Deixis and critical discourse analysis interdisciplinary in Mitt Romney And Barack Obama 2012 presidential debates

Abstract EN

This article examines the U.

S.

2012 presidential election campaign by using Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA).

The study focuses on Mitt Romney and Barack Obama political discourses.

Mainly, the aticle follows an interdisciplinary study of the presidents' speeches.

It tries to explore the way in which they use specific expressions to support their campaigns.

This interdisciplinarity is linguistic involving two stylistic theoretical trajectories.

First, CDA is studied together with deictic expressions within pragmatic conceptual framework.

CDA is specified to the selected candidates' utterances.

These utterances reflect the political visions and missions by which each candidate aspires to fulfill his presidential rally.

Second, the fulfilling of this presidential rally is analyzed by applying three deictic expressions, namely, personal, spatial, and temporal deictic utterances.

The personal utterances are analyzed to unravel the political objectives outlined by the presidents.

Both candidates keep using the pronoun 'I' in order to draw attention to their personal visions and missions towards the future of the U.

S.

personal deixis leads to the analysis of spatial deixis.

Spatial deixis are used to refer to a place, or situation, where the candidates assert their objectives.

This place is specifically the U.

S.

the candidates jot down their objectives regarding the future of the U.

S.

and how each of them can enhance the American leadership.

The temporal deixis are applied together with personal and spatial deixis to analyze the time of the presidential campaign.

Thus, deixis are applied with CDA as an interdisciplinary study.