Modalities as Persuasion Carriers in Political Discourse

Abstract

This paper explores the persuasive weight of modalities as presidential meaning carriers in Egyptian political discourse. More specifically, it probes the extent to which modalities, which are linguistically manifested in obligation modals and need-statements, go beyond their ordinary semantic function of communicating obligation and commitment towards further persuasive functions that target the successful communication of particular presidential meanings in one of President El-Sisi’s speeches. Two research questions are addressed in this study: first, to what extent are modalities employed as persuasion carriers in El-Sisi’s speeches? Second, what are the presidential meanings carried by modalities in the selected data? The paper theoretically draws on various approaches to the concept of modality and its categorization. The study reveals two main findings: first, modalities in El-Sisi’s speech go beyond their ordinary semantic function towards further pragmatic purposes that target the influence of the addressees’ cognitive background in a way that serves to confirm specific existing beliefs or to change them totally to adopt the persuader’s views. This, in turn, accentuates this paper’s assumption that modalities are persuasion strategies with a speaker-benefit-oriented goal of communicating particular intended meanings. Second, in political speeches, modalities are often accompanied with other lexical and grammatical categories to intensify the persuasion process. The study recommends further discussions of grammatical categories other than modality, such as pronouns, to show their significance as persuasion strategies in political and critical discourse studies.