A Critical Discourse Analysis of Iran and US Presidential Speeches at the UN: The Sociopragmatic Functions

Speeches articulated by politicians are often vehicles towards achieving their ultimate goals. That’s why there is always tendency to find out the potential ideologies indicated by the discursive strategies and rhetorical devices which these politicians employ to express their political viewpoints. This study adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to cognitively analyze the typical discursive characteristics underlying Iranian and American presidents’ speeches at the UNGA (2013). The findings revealed that the most frequent of the strategies employed by Obama were polarization, self-glorification, positive self-presentation, negative-other presentation and victimization while the most prominent ones used by Rouhani were metaphor, vagueness, negative-other presentation and national self-glorification. The intricate, undeniable relationships existing between language, power and ideology is also what had been clear through the analysis of the lectures transcription.