Critical Discourse Analysis of Obama's Political Discourse. Paper presented at the International Conference of Language, Literature and Culture in a Changing Transatlantic

This paper examines the persuasive strategies of President Obama's public speaking as well as the covert ideology of the same, enshrined in his inaugural address. Our analysis is grounded in Norman Fairclough's assumptions in critical discourse analysis, claiming that "ideologies reside in texts " that "it is not possible to 'read off' ideologies from texts " and that "texts are open to diverse interpretations " (Fairclough: 1995).The selected corpus ' ideological and persuasive components are assessed, thus revealing Obama's persuasive strategies