Abstract

US general election attracts global attention every four years. Presidential candidates express their political ambitions, attacking others and defending themselves at the same time. Various debate styles strategies are manifested in candidates’ verbal delivery as well as their nonverbal expressions. Apart from candidates’ verbal language use, their nonverbal expressions such as smiles, gestures and eye contact reveal candidate’s underlying characteristics and debate strategies. This research studies the first US presidential debate and analyzes debate features of two candidates—Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. This research analyzed their debate speech from the perspective of multimodal analysis, in which different modes of speech have been taken into consideration. Our analysis is Multimodal Analysis Video Software (MMAVEIDO), from which quantitative data of two candidates is retrieved. In addition to empirical analysis, qualitative method is also adopted to analyze the language features of two candidates. Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, this research arrives at the conclusion that as a politician with commercial background, Donald Trump is an individualistic debater with subjective speech and arbitrary debate manners. Whereas Hilary Clinton proves herself to be a diplomatic and seasoned politician who debates with appropriate debate manners such as measured diction and good interaction with audience. This research helps to deepen the study of political discourse analysis from a multimodal analysis perspective. The data drawn from the software analysis can provide many detailed information of candidates’ language styles and debate strategies. 

Keywords: US general election；presidential debate；verbal；nonverbal；multimodal analysis

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1.Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the study-1

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study-1

1.3 Outline of the Thesis-2

2. Literature review-2

2.1 Conversation analysis-2

2.1 Critical discourse analysis-3

2.2 Conceptual metaphor analysis-3

2.3 Multimodal Discourse Analysis-4

2.4 Other Researches on Political Discourse Analysis-4

3. A Multimodal Analysis of the Debate-5

3.1 Description of MMAVEIDO Software-5

3.2 Procedures for the Analysis-5

4. Analysis of the verbal features of the presidential debate-6

4.1 Sentence structure distribution-6

4.2 Repetition-7

4.3 Figure of Speech-9

4.4 Attack and defense strategies-11

5. Analysis of the nonverbal features of the presidential debate-13

5.1 Super-fragmental features-13

5.1.1 Timbre-13

5.1.2 Pace-13

5.1.3 Pause-14

5.2 The correlative features between verbal and nonverbal language-15

5.2.1 facial expression-15

5.2.1.1 facial expression and timbre-15

5.2.1.2 facial expression and figure of speech-16

5.2.1.3 facial expression of debate and attack methods-16

5.2.2 Gestures-17

5.2.2.1 Concurrence of gestures and attack method of two candidates-17

5.2.2.2 Concurrence of gestures and figure of speech of two candidates-18

6. Conclusion-19

6.1 Summary of Trump and Clinton’s style and strategy-19

6.2 Implication of this study-19

6.3 Limitations of this Study-20

References