama.
This study will give new insights to the students and researchers of English
language and literature. This research highlights the importance of Gricean
Cooperative Principle in the speeches of great leaders. It will prove how the
maxims of Cooperative Principle are violated with a purpose and how more
is communicated than is said through such violations. This study also shows
that whenever a Conversational Implicature is generated, a maxim is
violated. It illustrates that there are utterances which appear irrelevant at the
surface level but they have pragmatic meaning at the deeper level. This
research also points out that the robust belief in the Cooperative Principle
makes the audience or readers search for the implied meaning by going
through the inferential procedure even if an utterance sounds irrelevant.
The significance of this research can also be understood in relation to
Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of Linguistics. As highlighted by Gordon
(1996), according to Saussure if one has to understand the unique and
absolute individuality of every expressive act, one must consider the spoken
18
word (utterance or speech) as the starting point for examination. This led to
Saussure’s classification of Langue (what one can do with language) and
Parole (what one actually does with language when one speaks).
Thus, the speeches of Barack Obama fall in the category of Parole i.e.
language as used by its speaker. Therefore, this research brings to the fore
the unique individuality and distinct use of language in Barack Obama’s
speeches with reference to the Gricean pragmatic analysis.
Being interdisciplinary in nature, the research draws on history and politics,
hence it will give some insights to researchers related to history and politics.
This research also suggests that the theory of Cooperative Principle can be
applied to speeches and utterances of other great personalities, politicians,
bureaucrats, religious leaders, country heads, etc. for understanding their
motives and implied meaning. The research of Barack Obama’s speeches
will definitely inform and give new insights to readers, writers and
researchers.
1.9
Scope and Limitations
The scope of this research is limited to the violation of Cooperative Principle
with reference to the selected speeches of Barack Obama. Thus, highly
marked utterances in the speeches are analysed in terms of the violation of
the four maxims of Cooperative Principle, viz. Quality, Quantity, Relation
and Manner.
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The video recordings of some speeches of Barack Obama are not available.
In such cases, the audio recordings of the speeches are taken into account for
understanding the uptake or effect on the audience. In case where both video
as well as audio recordings are not available, the uptake is analysed on the
basis of text i.e. by reading the transcript of such speeches.
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