Burke's New Rhetoric Discourse Analysis

This thesis is intended to construct a framework for rhetorical analysis of political speech discourse from the perspective of Kenneth Burke's new rhetoric. The focus of the study is designed to reveal the rhetorical process of political speech discourse and the rhetorical motive embodied in the discourse.In this thesis, Burke's ideas of new rhetoric are studied from three aspects: rhetoric of identification, dramatism, and logology, which constitute three dimensions of the framework proposed. Identification analysis focuses on three major identification strategies: identification by sympathy, identification by antithesis, and identification by inaccuracy. These strategies are often employed in political speeches to move the speech audience to identify with the speaker and the speech content. In dramatistic analysis, the discourse of political speech is analyzed in terms of ratios of act, agent, agency, scene and purpose, demonstrating the speaker's motive of influencing the audience. With the vocabulary of logology as the tool to analyze the relationship of human nature and rhetoric, logological analysis of political speech studies how the discourse constructs hierarchy, creates principle of perfection and marks mystery to drive the audience identify with the speech.By introducing the theory of Burke's new rhetoric, the present study opens up new perspective for the discourse analysis of political speech. It helps to understand how language in political speech supplies rhetorical motive and the human being further. The present study also has practical implications for language teaching and advanced writing.