A Pragmatic Analysis of Trump’s Statements on Iran’s Nuclear Agreement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/lark.4684Keywords:
Keywords: Speech acts, Pragmatic analysis, van Dijk’s model, Iran's nuclear program, Speech events.Abstract
This research examines the prominent discursive strategies utilized by the US President Donald Trump to rationalize his choice to exit the Iran nuclear agreement. The analysis was conducted using a transcript of Trump’s speech regarding the termination of the agreement, which was delivered from the diplomatic room of the White House on May 8, 2018. By employing van Dijk’s model of claims analysis (2004), the results indicated that the most commonly employed discursive strategies by Trump included negative other representation, lexicalization, hyperbole, counterfactuals, authority, polarization, populism, and number Game. Using these strategies, Trump portrayed Iran, its nuclear program, and the agreement as a security threat to the United States, its allies in the Middle East, and the global community. As a result, Trump persuaded the audience that his decision to withdraw from the agreement was justifiably reasonable.
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