Discursive strategies in American foreign policy
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | U.S. foreign policy rhetoric as we know it in the 21st century is not only an immediate reaction to current world events but also the result of a long-term evolution arising out of the historical challenges it faced. This idea led me to identify a number of concepts of discourse that constitute the basis of my research and that mirror aspects of American beliefs, which draw on a long tradition of the exceptionalness of the nation and appear throughout the American approach to world politics. These include, for example, concepts of Us vs. Them, condemnation of the others, American values and principles, or American global leadership. In this presentation, I would like to introduce these individual concepts of my research methodology, which are, in fact, discursive strategies that are relevant for the case study of the United States foreign policy towards the Middle East, specifically directed at Iran, Syria, Egypt and ISIL. The methodology is based on principles of Critical Discourse Analyses and elaborates on the motion of discursive strategies as used by scholars such as T. Van Dijk, N. Fairclough, or R. Wodak. The research focuses on President Barack Obama’s second term in office. The studied data has been selected from official proclamations made by the administration, mostly comprising of statements or parts of speeches and interviews given by the President himself. The presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of these discursive strategies which will be supported by relevant examples extracted from the proclamations. |
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