Indirectness in Political Discourse: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of Abbas and Netanyahus' United Nations General Assembly Political Speeches (2016-2018) رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Indirectness is a phenomenon that has been used by politicians universally. In this phenomena politicians prefer to convey their meanings without explicitly, clearly, and directly stating it to the public. Politicians, for many reasons, exploit indirectness, they prefer to exploit it when they are dealing with a sensitive issues or with another politician to take advantage of it since it appeals them to achieve different pragmatic functions, such as to build rapport, defend themselves, convince their audience, avoid responsibility, reject decisions politely, and to achieve politeness. With regards to politics, indirectness is exploited heavily by politicians on nearly all of political occasions like on the political speeches. Due to the influential role indirectness plays at political speeches, political speeches have become an interesting and essential area to be investigated where a critical and pragmatic analysis can be done. In political speeches, politicians are able to achieve their political aims indirectly and ambiguously without being clear, direct, and honest. How politicians indirectly achieve their political aims and why is one of the issues that pragmatics field is concerned with and discussed where the analysts study the intended meaning of the politicians. As such, this study has been done to investigate the two politicians, Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahus' use of indirectness in their political speeches at the UN General Assembly 2016-2018 from a critical pragmatic perspective. This study examines six political speeches, three by Abbas and three by Netanyahu. The analysis of the speeches has shown that politicians use many indirectness strategies in their political speeches to not only achieve politeness but also to achieve other pragmatic functions. Also, politicians in most cases fail to follow the four Grice's maxim to achieve the pragmatic functions they draw to achieve behind exploiting VI indirectness. The politician's culture affects their use of indirectness but it is more as a personal skill that varies from one politician to another regarding their hidden intentions. Therefore, the five drawn hypotheses are confirmed. The present study is divided into five chapters. Chapter one introduces the introduction that contains the problem, aims, hypothesis, limits, procedures, value of the study, definitions of the study terms, and theoretical background to critical discourse and pragmatic theories. Chapter two supplies the reader with a theoretical background of the relation between indirectness and pragmatics. Chapter three embarks upon the indirectness strategies that are used by Abbas and Netanyahu in their political speeches to the UN General 2016-2018. Chapter four dedicated to the analysis of the data. The fifth chapter presents conclusions and recommendations