Dr. Shazia Ayyaz
National University of Modern Languages, Pakistan
This paper is aimed at examining the US President Barak Obama’s Afghan statement. The main objective of the study is to expose the discursive strategies utilized by President Obama to legitimize the ideologies of the US to achieve the power goals in the political power structure. It also attempted to examine the power struggle as exposed in his discursive strategies where he represents the dominant group. The study lies in the field of Critical Discourse Studies with a specific emphasis on the Socio-cognitive Approach by T. van Dijk (2016). Data for the study is the statement on Afghanistan by President Obama at White House in October 2015. The data is analyzed by following van Dijk’s concept of Socio-cognitive Analysis (2016). The study reveals the ideological stance of Obama in the context of Afghan-US relations. It exposes that Obama uses various discursive strategies to enhance the positive self-image by justifying the actions and strategies of the US in Afghanistan. He manipulates the other ideologies to structure a dominant position in the context of international politics.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
