"We love you Barak Obama" is an utterance heard from some of the members of the audience at Cairo University, on June 4, 2009, in response to President Obama’s speech. In the speech subtitled "A new beginning", president Obama promises: "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world" (Line 26). This utterance- in combination with about forty outbursts of spontaneous applause- is an evidence of the persuasive power in Obama's speech. This paper attempts to explore how power is clearly manifested in Obama’s speech at Cairo University, applying Halliday’s systemic functional Grammar, and the critical perspectives set forth by Norman Fairclough. This paper will focus on analyzing the utterances in Obama’s address at Cairo University to reveal how ideology and power are reflected in this instance of his discourse. The study attempts to point out some linguistic mechanisms which president Obama attempts to persuade his audience. These show clearly how language serves the ideology and power within which the political purpose of his speech is encoded. |
