Abstract

The researches on Obama’s speeches in China from the perspective of Perelman’s argumentation are mostly focused on the universal audience, and seldom focused on his starting points of argumentation and argument techniques. This paper researches Obama’s speech not only from the perspective of audience theory, but also from the starting points of argumentation and the argument techniques which made a more complete analysis of Obama’s speech. According to the study, it has been found out that Obama is an excellent speaker and outstanding politician who is good at employing argument techniques to persuade others. He used Perelman’s universal audience, the starting points of argumentation and the argument techniques and made his audience accepted and believed his opinions. Thus, his speech gained great success. On the other hand, it is obvious Perelman's argumentation theory has guidance on our analysis of political speeches and can help us judge the quality of political speeches. 

Keywords : keynote address; universal audience; starting points of  

argumentation;  argument techniques

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 Brief introduction to political speech-1

2.2 Features of political speech-2

2.3 Previous research-3

3. Perelman’s Argumentation Theory-4

3.1 Perelman’s universal audience-4

3.2 The starting points of argumentation-5

3.3 Argument techniques-6

4. The Analysis of Obama’s 2004 Keynote Address in terms of Perelman’s

Theories-7

4.1 The analysis in terms of the universal audience-7

4.2 The analysis in terms of the starting points of argumentation-10

4.3 The analysis in terms of the argument techniques-12

5. Conclusion-14

Works Cited-15