Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Understanding discursive persuasion in American and Iraqi call to arms discourse discursive strategies as instruments of persuasive politics Katea, Haider Award date: 2018 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 UNDERSTANDING DISCURSIVE PERSUASION IN AMERICAN AND IRAQI CALL TO ARMS DISCOURSE: DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES AS INSTRUMENTS OF PERSUASIVE POLITICS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT BANGOR UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES SCHOOL OF LINGUISTICS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE By HAIDER HUSSEIN KATEA, BA, MA BANGOR, AUGUST 2018 Abstract: ‘Call to arms’ is the battlefield for the conflict for power and legitimacy between different ideologies, with language playing a vital role. Nowadays, the most recent examples are the speeches of various political figures on the War on Terror, due to the rising threat of terrorism worldwide. Analysing ‘call to arms’, the War on Terror, in different genres has received considerable academic interests in the last decade. However, most of these academic endeavours present themselves to understand the dynamics of such discursive constructs and strategies used either by western, American in particular or European discourse producers. It is against this backdrop that this thesis investigates the American and Iraqi ‘call to arms’ discourse instantiated in highly formalised institutional genre. The study presents a critical analysis of how persuasion has been produced and discursively realised in two different socio- political discourses. The study examines four specific speeches: two by American Presidents, namely, George W Bush and Barack Obama, and the remaining two were delivered by two Iraqi Prime Ministers, Nouri Al-Maliki and Haider Al-Abadi. The thesis incorporates some of the widely applied CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) analytical categories used in the DHA (Discourse-Historical Approach), including referential, predicational, perspectivization, argumentative strategies (Topoi) and the strategies of intensification and mitigation (Resigil & Wodak, 2001), and legitimation studies from Van Leeuwen (2007) and Reyes (2011), along with some elements from the socio-semantic approach of van Leeuwen on the representation of social actors (van Leeuwen, 1996). The thesis emphasises specific linguistic ways in which language represents an instrument of control and a manifestation of symbolic power in discourse of war. It first develops an analytical approach that derives from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and legitimisation studies to account for how ‘call to arms’ can be produced and discursively realised in situ. This particular work expands, and further proposes, some key discursive constructs and strategies of persuasion political figures employ in the discourse of going to war. The analysis of the data demonstrates that the American ‘call to arms’ rhetoric is not dissimilar to the Iraqi ‘call to arms’ rhetoric. I To the victims of terror all around the world II Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support and generosity I received while carrying out this research. Simpliy, I would not have been able to carry out this research without the financial support from the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR), and the help of the Iraqi Cultural Attache in London. I highly appreciate their support and generosity. I would like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor Dr Thora Tenbrink for her invaluable support, advice and guidance throughout the entire process. It has been an honour to be her PhD. student. Her insights and continual encouragement made this thesis more of a stimulating challenge than the demanding burden I often felt it would be. I also would like to thank Prof. Vian Bakir, who kindly took on my supervision and provided me with valuable feedback at key moments in the study. The completion of my doctoral degree is one milestone of a personal journey; a journey that has not been travelled alone. Therefore, it is my pleasure to acknowledge those who have supported and encouraged me through the different stages of this thesis. I owe my loving thanks to my wife (Inas) who overwhelmed me with her loving care, affection, and continue to support and encourage me in ways too numerous to count. Thanks to my mother who always spared time to pray for me and also my brothers for their continuous support. I also would like to thank my children (Hala, Abdullah and Mayar) who have always been an inexhaustible source of support. I also thank my friends (Drs Hazam, Atheer and Saher), who supported me with their positive feedbacks and comments. Lastly, I would like to thank everybody at the School of Linguistics and English Language for they always wished me good luck, especially Dr Anouschka Foltz and Dr Eirini Sanoudaki. Being part of this school was a great experience. Haider Hussein Katea Bangor University School of linguistics and English Language III Table of Contents Abstract: ................................................................................................................................................ I Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. III List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. XI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Terrorism and the War on Terror .............................................................................................. 2 1.3. Guiding research interests, aims and research questions ................................................................ 4 1.4. Outline of the thesis ........................................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER 2: LANGUAGE AND PERSUASION .................................................................. 11 2.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 11 2.2. Persuasion: scope and definitions ................................................................................................ 11 2.3. Persuasion, language and politics ................................................................................................. 14 2.4. Public speech: types and functions ............................................................................................... 15 2.5. Rhetoric: the art of persuasion ..................................................................................................... 18 2.6. Aristotle’s rhetoric theory ............................................................................................................ 18 2.6.1. Means of persuasion: types of appeals ................................................................................. 19 2.6.2. Parts of persuasive speech .................................................................................................... 23 2.6.3. Style of persuasive public speech ......................................................................................... 27 2.6.4. Delivery of public speech ..................................................................................................... 28 2.7. Persuasion and Democratic Societies ........................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 3: CRITICAL FRAMEWORK OF DATA ANALYSIS ....................................... 33 3.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 33 3.2. CDA: historical development ....................................................................................................... 33 3.3. CDA: definitions, aims and principles ......................................................................................... 35 3.4. Theories of CDA .......................................................................................................................... 37 3.4.1. Socio-dialectic Theory ......................................................................................................... 37 3.4.2. Socio-Cognitive Theory ......................................................................................................