Inaugural Speech

President Obama's inaugural speech of course may not be considered to be spontaneous or that it would react immediately on some of the most actual events of those days. It was delivered more than two months after Obama's victory in the US presidential election so he had a sufficient time to elaborate his speech in order to sound persuasive and decisive. The speech appears to be really more sophisticated and to posses features of speeches for prominent occasions. And moreover, it is longer than the Obama's victory speech. Also here Obama thanks at the beginning of the speech. If he was thanking his predecessor in the office, George Walker Bush, with whose political party of Republicans Obama's democrats are on the opposite edge of political spectrum and against whose politics he had clearly and hardly stood up during the previous political campaign, it may not be expected that these words of praise are meant seriously and heartily; nevertheless, thanking the opponent is a traditional thing – it tries to suggest that after the elections the new President represents the whole nation, not only his party.

The whole speech, beside this, seems to resemble an effort to encourage the listeners in his American citizenship, or, in other words, to intensify their self-esteem of America and its traditional values. Very important is also the reference to previous presidents, which places Obama as one of the series of American leader. Quoting an ex-president means associating the new president’s policy with the ideas of his predecessor. Obama lists some of the hindrances that threaten America and which American citizens should overcome and American government will try to fight against. And though the formulations like " the state of the economy calls for action" or " we will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories" sounds majestically and lofty, yet still also a bit unclearly and feebly.

On the other hand, Obama wants to be viewed as a dauntless president and tries to persuade his listeners to act boldly in case of necessity which he sees as the main feature of American society and its traditions. The explicitness of persuasion thus seems to reach a high degree of appearance.

Even here, Obama reminds the audience to recall the past times and the changes that have happened during that time. It may seem to be inappropriate because he himself has not made anything special for to be meant, on the other hand, these recalls strengthen the sense of mutuality and solidarity. Moreover, Obama becomes even a bit personal when he is comparing the situation from 60 years ago when black people were not welcomed to serve in the restaurant and the situation of that moment when he is standing in front of the American nation as his first black president in the office.

Among the other characteristics of this speech may be named a relatively high proportion of short sentences. Although the use of simple sentences and compound or complex sentences is not the matter of interest of this thesis, it may be stated here that such methods facilitates to build an effect of drama and the change in anticipation. This suggestion gains more credibility if we take into the consideration the fact that the speech was delivered in spoken form and therefore the change of the pitch of the voice may intensify the attention of the audience. As the corpus of this thesis consists just of the transcripts of the speeches, this feature, however, is not taken into consideration during the analysis and comparison.