Shaping political image through politeness strategies in the presidential debates

Ahmad Amin Dalimunte; Fengwei  Wen

doi:10.21070/jees.v7i1.1660

(1) * Ahmad Amin Dalimunte Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara
Indonesia
(2) Fengwei Wen School of Foreign Languages, Gannan Normal University, China
China
(*) Corresponding Author

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21070/jees.v7i1.1660

Abstract

Politeness involves evaluations and attitudes which are closely connected to the assessment of actions. Politeness investigations in presidential debates enables voters to assess the candidates’ behavior to make well-informed decision during the election. The present study investigated politeness strategies in two different presidential debates within the United States electoral context: the Democratic party and the final presidential debates. Data were analyzed by adopting the coding scheme in Brown and Levinson’s frameworks. The overall result indicated that both the presidential debates used more positive politeness strategies than the negative politeness. PPS-10 (offer and promise), PPS-12 (include speaker and hearer in the activity) and NPS-2 (hedge) were more frequently used in both types of debates. PPS-3 (intensify interest to hearer) was frequent in the democratic debate alone. Meanwhile, PPS-15 (give gits to hearer) was frequent in the final presidential debate alone. The findings imply that the use of the politeness strategies can shape the candidates’ positive political images in the presidential debates.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Findings show that the selected politeness strategies are to shape candidates’ positive political images in the presidential debates.
Having positive images such as not harsh, having good behavior are considered to be critical importance in determining the winning of the election.
Negative politeness is less preferably used and has been less taken into account as proper rhetorical skills in the debates.

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Author Biographies

Ahmad Amin Dalimunte, Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara

Ahmad Amin Dalimunte is an English teacher at Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara (UIN-SU), Indonesia. He obtained his PhD in English Language Studies from Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand. His research interests include disciplinary discourses and genre analysis, English for Specific Purposes, reading and writing interconnection. He has published two articles on Scopus indexed journals on texbooks and genre analysis.

Fengwei Wen, School of Foreign Languages, Gannan Normal University, China

Fengwei Wen is a lecturer in English at the School of Foreign Languages, Gannan Normal University, China. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in English Language Studies from Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand. His current research interests include EFL teaching and learning and technology-enhanced learning.

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