A critical discourse analysis of some persuasive strategies of Ashton Carter's 2016 political speech on Iraq and Syria unrest

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Political discourse contains features that should be understood by the audience, but it must fulfill the purpose of persuading the audience.

This study examines three of Ashton Carter's discourse strategies of persuasion in his 2016's political speech on Iraq and Syria unrest, as well as the implicit ideologies.

These discourse strategies are repetition, metaphor and appeal to logic.

The model adopted to analyze the speech is critical discourse analysis under the impact of Van Dijk's perspective.

The study hypothesizes that Carter's political speech is emotionally and logically expressive and that his speech is ideologically structured.

The results have shown that Carter was so impressive in persuading his listeners due to the use of the three persuasive strategies.

The results have also shown that the strategy of appeal to logic was the most frequent among others, through which he resorted to speaking logically and stating facts to make his listeners believe him and drive them at his stance.