An Analysis Of Pragmatic Empathy In Barack Obama’s Weekly Radio Addresses From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

This thesis attempts to investigate the pragmatic empathy in the U.S. presidentBarack Obama’s Weekly radio addresses based on Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory.The concept of empathy is first originated from German aesthetics in the1870s,which refers to the natural infiltration of general sentiment in early researches. Afterthat, empathy was gradually introduced to the field of aesthetics, psychology,linguistics, etc. In1991, the Chinese linguist He Ziran first put forward the term of“pragmatic empathy” in his article “Pragmatic empathy in verbal communication”.Pragmatic empathy generally means the emotional exchange between the utterer andthe interpreter in the process of speech communication, always encoding anddecoding the information form the other’s perspectives. The pragmatic empathy isinvolved with two aspects, which are pragma-linguistics and socio-pragmatics.The data of the present study are selected from the official website ofhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/and the English learning website www.putclub.com.cn forthe present research. Forty weekly addresses are chosen randomly from the time9/30,2012to the time9/30,2013. All the data are original versions without changing andmodification. According to the Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, the present studyattempts to explore the pragmatic empathy adopted by Obama in his weekly addresses.In the process of analysis, the qualitative and quantitative methods are used.Through the analysis, it is found that president Obama adopts a number ofstrategies of pragmatic empathy to adapt to the communicative contexts. He achieveshis communicative intents and purpose by primarily using the first and second pluralperson deixis, the modal verbs and the euphemisms. The use of plural person deixis isthe result of linguistic choice-making. They can narrow the psychological distancebetween the leader and fellow citizens of America, which makes the people feel their president is with them, sharing the common desires and beliefs. The use of modalverbs is one of the pragmatic empathy strategy adapted to the mental world and theeuphemisms is a means to adapt to the social world. The president Obama is famousfor his eloquence and he knows how to employ the linguistic strategies in his speecheffectively. According to the appropriate use of strategies of pragmatic empathy,president Obama established an intimate and harmonious relationship with hisaudience, promoting political views and obtaining support successfully. This thesis ishelpful for readers to have a better understanding of pragmatic empathy in Obama’sweekly addresses.