A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2018 Utah Senate Mid-term Election Debate

Ghonim, Amira; El-Zawawy, Amr; Ramadan, Dina

doi:10.21608/buhuth.2021.80407.1128

A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2018 Utah Senate Mid-term Election Debate

Document Type : Academic research papers

Authors

¹ Department of English, Faculty of Education, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt

² Translation and Linguistics, Department of English, Faculty of Education, Alexandria University

³ Linguistics, Department of English, Faculty of Women for Arts, Science and Education, Ain Shams University

10.21608/buhuth.2021.80407.1128

Abstract

The present study is centered on the multimodal critical discourse analysis approach of the US 2018 Utah Senate pre- election debate between the two challengers Mitt Romney (R) and Jenny Wilson (D). The debate is analyzed according to the eclectic model, adapted from van Dijk’s (2006) Ideological Square Model, complemented with Fairclough’s (2003) “Intertextuality" from CDA model and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2006) Visual Grammar Framework. This study aims to detect and unveil the subtle discursive structures and strategies employed within the transcripts of the two prospective Democratic and Republican candidates’ speeches and discover the ideologies underlying them. The study reveals that the self-other binary is strongly evidenced in the candidates’ speeches and that they employed ideological polarized structures of positive self-presentation of ῾US’ and negative other-presentation of ῾THEM’ as means of mind controlling and manipulating the audience through their verbal and nonverbal modalities to win the elections. It also proved that Romney’s multimodal resources, namely facial expressions, gestures, and colors are used simultaneously and synchronized with his words to enhance his positive image. Conversely, Wilson’s excessive dependence on multimodal resources that are not in alignment with the verbal message being delivered result in weakening her message, perceiving her as less- confident and reliable than her counterpart and losing the race later on.

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