الفهرس 
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Abstract
This study aims at exploring the linguistic features of the Spoken Language of American political discourse through a pragmatic investigation. It also aims at demonstrating the ability of pragmatics as a helpful tool in analyzing political discourse. The work seeks to uncover the different facets of meaning that can be covertly expressed in political discourse, investigating the different methods and strategies used and the targets aspired to by this tactical usage of language.
The data covers a wide range of samples of the spoken corpus of the first period of President Bush’s presidency (2000-2004), with speeches of the President and a number of other leading politicians, including speech transcripts of the former President Bill Clinton (1993 - 1996).
The thesis comprises four chapters. The first chapter, ’Conversational Implicature and Politeness’, is divided into two parts: “implicature” and “politeness”, it gives a brief overview on the theories of implicature and politeness. Afterwards, it sheds light on the political usage of Grice’s theory of implicature and how far politicians depend on indirectness in their oratory. An analysis of the forms of politeness used in political discourse is also given with particular reference to the theory of Politeness Phenomena. In addition, an explanation is presented for such treatment through examples and excerpts from political speeches.
The second chapter: Person Deixis, defines and explains deixis, and discusses various views concerning pronouns, and how the pragmatic parameters are seen to be the most appropriate tools to handle pronouns. It deals with the political usage of person deixis through studying excerpts from real political speeches, stressing the aims and reasons that govern the pronominal choice.
The third chapter: Political myth and Doublespeak is divided into two parts : ‘political myth’ and ‘doublespeak’. The first part focuses on political myth and the model of the political fairy tale. Theories of Geis, Edelman, Wilson and Lakoff are the basic tools of analysis regarding the notion of mythic thinking. In the second part, Orwell’s model of euphemism and the theory of Doublespeak are applied due to their indispensable value in revealing the true face of political discourse nowadays.
The fourth chapter: Persuasion Strategies, concentrates on several persuasion methods like the use of repetition, metaphors details, and labelling. These persuasive tools are being analyzed with examples from political oratory as to unravel the reason behind their use and construction.
The study concludes that political discourse is characterized by the significant use of: 1. indirectness in order to evade criticism, commitment, and specific questions. 2. Politeness strategies for face management. 3. Involvement and detachment for keeping the distance between speaker and his audience, accepting or avoiding responsibility, and showing attitudes towards others. 4. Figures of speech as a persuasion tool. 5. Mythic thinking for ideology shaping. 6. Doublespeak for manipulation of the truth. The conclusion also proposes recommendations for further investigation in the field. A bibliography of the books cited, and an appendix of samples of the corpus are also given.