An Analysis of Personification as a Rhetorical Device in the US Presidents’ Speeches in Four Decades
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Abstract
The purposes of this study were to analyze personification as a rhetorical device in political speeches and to find out the frequency of personification in the inaugural speeches of the US Presidents in the year 1981-2021. It was the analysis of the rhetorical feature of personification used in the eleven speeches by seven US Presidents in 4 decades in order to express the conceptual framework of the American leaders’ rhetoric. The descriptive qualitative method has been applied, and the rhetorical strategy of conceptual personification has been used in order to scrutinize sentences of the speeches. The finding revealed that the seven US Presidents, all quite frequently, use the rhetorical device of personification with the aim to make the American people understand their concepts, beliefs, and goals for America, and the rhetorical device of personification was mostly found in the speech of President Barack H. Obama in the second inaugural speech in 2013.
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