This paper is to find out how Obama?s inauguration speech
addresses the confidence of the new President to cope with the domestic
problems and renew the American role in the world in terms of its theme,
plot structure, linguistic and stylistic categories. The theme expressing the
historically-rooted confidence to remake the nation and the world is
developed into six simple elements. The words in general are aimed to
emphasize a convincing vision - a return to the steady rule of law and the
solid ideals of the U.S. democracy. Obama?s repeated use of the
illocutionary act of commissives convinces his audience and fellow
citizens that the crisis they are suffering will optimistically be overcome.
To better provoke his audience? interest, more compound sentences and
frequent apposition are used. The figures of speech used are mostly
metaphor and very few in the forms of synecdoche and metonymy. Threepart
structural constructions, sometimes with their half-rhymes, are also
repeatedly used for creating the effect of continuity and reinforcements.
The cohesion in the speech is achieved by the employment of cohesive
devices such as co- reference pronouns and ellipsis. Throughout the
speech, Obama places himself as a humble citizen and addresses his
audience as his inseparable compatriots in the use of the pronoun "we"
(43) and the possessive pronoun "our" (37).