Speech And Image Building

As a typical case study, this thesis attempts to conduct discourse analysis of the third Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate. It tries to reveal the relation between speech patterns and image building.After briefly introducing discourse analysis proper and some background information concerning the third Bush-Kerry presidential debate, this thesis reviews three important theories. They are Gee's social and cognitive discourse analysis approach, Halliday's interpersonal function of functional grammar, and Hudson's face and solidarity theory.This thesis then elaborates the research, lists the results, and interprets them. Based on a survey of Bush's and Kerry's profiles and some public survey reports concerning their presidential debate, this thesis puts forward a hypothesis, that is, Bush and Kerry build up different images respectively as a "doer" and a "thinker" in the third Bush-Kerry presidential debate. The study surveys the linguistic details of Bush and Kerry's debate speech quantitatively and qualitatively. The linguistic details investigated are speech function realization, temporal operators, model operators, I-statements, mood adjuncts, vocatives and address forms, and expletives and speech fillers. The features of linguistic details are then interpreted comparatively with example illustration. The survey and interpretation reveals Bush's and Kerry's different speech patterns and personal qualities.After data interpretation, the thesis then further analyzes the relation between speech patterns and image building. The two words "doer" and "thinker" have different situated meanings and cultural models. The "doer" category people are men in the street, like an aircraft pilot, an electrician, a carpenter, a plumber, a butcher and so on, while the "thinker" category people are more educated, like a lawyer, a judge, a professor, a historian, a mathematician, a scientist and so on. In the debate, Bush and Kerry are building different socially situated identities. Bush speaks in the way average Americans do; Kerry speaks in the way educated Americans do. With different ways of speaking, Bush and Kerry respectively build up themselves as a "doer" and a "thinker". Speaking differently in the debate, Bush and Kerry can be perceived as conducting different activities. Bush has a daily talk with common Americans, while Kerry delivers a formal lecture before well-educated Americans. They accommodate different targeted audiences and respectively achieve solidarity with them.At the end of this thesis, research findings are summed up, and significance and limitations of the research are provided. This thesis partly accounts for Bush's success and Kerry's failure in the 2004 US presidential election. It also has implication for those people who are speech and image conscious to manipulate their speech to build up favorable image.