A preservação da face no inglês falado: estratégias discursivas do presidente Barack Obama

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse the face work procedures in the speech of the U.S. President, Barack Obama, by analyzing the illocutionary value of his statements. The theoretical contribution for this research is based on the Conversation Analysis principles and the data transcription was performed according to the conventions suggested by Preti (2003). The corpus consist of three political debates during the reelection campaign of Barack Obama for president. The 2012 presidential race was intensely conveyed in the media worldwide and the performance of the President was evaluated by political analysts, sometimes as positive, sometimes as negative. Based on this assessment, we seek to establish a relationship between the discursive strategies and the performance of the candidate touted by analysts as the debate, especially in the U.S., is an event capable of directly interfering in the choice of the voters. In addition to the discussions, the corpus consists of interviews with different formats, more and less formal, in which the president expressed different views about controversial subjects. The television interviews constitute a significant form of social interaction, since through them, people seek to obtain answers, exchange of information, experience and value judgments between interviewer and interviewee, interviewer and audience, and interviewer and audience. The choices and the combination of these statements are used in order to meet the needs of the speaker in a communicative situation, aiming at building a positive public image. The results showed that these features influence the linguistic attitude of the president, especially when exposed directly to a large audience. His speech is formed by sociointeracionais strategies to reduce potential threats to your image, preserving it for the approval of the listeners and hide what he does’t want to see displayed.