An Investigation into the Political Discourse of the Iranian and the American Presidents via Van Dijk s CDA Model: The Case of Annual UN Assembly Speeches

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) shows how language serves ideology and power. It makes people aware of what language can do in defining people and their status in the community and explicates abuse of power by analyzing texts in the light of larger social and political contexts in which those texts and speeches circulate. In this vein, one of the discourses which attracts many scholars is the political discourse. The present study aimed at making a comparison between Iranian and American presidents’ political discourse at the UN general assembly based on Van Dijk’s (2004) CDA model. In this article, the authors try to see whether there are significant differences between the presidents in employing discursive strategies and to see what the basic ideological differences are between Iranian and American presidents’ speeches. On this account, 8 speeches given by four Iranian and American presidents in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 at the UN general assembly were chosen and transcribed. All the speeches were duly analyzed. Then, using Van Dijk’s model, the discursive strategies were highlighted. To sum up, the results of this study made obvious that there are significant differences between the presidents in employing discursive strategies. The number of ideological strategies taken into account by Iranian and American presidents was remarkably different. Additionally, the comparison of the presidents’ speeches revealed that the basic ideological differences are that of Actor Description, Norm Expression and Positive Self-presentation.