Pragma-Linguistic Analysis of Assertion in May's and Trump's Inaugural Addresses

Abstract

British Prime Ministers and American Presidents are often observed to make use of assertive speech acts (realized in different syntactic forms with different rates) to attain various purposes associated with their future plans, such as clarifying, asserting and signifying the main critical points in their political speeches. Thus, this paper aims at investigating how the speech act of assertion is used in May's (2016) and Trump's (2017) Inaugural Addresses, focusing on the ways of realizing assertives pragmatically and linguistically, highlighting the purposes behind manipulating these asseretives by using a mixed method of descriptive- qualitative and quantitative processes. The paper concludes that both May and Trump exploits various syntactic forms to execute assertive speech acts which are utilized to confirm the main themes of their inaugural addresses and to assert the truthfulness of the messages they convey associated with their governmental agendas and programs.