Intonational Patterns of Persuasive Strategies in Blair’s Speech: A Socio-Cognitive Phonological Analysis

Abstract

The study aims to investigate qualitatively and quantitatively the intonational patterns of power abuse and manipulation in Blair’s speech regarding legitimating the war on Iraq. It focuses on examining the representative tonal contours in Blair’s speech, particularly the persuasive strategies of inequality and dissimulation. The major findings have shown that the signs of power are more than the signs of manipulation in Blair’s speech. This is because Blair took the role of an omnipotent character when asserting his truth claims, and attributed that to having a reputed status as a prime minister when accessing information. The most common contours used by Blair’s speech are (H* L-L%) and (L+H* L-L%). The simple high tone (H*) reflects Blair’s assertion when he emphasized the information to convince the parliament to take decision about war against Iraq. By contrast, the complex fall-rise tone (L-H*) has been invested when Blair defocused and blurred the information, using lies and distorted or unclear arguments. Besides, the (L-L%) contour has been commonly invested in the power and manipulative strategies to express the representative speech act. This connotes the idea that the most of Blair’s speech is representative; it contains declarative statements. Such a study helps to enhance learners’ understanding of speakers’ intended meaning, since it focuses on showing the tonal types of the social and cognitive traits of the politician in the discourse.