American Presidential Farewell Address: Examination of Structure in the Final Speech

As many farewell addresses have a history of being painfully prepared and revised previously to presentation, structure of these speeches in their comparison is a topic of research. The preparation for a final speech is no doubt approached with a different mindset and method of presenting ideas and statements to the American people than other presidential addresses. There appears to be a gap in scholarly research in the use of specific tactics to express a meaningful farewell address, and in what degree they are used whether in successful or unsuccessful presidential time in office. As a student at Utah State University and an American Studies major, the origin of research stems from an interest in American politics including an overview of English literature which can be obtained from addresses. The envisioned final product of this research will be one in which historical and recent researched materials will be used in comparison to identify important aspects of presidential addresses of the United States. An examination of a collection of farewell addresses and relevant primary and secondary sources in every century of the existence of the United States, will be achieved through a thorough content, textual and rhetorical analysis. No human participants will be required. Statistical evidence will be acquired through the historical documents themselves in order to establish a comparison of different speeches. Rhetorical tactics and subjects mentioned will be assessed in cases which may gain different subcases in further research such as: Length Party Affiliation Rhetorical Devices Themes Results: Findings will be gathered into a research report. This research report will have visuals such as pie graphs and bar graphs to show the quantitative results. The overall purpose of this research proposal is to inform those in the scholarly history community, as well as its students with an in-depth analysis of the structure of the historical documents produced by American presidents through farewell addresses. This research will be presented to a mentor Joyce Kinkead and students in the class of 3470 of Utah State University, as well as the possibility of the undergraduate symposium sponsored by USU in the spring of 2017