A Rhetorical Analysis Of American Presidential Inaugural Addresses From The Perspective Of Identification Theory

The United States Constitution stipulates that the newly elected President must give an inaugural speech before taking office.It can be said that speech has become an extremely important part in the political life of American presidents.All presidents of the United States should not only possess outstanding leadership skills,but also show excellent speaking talent.As the leader of the most developed country in the world,American presidential inaugural addresses deserve attention and research.In order to make their speech easy to understand,presidents will use rhetoric in their inaugural addresses.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the rhetoric in American presidential inaugural addresses.As the most prestigious representative of the New Rhetoric,Burke Kenneth believes that the purpose of rhetoric is to achieve “identification” rather than “persuasion” which is the core of traditional rhetorical.The Identification Theory put forward by Burke has aroused the extensive attention from scholars in recent years,and it provides a new rhetorical perspective for discourse analysis.However,the application of this theory to the president's inaugural speech is rare at present.The analysis of phonetic rhetoric from the perspective of Identification Theory is even limited.This study adopts the research method of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,and analyzes the latest five American presidential inaugural addresses.Based on Burke's Identification Theory,this research attempts to study the application of rhetoric in their inaugural addresses from three aspects,including rhetorical content,rhetorical form and phonetic rhetoric,and analyzes with examples on how various rhetorical strategies help the speaker achieve identification with the audience.This research finds that the application of rhetorical strategies plays an important role in achieving identification with the audience.In terms of rhetorical content,identity by sympathy,identification by antithesis and identification by inaccuracy are adopted.In order to realize identification by sympathy,the speakers should satisfy the needs of the audience,seek common values,arouse shared emotions and show their noble characters.For the purpose of achieving identification by antithesis,the speakers usually shape a common enemy,which can be either an objective existence or some kind of behavior,idea or belief.Identification by inaccuracy is mainly achieved by frequently using the first person plural pronouns.As for rhetorical form,the speakers take conventional form,repetitive form and progressive form in American presidential inaugural addresses.All five inaugural speeches adopted the typical speech structure of “opening greetings-body-closing remarks”,which comply with the audience's expectation of the speech situation.In addition,the speakers make use of a large number of traditional rhetorical methods like parallelism and contrast.Repetitive form refers to expressing the same point of view in different ways,in order to achieve the goal of emphasizing.Progressive form is about using the syllogistic progression to make the audience follow the speakers' thinking and gradually accept their views.From the perspective of phonetic rhetoric,this research enumerates three types of phonetic rhetoric methods,namely alliteration,end rhyme and regression.In addition to the heavy use of alliteration,the other four phonetic rhetoric methods are seldom applied.The utilization of phonetic rhetoric can help the speaker get identification with the audience as well in an indirect way.From the perspective of speech perception,this research finds that the application of phonetic rhetoric accord with people's rule of perceiving continuous speech.The rule characterized by holistic perception play a vital role in achieving identification.Finally,by counting the frequency of various rhetorical strategies,it visually reflects the fact that rhetoric is extensively utilized in American presidential inaugural addresses.This research deepens people's understanding of Identification Theory and expands the scope of its application.Through the analysis of American presidential inaugural addresses,it can help people better understand and appreciate the speakers' intention and rhetorical strategy.What's more,it sheds enlightenment on the improvement of speech skills and has some guiding significance for the process of phonetic teaching and learning.