An Analysis Of Political Speeches From Peirce's Two Semiotic Triads

Peirce's two triads render a forceful interpretation frame for studies of political speeches. This research attempts to analyze Bush's four political speeches.In the present semiotic study, the application of semiotic theory is only confined to some fields. Being a new discipline in modern social science, semiotics provides some meaningful thoughts and methodology for the development of other theoretical studies, with a wide range of studying fields in sign properties, features, sign meaning and the relation between sign and human. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the initiator of pragmatism is an American philosopher and logist at the end of 19th century. The drastic interest in semiotics somehow signifies the status of Peirce.Semiotics, according to Peirce, should target at all the signs. The main content in Peirce's semiotic theory is two interlocking triads. The first one is the triadic combination of representamen, object and interpretant. The other one is the second trichotomy of sign: icon, index and symbol, which is put forward on his philosophical universal categories and on the relation between representamen and its object. This trichotomy casts a great bearing on semiotic studies. To Peirce, the richness of sign is the intrinsic combination of the three.American presidential speeches are typical discourses and of great academic value. Political speech is a kind of public communication. As far as the topics it covers, political speech falls into four kinds: inaugural speech, domestic speech, military speech and diplomatic speech. Political speech, in and of itself is a speech activity of strong purpose. Achieving this purpose is a requirement of the speaker to establish a good relationship with his audience. Such kind of relation and communication is a two-way process and interaction.By reviewing the previous studies, the author found that applying semiotic theories to specific practices still remains to be explored. This thesis makes a tentative attempt in studying political speeches from Peirce's semiotics. The author chose George W. Bush's four political speeches as an example for analysis from the perspective of Peirce's two interlocking triads. The author proposes that Peirce's semiotic theory, especially his theory of two interlocking triads is a more interpretative theoretical framework in the study of political speeches. Consequently, the study carried out in this thesis serves not only to gain a deeper insight into the nature of political speech from the perspective of Peirce's semiotics—a dynamic semiosis process, but also to achieve a better understanding of the political linguistic skills of statesmen at large, if not confined to George W. Bush. The triadic relation of representamen, object and interpretant provides a new perspective for studying political speeches and the partition "interpretant" greatly promotes the status of the addressee. Therefore, the thesis enlarges the application of Peirce's semiotics, proving that Peirce's two triads have strong interpretative force in analyzing political speeches. Meanwhile, some inspiring thoughts for studying language and discourse are also shown.