A Contrastive Analysis Of Obama’s And Trump’s Inaugural Addresses From The Perspective Of Linguistic Subjectivity

Both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have had far-reaching political,economic,and cultural influences on the United States during their terms of office,so their inaugural addresses have been widely followed by linguists.Many scholars at home and abroad have analyzed the two inaugural addresses from the perspectives of critical discourse analysis,relevance theory,and metaphorical discourse analysis.However,there are few studies on the contrastive analysis of Obama’s and Trump’s inaugural addresses from the perspective of linguistic subjectivity.Linguistic subjectivity is a basic feature of the language,which is everywhere,running through the whole process of language use.Without it,language can’t be called language.Based on the theory of linguistic subjectivity,this paper constructs an analytical framework of linguistic subjectivity,taking the Obama’s and Trump’s inaugural addresses as examples.Combining the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,this paper makes a contrastive analysis of the subjectivity of speaker’s perspective,emotion,and cognition implied in the two Presidents’ inaugural addresses from the three aspects of deixis,adjectives,and modality.The research shows that there are similarities in the subjectivity of the speaker’s perspective,emotion,and cognition expressed by the two Presidents’ inaugural addresses.In terms of perspective,the person deixis “we/us” and the distance deixis“this” were largely used in the two inaugural addresses,showing their approachable attitudes towards the people;In terms of emotion,both Presidents used positive adjectives often,with “great/greater” appearing the most frequently in the inaugural addresses to express their patriotism;In terms of cognition,both Presidents made extensive use of the dynamic modal verb “will” to reduce public resistance to their development plans.This study focuses on the differences in subjectivity presented by the two Presidents in their inaugural addresses.In terms of perspective,Obama used the person deixis “they/them” more often to show his respect for the selfless American people,while Trump used the person deixis “you” more often to make a promise to the people and show his desire to win support;In terms of emotion,Obama used more negative adjectives in his inaugural address,with “hard” “false”,and “dark/darkest” being the most frequent ones,expressing his concern about the current dilemma of the United States.Trump used emphatic adjectives more often,among which “American”,“every”,and “same” are the three most frequently used,showing Trump’s emphasis on justice;In terms of cognition,Obama used the dynamic modal verb “can” with the meaning of ability more often to show his sober cognition of the current conditions of the United States,while Trump used the epistemic modal verb “will” with the meaning of prediction more frequently to express his confidence in the future development of the United States.The study also points out that the main reasons for the differences in the two Presidents’ subjectivity of perspective,emotion,and cognition lie in their different governing environment and political backgrounds.The study enriches the analysis of two Presidents’ inaugural addresses and lays a theoretical and practical foundation for the contrastive analysis of linguistic subjectivity in political discourse.