A Transitivity Analysis of War Speeches by George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

War has been at the core of the human history. It is the bitterest experience that nations have ever had to go through. Wars bring about atrocities whose negative impacts are bound to last for generations and generations to come. It comes as a reaction to a previous offensive or offensives that one of the belligerents commits against the other. Along with the war of material weapons comes a war of words between the parties involved. War speeches are one type of political discourse which have an impact on the course of the events of the war.

The problem of the paper is to investigate speeches delivered by two former presidents, the American George W. Bush and the Iraqi Saddam Hussein. The paper seeks out to describe the types of processes of transitivity used in each speech, their distribution  and their functions. The analysis follows the model of  Halliday and Matthiessen of transitivity  (2004). It is a qualitative analysis supported by statistical analysis to attain a deeper insight into the topic of the paper. Transitivity analysis is part of this type of grammar. It is hypothesized that war speeches are marked by a domination of the processes of material and behavioral more than the other processes.

The aim here is to show how transitivity processes are used effectively in war speeches to produce a meaning or meanings in this kind of political discourse and create a gratifying piece of language to be accepted by the audience and reflect the ideology embraced by the speaker.

The paper consists of two parts: the first presents the theoretical background of the paper while the second is the practical analysis and explanation.

It is concluded that the two speeches by Bush and Saddam are both dominated by material clauses that describe actions done by some entity as part of the war declaration process. War is based on actions and declaring it is itself an action.