Stylistic Analysis of Barack H. Obama's Inaugural Address...

Stylistic Analysis of Barack H. Obama's Inaugural Address 2009

Rie Ito

0677

Keio University, Japan

The Asian Conference on Education 2012

Official Conference Proceedings 2012

Abstracts

This study takes up the 2009 Inaugural Speech by President Barack Obama (or Obama Speech) as the target of stylistic analysis. The main concern of the study is to find out the content of his speech as well as how it was carried out. In order to identify the WHAT and HOW questions, I employ a stylistic analysis, in which both content and linguistic analyses are combined. More specifically, research questions included:(1) What promises and requests are made and how they are made?, (2) How does intertextuality (quotations from other sources) strengthen Obama speech?, (3) What are the lexical features of Obama speech? (4) Are there structural resemblances between Obama speech and other presidents’ speeches?, (5) What are the referents of politically loaded pronouns (we, they, you) in the speech? Questions (1)-(2) are the target of content analysis, and questions (3)-(5) were the target of linguistic analysis. Among other things, the study reveals the following: (1) Obama’s promises were made in the form of “we will do such and such to do” in the same paragraph; (2) Obama quoted passages from the Bible, Musical Swing Time, and Thomas Pain’s the Crisis in the right places; (3) Obama used structural patterns derived from FDR speech. Most interestingly, Obama strategically used ambiguous pronouns like "they" and "we" in order to let the concept of “E pluribus unum” govern the flow of his whole speech. Key Words 1. Obama Inaugural Address 2. stylistic analysis 3. intertextuality 4. structural resemblance

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The Asian Conference on Education 2012 Official Conference Proceedings Osaka, Japan

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1. Introduction and Background of the Study

This study takes up the Inaugural Address of Barack Hussein Obama II, the 44th

President of the United States (Jan.20th 2009) as the target of stylistic analysis, in order

to identify WHAT is talked about and HOW it is delivered.

US Presidential Inaugural Addresses have been researched in various fields. Leadership

has been the main issue in Political Studies and Business studies, whereas American

Studies have observed historic moves chronically (Erickson 1997). In addition,

Inaugural addresses have been researched in the field of rhetoric. However, the research

focus in that direction has been again mostly on how presidents’ leadership and

charisma were shown (Matsuo 2002). Due to their high recognition of leadership and

charisma, the following are among the most researched presidents’ speeches: inaugural

addresses of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a.k.a. FDR and President John

Fitzgerald Kennedy a.k.a. JFK, and the Gettysburg Address of President Abraham

Lincoln (Houk 2002).

Matsuo (2002) points out the ‘paradoxical presence’ of U.S. presidents. On the one

hand, they are ‘common man’ (unlike European kings); on the other, they are the

commanders-in-chief and they are the achievers of the American dream, which makes

them special. Matsuo also points out that the ‘target’ of presidential inaugural speech is

inevitably ‘US citizens’; thereby every inaugural speech has two missions: 1) to ask

requests; 2) to give promises on his administration.

This study imbibes Matsuo’s suggestions while utilizing linguistic stylistic analysis.

Though I draw on Investigating English Style (Crystal and Davy. 1969) as stylistics

classic, ‘stylistic analysis’ in this paper means the combination of lexical (structural)

analysis and content analysis.

All texts can be resolved into lexicons. Expressions are weaved by construction/syntax,

and messages are delivered. Thus, all texts share two dimensions: WHAT and HOW,

meaning WHAT is talked about and HOW it is delivered. WHAT and HOW cannot be

divided, but rather co-related; therefore, I will focus on HOW —language use— to

The Asian Conference on Education 2012 Official Conference Proceedings1391 Osaka, Japan

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clarify WHAT.

2. Objectives of the Study

Obama has been emphasizing the concept of ‘One America’; THE United States of

America, during his first presidential election campaign 2008. Or, even before.

In 2004, at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), he directly quoted the U.S.

fundamental philosophy: ‘E pluribus unum (One out of many)’. This Latin expression is

incused on U.S. coins as well.

E pluribus unum was the solution, the creation of a brand-new national identity. US

ideal is not functioning anymore; Schlesinger (1992) raised an alarm, pointing out:

“The Europeans who had torn up their roots to brave the wild Atlantic wanted to forget

a horrid past and to embrace a hopeful future. Their goals were escape, deliverance,

assimilation.” And he went on, “The escape from origins yields to the search for roots.

It belittles unum and glorifies pluribus.”

With this social background in mind, Obama left the following words at DNC: “There

is not a white America, there is not a black America, there is not a Latino America,

there is not an Asian America; There is the United States of America.”

This was the speech glorifying the spirit of E pluribus unum, with an emphasis on unum

= ONE.

Did Obama carry on this message / spirit in his inaugural address as well? If so, HOW

did he deliver it?

3. Research Questions

This study aims to identify and analyze the stylistic characteristics of Obama speech by


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addressing the following research questions:

(1) What promises and requests are made and how they are made?

(2) How does intertextuality (quotations from other sources) strengthen the Obama

speech?

(3) What are the lexical features of the Obama speech?

(4) Are there structural resemblances between the Obama speech and other presidents’

speeches?

(5) What are the referents of politically loaded pronouns (i.e. we, they, you) in the

speech?

4. Research Methodology

The target of this study is Obama’s inaugural speech full text (2400 words). For

comparison, I refer to 60-year-length of all presidential inaugural speeches, from JFK

(1962) to Obama including reelected president’s speeches: Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and

G.W. Bush. Though Ford’s speech has not been researched much due to his irregular

inauguration—he is the only president who was not elected by the citizens, this study

includes his speech as well.

First, I employ content analysis, which enable us to clarify the flow or the picture of the

speech. Secondly, I focus on intertextuality as reference to U.S. history ——‘speaking

to ages’—— is one of the requirements of U.S. inaugural addresses. They are usually

unsourced. Third, from token meaning raw data, I analyze type and frequency counts:

so-called, quantitative analysis. Forth, I employ structural analysis where I analyze both

intra / inter syntax. Related with intertextuality, I focus on structural relevance between

other presidents’ speeches. Lastly, I observe distinct usages of pronouns, and then

clarify ways Obama adopts to address people.

5. Analysis

5-1:Promises and Requests


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In the Obama speech, promises are made in a certain fixed pattern. As underlined and

numbered, he uses the same construction pattern, ‘will do such and such to do

something’ repeatedly and presents five promises in a row. By using the modal

auxiliary ‘will’, he expresses the determination of Obama ministration, while describing

the purposes of those actions with the infinitive ‘to do’.

(1) We will act not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.

(2) We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our

commerce and bind us together.

(3) We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise

health care's quality and lower its cost.

(4) We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our

factories.

(5) And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the

demands of a new age.

Obama’s requests are made as follows:

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of

every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that

we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is

nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a

difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our

confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.”

The core message is to ask the citizens to be aware of their duties and responsibilities

and get over the difficult time.

5-2:Intertextuality

Quotations from U.S. history—‘speaking to ages’ —is one of the requirements of U.S.

presidential inaugural addresses. Let us observe what and how Obama quotes in his own

speech.


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5-2-1: Quotations from Scripture

Obama: “We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to

set aside childish things.”

This is an indirect quote from Corinthians, The Testament.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man,

I put childish ways behind me. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I

am fully known.” (c.f.：New International Version.13.11)

Obama’s ‘childish things’ refers to “the petty grievances and false promises, the

recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics” in

his inaugural address.

5-2-2: Quotations from Swing Time

One of the sound bites of Obama speech is “We must pick ourselves up and dust

ourselves off and begin again the task of remaking America”. But why ‘dust ourselves

off’?

There was a musical named Swing Time (lyrics by Dorothy Fields, music by Jerome

Kern) in 1936. It was played to lift up the U.S. citizens’ spirit during the Great

Depression era.

Swing Time:

Nothing’s impossible, I have found.

For when my chin is on the ground,

I pick myself up, dust myself off,

Start all over again.

Don’t lose your confidence if you slip.


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Be grateful for a pleasant trip,

And pick yourself up; dust yourself off;

Start all over again.

Through its lyrics, especially from the first phrase “For when my chin is on the ground”,

we can tell now that the original character’s situation and the reason of Obama’s

expression.

5-2-3: Quotations from Thomas Pain

Obama directly quoted from Thomas Pain’s booklet, The Crisis (distributed on Dec.23,

1776). Underlined in the extract below are Pain’s words.

Obama:

“At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our

nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope

and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger,

came forth to meet [it]."

Pain’s work is known as the first president George Washington’s favorite. Obama’s

“the father of our nation” refers to President Washington, who read these words to the

soldiers in Valley Forge to lift up their spirit during the Independence War.

From those three quotes, we can see how Obama follows predecessors’ (former

presidents’) inaugural style, but also stands out or attains his originality by letting the

nuance of ‘lifting up spirit’ link two historically significant moments.

5-3:Lexial features

In this section, I will explain Obama’s main characteristic terms or lexical items. Below

are the top 12 most frequently used terms in Obama inaugural speech.


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Nation 15

America 14

people 8

generation 8

now 7

today 7

time 6

spirit 5

crisis 4

peace 4

Americans 3

journey 3

On the basis of the frequency counts, it turned out that 880 different words were used in

the speech with 2400 token words. Out of these 880 words, basic words (verbs) such as

‘carry’, ‘remain’ and ‘meet’ were repeatedly used to make his speech lucid. ‘America’

and ‘Americans’ are among the ‘buzz words’ frequently used in U.S. presidential

inaugural speeches. ‘Buzz words’ mean “the terms which arouse U.S. citizens’

patriotism” (Matsuo 2002). Other examples of such expressions are ‘peace’, ‘hero’,

‘unity’, ‘believe’ and so on.

Obama uses a larger number of buzz words usually in his speeches (notably, the 2008

election campaign slogan was ‘change we can believe in’). But in this inaugural address,

he used few buzz words. Instead, he managed to arouse patriotic feelings in context and

with the strategic usage of pronouns. In the sections 5-5-1 to 5-5-3, let us see how

Obama replaced the terms ‘American/ Americans’.

5-4:Structual Resemblance

Here, let us consider whether we can see any structural resemblance between the


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Obama speech and FDR’s first inaugural address. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his

first presidential oath during the Great Depression era (1933). In the beginning of his

inaugural speech, Roosevelt noted “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and

recited the critical economic crisis those days in parataxis without using discourse

markers.

Roosevelt（1933）：

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties.

1) Values have shrunken to fantastic levels;

2) taxes have risen;

3) our ability to pay has fallen;

4) government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income;

5) the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade;

6) the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side;

7) farmers find no markets for their produce;

8) the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

(numbers added by the author)

This style is also found in the Obama speech.

Obama:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a

far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a

consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective

failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

1) Homes have been lost,

2) jobs shed,

3) businesses shuttered.

4) Our health care is too costly,

5) our schools fail too many—

6) and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our

adversaries and threaten our planet.

(numbers added by the author)


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This commonality can be described as ‘structural resemblance’. This structural

resemblance contributes to a heightened persuasion of the Obama speech since the

Obama administration faced the severest economic crisis since the Great Depression in

the days of the FDR administration.

5-5:Pronoun Usage

The way pronouns are used in a given text is well worth examining for the sake of

stylistic analysis; namely, who or what is referred to by which pronouns in what kind of

context. According to Brown and Gilman (1960), pronouns suggest power and

solidarity. Pronouns in this study include ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘we’ and ‘they’. You and I share a

correspondence relationship dialogically while they and we share another type of

correspondence relationship. In addition, pronouns reflect the speaker’s (in this study,

president’s) stance. ‘I’ means the speaker him/herself, yet which does not count much in

this study, as the speaker in U.S. inaugural addresses is evidently, the president himself.

Postulating Obama’s pronoun usage is related to “E pluribus unum” spirit with the

emphasis on ‘unum (One)’. This is one of the points to be verified in the following

section.

5-5-1: THEY

‘They’ is classified mainly into two groups: suggesting human e.g. men and people in

general or NOT human e.g. trees and organizations. It makes distinct difference

between other pronouns ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘we’ as the rest can only suggest human. Furthermore,

‘they’ has a function to ‘group up individuals and bind as a whole’ (Ito 2010) like ‘we’,

still we need to observe its referents by context.


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Fig.1 Frequency of ‘they’ in inaugural addresses from JFK to Obama

Obama used ‘they’ 17 times in his inaugural speech. Compared with all the other

presidents from JFK, Obama’s ‘they’ use was by far the top. Second most they-user is

Reagan the 1st (12 times) and Clinton the 2nd follows (10 times). However, frequency

won’t tell enough, so qualitative analysis must be pursued. To focus on the connection

of pronoun usage and “E pluribus unum” spirit, consider the following.

Obama:

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in

search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and

plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and

Khe Sahn.

As underlined above, there are three times of appearance of ‘they’. The first use of ‘they’

reminds us of Puritans (Whites) who immigrated to America by the Mayflower.

However, the second ‘they’ evokes slaves (Blacks) from Africa. The third ‘they’

superficially hints at all Americans, yet if we take a closer look, there can be a deeper

interpretation. Concord suggests the War of Independence, Normandy suggests World

War II and Khe Sahn suggests the Vietnam War. Thus ‘they’ refers to Americans. But


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Gettysburg is the Civil War, meaning this was the battle among Americans. Gettysburg

is the symbolic place for President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1862) and the

Gettysburg Address (1863), which lead us to the idea that ‘they’ implicates more of

Blacks. Historical facts show there were more black war victims at that time.

In this paragraph, Obama repeatedly used the expression, “For us, they…”. The next

section is dedicated to an analysis of the use of this ‘us’.

5-5-2: WE & I

‘I’ means the president himself in the inaugural address. Impression changes by

frequency, placing, and usage. Obama was the second least ‘I’ user (3 times) in 60 years

next to Clinton the 2nd (2 times), whereas Obama was the third most ‘we’ user (62

times).

Fig.2 Frequency of ‘we’ and ‘I’ in inaugural addresses from JFK to Obama

‘We’ has a function to ‘arouse sense of unity by grouping up individuals and bind as a

whole’ (Ito 2010). When observing the pronoun ‘we’, there are two essential points:

First, is ‘we’ inclusive or exclusive? Second, is there ‘a basis of sense sharing’ or not

(Tanaka and Fukaya 1998)?


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Before analyzing the Obama speech with these two points, considering everyday

utterance examples would be meaningful.

(1) “Sorry we are already closed”

Situation: A CVS manager says to customers after he closed the store with his

colleagues.

This ‘we’ usage is exclusive, as it is not including customers (=’you’).

(2) “I trust you just as much as you trust me. We are one and the same.”

This ‘we’ includes the listener therefore it is an inclusive ‘we’ usage.

(3)“We are Americans”

Situation: A speaker, born and raised in U.S., utters to someone that has the same

background as the speaker.

This is inclusive ‘we’. Also ‘a basis of sense sharing’ is assured. For it is a fact that they

share the same background and U.S. citizenship.

(4) “As we both know, men can't take that kind of things.”

Situation: A girl (a listener) had a fight with her boyfriend and got heart-broken. Her

female friend speaker talked to the listener above to comfort her.

This ‘we’ includes the listener and excludes men in general. However, here, something

interesting happens. Since ‘men can’t take that kind of things’ is not at all a universal

fact (this is a statement which relies on the speaker’s subjective opinion), whether ‘a

basis of sense-sharing’ is secured in this usage of ‘we’ seems to be up in the air. There

is not yet that sort of sense-sharing established, but rather, the speaker herself is now

attempting to make a new basis of sense-sharing. So if the listener agrees to the idea

‘men can't take that kind of things’, a feeling of sense-sharing occurs such that ‘we’ can

function as the speaker’s strategic intention. However, if the listener rejects the

speaker’s idea, feeling e.g. “You’ve got some problem. Not every man is like that”, the

speaker’s intention fails and there won’t be ‘a basis of sense sharing’.

So why does this phenomenon happen? This is because ‘we’ does NOT exist in the first

place. The component of ‘we’ is ‘you’ & ‘I’. Hence, even the example (1) excluding


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customers has ‘a basis of sense sharing’ of ‘we’; in other words, CVS clerks themselves

have the premise as a collective or community within a store. This is the rationale for

setting the function of ‘we’ as to ‘arouse sense of unity by grouping up individuals and

bind as a whole.’

With the analysis above in mind, let us go on to the analysis of Obama’s usage of ‘we’.

Obama:

We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth;

and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged

from that dark chapter stronger and more united,

we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe

shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal

itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

First ‘we’ evidently refers to Americans. However, the question is the second ‘we’.

People suffered from Segregation are Blacks, not Whites that this ‘we’ implicates

Blacks. Therefore, this is superficially an exclusive ‘we’ usage (against White people).

Yet the third ‘we’ suggests ‘we the Americans’ or ‘one people’, meaning an inclusive

‘we’. Was the second ‘we’ originally intended to be an exclusive usage and

interpretation, addressing only from Blacks’ viewpoints? My answer is no.

Compared to all the inaugural addresses from JFK, Obama is the first president that

used both ‘they’ and ‘we’ to mention racial issues. Former white presidents avoided the

use of ‘we’ for the topics of segregation and slavery—they quoted or hinted at Lincoln

and Martin Luther King Jr. instead, whereas half-Black Obama had the right to use ‘we’.

Yet, Obama has been appealing himself as ‘American’ (not Black) since his first

election campaign and had the ideal of ‘One America’. This usage of ‘they’ and ‘we’

was his way of meeting high expectations from U.S. citizens and the world on his

epoch-making inauguration –to complete a historic turn.

Rather, by fusing exclusive ‘we’ and inclusive ‘we’ together and by making the best of

the functions of ‘we’ and ‘they’, Obama stylistically accomplished to encode the


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concept of ‘One America’, the fundamental philosophy of U.S., ‘E pluribus unum’ in

his first symbolic inaugural address.

Conclusion

This study was motivated by the question ‘WHAT was talked about and HOW it was

delivered’ in President Barack H. Obama’s Inaugural Address 2009. In order to clarify

the stylistic characteristics of this speech, I employed a method of stylistic analysis that

combined content analysis and linguistic (lexical, structural and pronoun) analysis. With

the notions of WHAT and HOW being inseparable, I placed a high priority on HOW;

linguistic analysis. The focus of this study was on how the concept of intertextuality and

the idea of “E pluribus unum” were represented.

As of intertextuality, I clarified Obama’s both direct and indirect quotations from the

Bible, a musical Swing Time, and Thomas Pain’s work. Content analysis made in this

study revealed that Obama’s promises were made in the form of “we will do such and

such to do something”. Linguistic analysis showed that Obama speech and that of FDR

(the Great Depression era) share a structural resemblance. Pronoun analysis revealed

Obama’s stylistic realization of “E pluribus unum” spirit by adjusting referents of

pronouns.

Analyzing 200-year-long U.S. presidential addresses was beyond the scope of this study.

I would like to go for that starting with another stylistic analysis of the up-coming

Obama’s second term inaugural address.

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Brown, R. and Gilman, 1960. The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. Sebeok (ed.)

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Houk, David. 2002. FDR and Fear Itself: The First Inaugural Address. College Station:

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Schiffrin, D. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge University Press

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