A Critical Discourse Analysis of Extremist Language toward Iran in Obama's Discourses

Abstract

             Language is a means of communication through which one can transmit his/her own ideas and thoughts. Extremism is a social phenomenon, political agenda and an ideology. It is taken as a defense mechanism by which politicians defend themselves or their own country. It also can be used as a way to attract people's attention in elections. This specific issue, i.e. extremism in language specifically in American political context especially against Iran has not been given enough scholarly investigative attention from a critical discourse analysis perspective. Thus, this study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature. To do so, it scrutinizes the speeches delivered by the American president, namely, Barak Obama who utilizes various extremist manifestations represented by various discourse tools.

            This study attempts to identify the extremist manifestations and representation used by Obama among which are overt manifestations and the different discourse devices used to deliver such speeches to put an end to Iran's nuclear program.

             In relation to the above objective, it is hypothesized that Obama uses overt manifestations and utilizes different roles, vocabularies, SAs, rhetorical devices such as allusion, and overstatement with argumentative discourse strategies to extremely refuse Iran's nuclear activity.

            To accomplish the above aim and test the above hypothesis, specific American extremist political extracts of Obama are critically analyzed by means of a model elicited for this purpose.