PRAGMATICS AND MULTIMODALITY IN INTERPRETING POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN JOE BIDEN'S VICTORY SPEECH

Abstract

This study aimed to interpret political discourse using a pragmatic multimodality approach to the text and video of the victory speech of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, using linguistic and gestural analysis using Searle's speech act theory, Perrine's speech act theory, and gesture interpretation. After that, the combined analysis of the three were classified into the function of political discourse which includes communicative, emotive, incentive, motivational, phatic, metalanguage, and aesthetic functions. The method used in this research was descriptive qualitative method. The findings on speech acts show that assertive speech acts dominate speech with 61%, followed by expressive (14%), directive (11%), commissive (9%), and declarative (5%) speech acts. Meanwhile, findings on figurative language show that there are 7 figurative languages found in speech, namely synecdoche (24%), symbol (21%), personification (21%), hyperbole (11%), metaphor (11%), simile (9%), and apostrophe (3%). The combination of speech acts, gestures, and figurative language with the function of political discourse mostly refers to emotive function and motivational function, which shows Joe Biden's political discourse leads to the act of evoking the audience’s emotion and motivating the audiences related to the United States national movement under the leadership of Joe Biden in terms of maintaining his power as the president of the United States of America.