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- Monday, March 23, 2009
- Obama's lopsided speech and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
- Published at:Amazine/Ezine online journals
Lexicography and poli-linguistics:
Obama's lopsided speech and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
It but axiomatic that the common trend in political discourse is to go beyond what is natural, common and marked to come up with effectively manipulated discourse. This article addresses the way politicians convey their attitudes towards a subject area by employing the lexical connotations of Dysphemism and Euphemism in reference to the entities under discussion (Hasegawa, 2002). For instance, if a politician favors a particular party, he tends to use euphemized expressions to support it. Euphemism is defined as an implicit mode that portrays the good face of an entity in a way that it seems positive. Fairclough (2004) states that you can "avoid calling a spade a spade" by using an emotively euphemised expression. In contrast, dysphemism shows the ugly face of the entity. This article addresses how President Barack Obama delivers a lopsided speech when the topic under discussion is "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict".
After intensive analysis of Obama's speech entitled: "Israel and the Palestinian territories"(Click:http://obamaspeeches.com/043-From-the-Road-Israel-and-the-Palestinian-territories-Obama-Podcast.htm), It is found that the title and the rest of his speech is imbued with an overall perspective tilting pro-Israelis. To pin it down, President Obama uses the euphemized term "Palestinian Territories" which means (an area which is considered as belonging to or connected with a particular country http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=82092&dict=CALD).
Moreover, he refers to "the Israeli erected barriers" by using the euphemised term "checkpoint" (a place where people are stopped at a border between two countries). This implies that Palestine is only part of a state. A better choice is the euphemised term "roadblock" (a temporary structure put across a road to stop traffic) is to be employed if Obama intends to support the Palestinian perspective. At other instances, President Obama opts for dysphemised terms such as "terrorism" referring to Palestinian assaults against the Israelis.
The article ends up with guidelines to the analyst, politician, or even would be translator so as to know the semiotic values with which the utterance is saturated. Euphemism is implicitly used by President Obama to refer to both Palestinians and Israelis but with one perspective to show the good face of the State of Israel that has borderlines with a territory part of Israel, i.e. "The West Bank" as Obama puts it. On the other hand, dysphemism is an explicit mode that clarifies the ugly face of Palestinians.
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