The Analysis Of Vagueness In Barack Obama’s Speeches From The Perspective Of Identification Theory

Since vagueness is prevalent phenomenon in people’s nature language, many scholars at home and abroad have drawn attention to this field and analyzed from various perspective, like systemic-functional grammar, stylistics, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, critical discourse analysis. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of analysis from the perspective of new rhetoric.Therefore, we choose the President Obama’s speech as the study material. Based on the theory of Kenneth Burke’s new rhetoric, we probe the function of vagueness in the realization of identification and provide a new perspective for the further study.The materials mentioned in the study are in the significant position in Obama’s presidency career. More exactly, they play the significant role in presidential campaign and make great contribution to the Obama’s victory. So they are also the victory of Kenneth Burke’s new rhetoric and full of the vagueness phenomenon.This thesis finds out that many strategies of vague language appear in his speech to accomplish the identification. The employment of vague words, abstract vague words, modal words, and vague rhetoric aims at accomplishment of identification and victory in the presidential campaign. As vagueness serves as such a vital instrument for the president to gain the support and accept in his speech, it is quite indispensible to do this thesis so as to shed light on the function of the vagueness.