HomeTin-awvol. 2 no. 1 (2018)

Speeches of President Rodrigo RoaDuterte: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Aivie E. Dacay

 

Abstract:

Politicians express themselves and their ideologies through language which influences and determines one’s thinking and behavior. The purpose of this qualitative research which employed critical discourse analysis was to describe the linguistic features of the five speeches of President Rodrigo RoaDuterte (PRRD) which were delivered in different contexts and with different audiences. Moreover, the study aimed to explore how power and ideology could be incorporated in his speeches to persuade the public to accept and support his policies. The speeches were analyzed based on Fairclough’s three - dimensional model and Van Dijk’s social - cognitive stream which focuses on social variables such as action, context, power and ideology. Results revealed how President Rodrigo RoaDuterte (PRRD) accurately and effectively employed linguistic features to express his goals, interests, and joint assumptions in his actions such as pronouns, modals, repetition, and emotive expressions. In addition, results showed how the president consistently expressed his ideology in his speeches which values equality of opportunity, liberalism in the government, positive representation and negative representation of people, love for country, servant leadership, social responsibility, and respect for local government.