Promising in American Presidential Discourse

Abstract

The speech act of promising is considered as the most influential strategic device to sway the
hearers to the speaker’s point of view, and it represents a prerequisite to a successful interaction
among individuals. It is studied to investigate how people use it as a functional unit in
communication. In other words, to understand how promising is produced by the speaker and
conceived by the hearer, it is essential to identify the linguistic function of the act when it is used
in a clause within a context, more specifically, political context. Besides, promising is classified
within the tact maxim and generosity maxim by Leech (1983). The present study is intended to
analyze the speeches of two politicians; namely, President Barack Obama and his Opponent Mitt
Romney in their presidential elections in 2012. Halliday’s transitivity theory is used as a model
of analysis not only to examine the speaker’s sincerity, but also to show the linguistic options
available for the speaker to express commitment. It is concluded that President Obama and the
politician Mitt Romney tend to be not involved in promises that they cannot keep. Even when
making promises, they prefer to make them implicit rather than explicit. Consequently, the two
politicians’ conventional practice of promising does not necessarily indicate the use of the word
‘promise’, but they bind themselves to future actions.