An Analysis On Obama’s Shanghai Speech:A Perspective Of Perelman’s Audience Theory

With the development of the society, exchanges become more and more between countries. Discourse as an extremely important means in international communication manifests its significance, and it also has a profound impact on international relationship. People can use rhetoric to solve the problems existing not only in daily activities, but also foreign affairs. Rhetoric cannot be taken apart from variety of communicative activities and it penetrates into all kinds of western political activities, like political speeches, diplomatic speeches and so on. Reasonably applying rhetoric skills can successfully persuade others to accept speakers’proposals and ideas. Audience as one of crucial factors plays a role that cannot be ignored in a successful speech. Therefore, making the research from the viewpoint of audience in a speech can accomplish the effect of international communication.Sino-U.S. relations are always the centre of attention around the world. The dialogues between the two countries catch the eyes of the world. Barack Obama came to China for state visit in November15to18,2009. He was the first U.S. president who came to China for visit within a year in his presidency. He delivered the Shanghai speech when he was meeting with young students in Shanghai, which was one of his successful speeches. Obama discussed the U.S.-China relations in the speech and he was looking forward to cooperating with China. His Shanghai speech obtained the world’s attention. This article aims to analyze Obama’s Shanghai speech from perspective of the western audience, mainly in view of Chaim Perelman’s audience theory. The article discusses how Obama in particular rhetorical situation, applied appropriate methods and rhetoric skills to promote America’s China policy, and to contribute the development of Sino-US relations.Perelman puts forward the audience theory and firstly creates the concepts of presence and communion. He holds that the audience dominates the key position in a speech. The orator should adapt the speech to the need of the audience. This article is in the viewpoint of Western audience theories and on the basis of the function of rhetoric in political speeches, mainly under the guidance of Chaim Perelman’s audience theory to do the analysis.The thesis will make a qualitative analysis and specific analyses are following:1. How did Obama obtain a better understanding of his audience in the particular situation;2. His audience construct;3. What rhetorical skills Obama used to help his audience come into the communion, finally share identification and his views and values were accepted.Through the analysis of a specific example, we can find that the audience is the decisive factor in a speech. Shanghai speech reveals that Obama has a better understanding on his audience and has a good ability to successfully apply rhetorical skill in making political speech. He is good at skillfully using rhetoric skills to build presence and induce or persuade his audience, thus according to the specific situations making the speaker and the audience achieve identification in commune. Therefore, employing audience theory to analyze the specific cases will undoubtedly have a good practical significance, and in which the art of discourse communication will be accomplished the effect of communication as well, what’s more, it also can promote the understanding and exchanges between countries.