The Rhetorical Analysis Of Obama’s 2013 President Inaugural Address

This thesis integrates Burke’s rhetorical theory to analysis Obama’s 2013 president inaugural address to reveal what speaking techniques Obama used to gain the audience identification and the analyze the motivation behind the speaking.This thesis consists of 4 parts. The first part introduce the background, the relevant researches, significance and means. The first chapter accounts for the definition of political speech and focuses on Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric theory. The second part uses content and form identification to discuss Obama’s speaking technique. The third part explores the motivation of Obama’s inaugural address from scene, agent, act, agency and purpose of dramatism.By study, we can find that Obama was able to exploit the identification to persuade audience to overcome the division and induce them to identify and support him. Meanwhile, we can see that Obama is a pragmatic, aggressive person, and he can look upon America’s position and development roundly. By this studying, I hope it can help us to understand political speech in an effective way.