چکیده:
The study analyzes the apology delivered by the then-democratic Presidential contender in 2007, Senator Barack H. Obama, to the Indian-American community. This apology succeeded in convincing American citizens of Obama’s goodwill and clean political standards, which eventually led him to surpass his chief opponent, Senator Hillary R. Clinton and become the President of the United States. The study employs Searle’s (1969) speech act theory (SAT) and Holmes’s (1990) apology strategies through pragmatics. The study, then, administrates thematic analysis through positive discourse analysis to gain insights from Obama’s leadership values. Findings educate readers on the importance of an apology construction and encourage readers to follow the example of a world-class leader’s values by having an insight into Obama’s leadership.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Findings educate readers on the importance of an apology construction and encourage readers to follow the example of a world-class leader’s values by having an insight into Obama’s leadership.
Psychological researchers show that when people find themselves in such an identity-threatening situation, they resort to a remedial self-presentation strategy—an apology to communicate to others that a mistake, a bad decision, or an offense is not a representation of that individual’s true character (Schlenker & Darby, 1981).
Her findings reveal that characteristics of an effective apology should include an acknowledgement of the wrongdoing, acceptance of responsibility by the offender, an expression of regret, and a promise that the offense will not be repeated.
Researchers have developed a variety of strategies to comprehend complex speech acts like apologies over the years such as Fraser (1981), Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1989), Olshtain and Cohen (1983), Trosborg (1987), Abadi (1990), Meier (1992), Deutschmann (2003), Brown and Attardo (2005), and Marrus (2007).
Within positive discourse analysis, the grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was used to perform a thematic analysis of leadership values from the apology text using coding techniques (Fairclough, 1995; Halliday & Hassan, 1976).
Lines 20-21 express a request in the directive speech act to help Obama share the apology with all the other Indian-Americans who missed out the apology to repair the tarnished relationship.
Obama used speech acts such as representatives, commissives, and directives to emphasize his beliefs, promise future action of reparation, and request the cooperation of his followers to trust him as a leader.