Cognitive Contrastive Study on Subjectivity in Political Discourse

Subjectivity is one of the essential features of discourse. A framework for analyzing subjectivity was constructed, and based on the framework, contrastive analysis of subjectivity in political discourse was explored. Both the method of introspection in linguistics and the statistical method in mathematics were employed. Our findings demonstrate that (1) concerning speaker’s perspective, the person deixis “we/us” and the distance deixis “this” are largely used in the two inaugural addresses, but Obama uses the person deixis “they/them” to show his respect for the selfless Americans, while Trump uses the person deixis “you” more to show his desire to win support; (2) concerning speaker’s emotion, both Presidents use positive adjectives frequently. However, Obama used more negative adjectives in his inaugural address, expressing his concern about the current dilemma. Trump uses emphatic adjectives more often, showing Trump’s emphasis on justice; (3) concerning the speaker’s cognition, both Presidents make extensive use of the dynamic modal verb “will” to reduce public resistance to their development plans. Obama uses the dynamic modal verb “can” to show his sober cognition of the current conditions of the United States, while Trump uses the epistemic modal verb “will” to express his confidence in future development. The study lays a theoretical foundation for the contrastive analysis of subjectivity in political discourse.