The Language Choice and Features in Michelle Obama’s Speech on Supporting Hillary Clinton

Abstract：Broadly speaking，the language in use，whether spoken or written，is discourse （Lin Wei & Yang Yuchen，2007）.Public Speaking is the process or act of performing a speech to a live audience which can both considered as spoken discourse and written discourse.This essay aims at analyzing Michelle Obamas speech on supporting Hillary Clinton mainly from discourse analysis approach，in which the first part focuses on specific language choice in the discourse and the last three parts emphasize on its uniqueness and linguistic features.

Key words：Language Choice；Features

1 Language Choice： the Use of No.（，） and our

People need to select language form and content in the light of individual demand and actual context.Functional linguistics holds that language is a matter of choice.Different language choices differ in meanings and materialize different functions.Language user，as the decision maker of the language choice，is bound to affect language use owning to her/his own roles and relationships with hearer/reader and other complex factors.In other words，there is a relationship between language use and language user.

Michelle Obama gave the speech as first lady of United States in 2016.The social status determines that each word she uttered should give a very careful consideration of its intentionality and acceptability.One feature of the speech is the use of short sentence No.（，） which appears four times in the whole speech.

（1）No，our motto is...

（2）...not Democrat or Republican，not left or right.No，in this election and every election is about who will have the power to shape our children...

（3）No，we listen to each other...

（4）No，hear me.

The information delivered afterward in the first three sentences are all important and convincing arguments in the speech.（4） is a command utterance，reminding the hearer that the following part is of vital importance.Short sentences have the overt merits of being easy to catch and follow，easy to get the meaning.Using the negative word No as a whole sentence is in conformity with the role of first lady because its firm and decisiveness are able to appeal the audiences trust and confidence，thereby uniting the Democratic Party.From phonetics perspective，the pronunciation of No.（，） is short and brief.Message delivered in this way in public speech seems to be more powerful and effective.

The language choice on lexical level also worth close scrutiny.Take the flexible use of our in the discourse，for example.“Our” is a possessive pronoun which is based on hearer/readers inference within the context.In this speech discourse，our daughters，our girls/children/kids occur frequently using to refer to either the speakers daughters or anyones kids in the country.For the sake of convenience，a brief statistics of the utterance of our have been shown in table 1-1.

Table 1-1 The relevant statistics on the utterance of our

According to the table，it is found that there is a gradual transition in terms of the personal reference as the right column shows.The speaker Michelle initially use our for referring to her and president Obamas daughters （paragraph 3，4，6）.Paragraph 7 is a transitional paragraph，in which our appears twice.For the first time，pronouns in the sentence With every word we utter，with every action we take，we know our kids are watching us like we and our have ambiguous references.It seems to refer to the speaker and Barack Obama and their kids at first thought，but it also appeals everyone to associate themselves.The word we lead the audience to think about themselves and our about their sons and daughters.If arousing sympathy among the audiences is one of the key element in a successful speech，the speaker Michelle has made it at this point.And the speaker explicit the target people not just to our girls，but the children across this country afterwards.From paragraph 8，our begins to refer to the overall kids in the whole nation.Therefore，a natural and smooth transition has been gradually threaded through the discourse.This “design” not only advance the speech naturally but also make the opinions more appealing and acceptable. Moreover，the word our could shorten the distance between speakers and hearers in spite of the wide disparity on social status （between the president or the First lady and the fellow civilians）.

2 Parallelism： A Noticeable Rhetoric Device and An Unnoticeable Cohesive Device

Parallelism is one of the most common techniques in public speaking and is widely used in all kinds of speeches.In this discourse，parallelism is defined as repetition of the same syntactic form and is marked by underlines in the analysis material.The frequent utterance of parallelism no matter double parallelism or triadic parallelism is often seen as a rhetoric device which could affect hearers feelings and attitude.

（1）...not Democrat or Republican，not left or right.

（2）...Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure.She never takes the easy way out.And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

（3）...when they go low，we go high.

（4）（p9） And I am here tonight because in this election ...

（p22） And I am here tonight because I know that ...

（5）（p16） I want someone with the proven strength to persevere，someone who ...

（p18） I want a president with a record of public service...

（p20） I want a president who will teach our children that ...

Using parallel structure in English could materialize certain functions： a） Brevity.In sentence （5），the speaker steered clear of political issues only with four nouns.b） Emphasis.In sentence （6），Michelle used syntactic form she/Hillary never three times for emphasizing Hillarys biggest merit —— never give up to anything.The strong and firm way of expression would also give the audience a strong feeling.c） Contrast.The effect of using parallel structure to represent contrastive ideas is more evident.In sentence （7），they and we，low and high have formed a strong contrast.Michelle here tried to emphasize that Barack Obama and she would never be the same as “those” people who behave bad and utter hateful language，because they know their children are watching them and thereby introduce the topic of whole speech ——children.

Parallelism can also be an unnoticeable cohesive device to make the discourse more coherent.Through repetition of structure，larger stretches of discourse are connected.Example （8） and （9） are both parallel sentences between paragraphs.In （9），paragraph 16，18，20 initiate the text by the same syntax I want a president with/who to specify which kind of president is preferred by her.And paragraph 17，19，21 are further explanations of the previous paragraphs.Thus there comes very clear and coherent structure.Sentences in example （8） links a longer stretch of discourse from paragraph 9 to paragraph 22.The discourse parallelism are widely used in both speaking and written discourses.

3 Political Speech： Say no More about Politics

Obviously，this is a political speech.But the uniqueness of the discourse lies in that the speaker Michelle steered clear of conventional political questions like parties or anything related to ideology，but put forward a new perspective —— kids.Reasons can be explored from two aspects.On the one hand，Michelle uttered little about parties or ideology because of the roles identity between she and Hillary.Michelle is a first lady，Hillary was a first lady； Michelle was a lawyer，Hillary was a lawyer； they are females，they both come from Chicago and they are both democrats.Hillary and Michelle share many similarities especially with the same party.Therefore，it is quite wise to avoid mentioning party and ideology.On the other hand，the roles as both first lady and a mother drive and facilitate Michelle to address the speech from a new perspective and with a new topic，kids.She emphasized the education and fostering of new generation which is bound to the same concerning of all the families in United States，and at the same time，she maintained that the only standard for presidency is who can leave something better for our kids.Therefore，a model president is of vital importance.Foregrounding on that，praising or speaking highly of Hillarys merits of being caring and effective would be more acceptable and natural.This is especially true when making a comparison with the competitor Trump，whose public image is quite controversial，rash and baffling.So omitting the partisanship，and seeking common ground by putting forward a new angle，Michelle ingeniously united a larger range of citizens heart.

Reference

[1]林偉，楊玉晨.英語與篇分析[M].上海：復旦大學出版社，2007.

[2]Halliday M A K，Hasan R.Cohesion in English[J].Longman，1976.

作者簡介

王安琪（1993.07—），女，漢，黑龍江大慶人，東北師范大學，碩士在讀，研究方向：語篇分析。