Intertextuality in the language of the US presidential debates: discourse analysis

Abstract EN

The U.S.

presidential debates are rich in revealing national/international policies of the politicians.

More specifically, the 2012 U.S.

presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are unique in balancing and predicting the election outcome through the candidates' discourses.

A Political Discourse Analysis is integrated to Ruth Wadak's (2011) Discourse-Historical Approach to investigate how intertextual practices are used in the language of the two candidates to reveal power manipulation and ideology in order to win the poll.

The current study is a qualitative study which analyzes the candidates' speeches.

The materials are particular extracts selected from the transcripts of one presidential debate in 2012.

The purpose of the study is to uncover the intertextuality in the candidates' speeches when they debate the most important issues of USA.

Both candidates utilize intertextuality and utter various chains of intertextual practices in order to persuade the public.

The findings indicate that the manipulative and persuasive nature of the debaters tends to the reference in order to mobilize the support towards opponent.

Such a reference is either historical or repetition.