Discourse Analysis of the Political Speeches of the Ousted Arab Presidents during the Arab Spring Revolution using Halliday and Hasan's Framework of Cohesion

Abstract

This study is designed to explore the salient linguistic features of the political speeches of the ousted Arab presidents during the Arab Spring Revolution.  The sample of the study is composed of seven political speeches delivered by the ousted Arab presidents during the period from December 2010 to December 2012. Three speeches were delivered by the Tunisian president, Zain Al-Abedeen Bin Ali; three speeches by the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak; and one speech by the Libyan president, Muammer Al-Gaddafi. The selected speeches are taken from the Internet.  To achieve the main goal of this study, the analysis of the obtained data is conducted using the Halliday and Hasan's (1976) framework of cohesion. The results of this study revealed that the political speeches which were delivered during the Arab Spring Revolution have their distinctive features which are different from those features of the usual speeches of these presidents during the normal circumstances.  Most of the lexical features such as repetition, synonymy, and hyponymy are widely used in the speeches of the ousted presidents to achieve different political ideologies and strategies such as the ideology of threatening the civilian protesters.

Keywords: Political Speeches, Discourse Analysis, Ousted Arab Presidents, Spring Revolution and    Cohesion.