Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 18:6 (2019) ► pp.915–937

Discursive portrayal of Islam as “a part of America’s story” in Obama’s presidential speeches

ORCID logo | Alzahra University
| Alzahra University
This article investigates the image portrayed of Islam and Muslims in official speeches of the former US President, Barack Obama during his two terms in office. Applying qualitative data coding procedures and based on a Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) approach, we examine 377 speeches delivered in the period of 2009–2016 within the macro context of US involvements in contemporary international politics to uncover the discursive image of Islam and Islamic attributes projected and subtly reproduced over time by Obama during his presidency. The outcome comprises four major themes shaped around the notions of America’s fundamental values; Dialogue with Muslim communities; Defining good Islam; and Defining bad Muslims. Through a detailed discussion of the discursive construction of these themes and specifically referring to their lexical highlights, we illustrate aspects of Islam-related issues in the view of an American president.
Keywords: critical discourse studies, political discourse, presidential speech, Obama rhetoric, Islam
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.The study
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1America’s fundamental values
      • 4.1.1Respect for humanity
      • 4.1.2Diversity and equality
      • 4.1.3Religious non-discrimination
    • 4.2Dialogue with Muslim communities
      • 4.2.1Common principles of tolerance
      • 4.2.2Common paths of progress
    • 4.3Defining good Islam
      • 4.3.1Seeking peace
      • 4.3.2Respecting America
    • 4.4Defining bad Muslims
      • 4.4.1Radicalization and extremism
      • 4.4.2Violence and terrorism
      • 4.4.3Anti-Americanism
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 9 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.18023.mir
References (49)
References
Ben-Porath, Eran N. 2008. Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Blum, William. 2013. America’s Deadliest Export; Democracy. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Cap, Piotr. 2002. Explorations in Political Discourse: Methodological and Critical Perspectives. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Charmaz, Kathryn. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2013. Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie. (2007). The Soft Power of War. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Gialdino, Vasilachis. 2010. “Labour, Workers and Work: Sociological and Linguistic Analysis of Political Discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies 7 (3): 203–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Isabela, and Norman Fairclough. 2012. Political Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2012. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by James Paul Gee, and Michael Handford, 9–20. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Filardo-Llamas, Laura. 2015. “Re-Contextualizing Political Discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies 12 (3): 279–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flick, Uwe. (ed). 2014. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, David A. 2017. “A Short History of U.S. Presidents Explaining Islam to Muslims.” The Atlantic. Accessed March 18, 2018. [URL]
Hafez, Farid. 2017. “Debating the 2015 Islam Law in Austrian Parliament: Between Legal Recognition and Islamophobic Populism.” Discourse & Society 28(4): 392–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hart, Christopher, and Piotr Cap (eds). 2014. Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Jager, Siegfried. 2001. “Discourse and Knowledge: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of a Critical Discourse and Dispositive Analysis.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 32–62. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Kampf, Zohar, and Yossi David. 2019. “Too Good to be True: The Effect of Conciliatory Message Design on Compromising Attitudes in Intractable Conflicts.” Discourse & Society 30(3): 264–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kienpointner, Manfred. 2013. “Strategic Maneuvering in the Political Rhetoric of Barack Obama.” Journal of Language and Politics 12 (3): 357–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lu, Louis Wei-Lun. 2008. “Ideological Influence on BUILDING Metaphors in Taiwanese Presidential Speeches.” Discourse and Society 19 (3): 383–408. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maalej, Zouhair. 2012. “The ‘Jasmine Revolt’ has Made the ‘Arab Spring’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Last Three Political Speeches of the Ousted President of Tunisia.” Discourse Society 23 (6): 679–700. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazid, Bahaa-eddin M. 2007. “Presuppositions and Strategic Functions in Bush’s 20/9/2001 Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Language and Politics 6 (3): 351–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mirhosseini, Seyyed-Abdolhamid. 2017. “Discursive Double-Legitimation of (Avoiding) another War in Obama’s 2013 Address on Syria.” Journal of Language and Politics 16(5): 706–730. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mirhosseini, Seyyed-Abdolhamid, and Hossein Rouzbeh. (eds). 2015. Instances of Islamaphobia: Demonizing the Muslim ‘Other’. Lanham, MD, USA: Lexington books.Google Scholar
Neagu, Maria-Ionela. 2013. Decoding Political Discourse: Conceptual Metaphors and Argumentation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oddo, John. 2011. “War Legitimation Discourse: Representing ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in Four US Presidential Addresses.” Discourse and Society 22 (3): 287–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pu, Chang. 2007. “Discourse Analysis of President Bush’s Speech at Tsinghua University, China.” Intercultural Communication Studies 16(1): 205–216.Google Scholar
Pujante, David, and Esperanza Morales-Lopez. 2008. “A Political Action against Popular Opinion: Aznar’s Final Speech before the Spanish Parliament Justifying the War in Iraq (December 2003).” Journal of Language and Politics 7 (1): 71–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reyes-Rodriguez, Antonio. 2008. “Discursive Strategies in Chavez’s Political Discourse: Voicing, Distancing, and Dhifting.” Critical Discourse Studies 5 (2): 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salama, Amir H. Y. 2012. “The Rhetoric of Collocational, Intertextual and Institutional Pluralization in Obama’s Cairo Speech: A Discourse-Analytical Approach.” Critical Discourse Studies 9 (3): 211–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schreier, Margrit. 2012. Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Sharifi, Mahdi, Nafiseh Ansari, and Mina Asadollahzadeh. 2017. “A Critical Discourse Analytic Approach to Discursive Construction of Islam in Western Talk Shows: The Case of CNN Talk Shows.” International Communication Gazette 79(1): 45–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shukry, Azimah S. M. 2013. “A critical discourse analysis of Mahathir Mohamad‘s speeches on the ‘war on terror’.” Intellectual Discourse 21(2): 171–195.Google Scholar
Teo, Chin S. P. and Cui Ruiguo. 2015. “Imag(in)ing the Nation: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Singapore’s National Day Rally Speech.” Journal of Language and Politics 14 (5): 645–664. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsui, Chin-Kuei. 2014. Tracing the Discursive Origins of the War on Terror: President Clinton and the Construction of New Terrorism in the Post-Cold War Era. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Otago, New Zealand.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2002. “Political Discourse and Political Cognition.” In Politics as Text and Talk: Analytical Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Schaffner, 204–236. Amsterdam: John Benjamines. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004. “ Ideology and Discourse Analysis .” Oxford Symposium on Ideology. Accessed February 15, 2004. [URL]
2006. “Politics, Ideology and Discourse.” In Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.), ed. by Ruth Wodak, 728–740. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007. “Macro Contexts.” In Discourse and International Relations, ed. by Dagmar Scheu Lottgen, and Jose Saura Sanchez, 3–26. Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
2009. Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012. “Discourse and Knowledge.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by James Paul Gee, and Michael Handford, 587–603. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2015. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (2nd ed), ed. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 466–485. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2016. “Critical Discourse Studies: A Sociocognitive Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed), ed by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 62–85. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2009. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (2nd ed), ed. by Jacob L. May, 166–169. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Wijsen, Frans. 2013. “‘There are Radical Muslims and Normal Muslims’: An Analysis of the Discourse on Islamic Extremism.” Religion 43(1): 70–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Politics as Usual: Investigating Political Discourse in Action.” In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by James Paul Gee, and Michael Handford, 525–540. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2013. Critical Discourse Analysis (Four1 Volumes). London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Wimston Kwon, and Ian Clarke. 2011. “‘Getting People on Board’: Discursive Leadership for Consensus Building in Team Meetings.” Discourse and Society 22 (5): 592–644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar