A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Feminist’s Strategies In Persuasion

Abstract

This study is extracted from an MA thesis entitled "Strategies of Feminism in Halimah Yacob’s Political Speeches: A Critical Discourse Analysis". The current study analyzes the feminist strategies of persuasion in political speech of Halimah Bint Yacob, the President of Singapore. The researcher uses Van Dijk's Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the structure of Critical Discourse Analysis of Halimah's political speeches to reveal the effectiveness of the positive self- representation upon Singaporeans in holding the success in their progressive life and to prove the efficiency of positive feminist strategies in changing and developing the Singaporeans' life to the best. The researcher utilizes the Socio-cognitive approach of Van Dijk in analyzing the speeches which includes three structures of analysis: macro-structure analysis, super-structure analysis and micro-structure analysis, the adopted approach is used to analyze the schema of the speeches depending upon the descriptive-qualitative and quantitative methodology to display the linguistic-structure of the language of the discourse via exploring the rhetorical devices that shows the power of feminist positive language in persuasion. The CDA shows the coherencies style via using repetition, speech acts, positive politeness, mother kindness and other feminist strategies that affect in persuasion.