Persuasive Strategies in Selected Speeches of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi

Abstract

The thesis attempts to detect the persuasive techniques in the English translations of nine political speechesdelivered by the former presidents Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi during the revolutions against their regime at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 through building an eclectic model of linguistic analysis adopted from: the role of personal deixis in persuasion, Halliday’s systemic functional Grammar, van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach of positive self- presentation and negative other presentation and Yule’s theory of presupposition. Besides, the studyrelates these linguistic tools to Aristotle’s three main components of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos. The results reveal that Mubarak is the highest president in terms of employing persuasive strategies which justifies the interpretation that he is considered the most one who arouses the pathos of his audience and wins the sympathy of many demonstrators. However, it was too late to stand to the increasing number of the injured and the martyrs. Ben Ali also attempts to sacrifice his image of arrogance, dictatorship and lordliness to hopeless and desperate figure who seeks his public’s compassion. Nonetheless, such drastic shift has not generated closeness with the addressees since he is known of his long history of exclusion and tyranny. This actually hinders his new attitude from being credible and persuasive enough and thus drives the Tunisians to insist on changing his regime. On the other hand, Gaddafi insists on his arrogance, deifying himself and satirizing the demonstrators throughout his speeches. As a result, he loses credibility and the sympathy of the Libyans who rather insist not only on his stepping down but also on getting rid of his life. Key words: Persuasion, Aristotle, Rhetoric, Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic FunctionalGrammar, Transitivity processes, Person deixis, Presupposition.