The function of lexical cohesion in political speeches

Abstract EN

Lexicon and Knowledge about all aspects of vocabularies are essential devices to understand message in the communication process.

Aspects such as word-formation, diachronic development of words, the current meaning of a word and mostly important, is the relation between words in meaning and the entrance of words and how they are tackled in dictionaries, are all important issues in the process of creating meaning which is necessary to be understood by speakers and readers, (Crystal,1995:118).

The undertaking of vocabularies to decide meaning in different discourse types and registers lead scholars to think about lexical cohesion.

Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) note on one hand, that cohesion occurs when the interpretation of some elements is dependent on that of another, they (ibid: 279), on the other hand, present that lexical cohesion in texts occurs through the repetition of some items and through complex relation of collocation.

Therefore, and to account for connectedness between words, Halliday & Hasan (1976: 290) advice ''to use common sense, combined with the knowledge that we have, as speakers of a language, of the nature and structure of its vocabulary'' Through political speeches, different types of cohesive devices are used.

This paper deals with the importance of functions of lexical cohesive devices and tries to shed light on the kinds of lexical cohesive devices used in the political speech through analyzing the speech of American president Donald Trump, depending on Schifrin’s (1987) classification of the ideational structure which is part of her (1987:25) modal of discourse structure, and Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) classifications of lexical cohesion; Reiteration and Collocation.

The lexical cohesive devices in this paper are investigated through two objectives (1- ) to identify the lexical cohesive devices that characterize Trump's speech and (2- ) to identify the role that each lexical cohesive device plays in Trump's speech.

The results show that these lexical cohesive devices have discourse value which enables them to function as means of social interaction aimed at influencing the nation.