A Critical Discourse Analysis of American and Arabic Political Discourses

The current study is an attempt to analyze discourse from the CDA perspective. The study aims at answering the following questions: How language use in Trump’s and Alsisi’s speech affected people? Do their speeches have positive or negative implication for the Egyptians people? And what are the discursive strategies used in their speeches?To answer these questions, the study hypothesizes that speakers use different strategies, argumentation and historical background to express their ideologies to listeners to have their supports. Also, it is hypothesized that English and Arabic speakers differ in the ways they make use of these materials.Wodak’s model (1999); the historical discourse approach (DHA), has been chosen to be the model adopted to analyze the data selected. Accordingly, two speeches of the former presidents; Abdul Fatah Assisi, in Khartoum-Sudan in March 6, 2021 and Donald Trump the former president of the United States of America, on Oct 23, 2020 about Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam are selected to be the data of this study. Concentration is going to be on the components of the historic approach including the strategies, the topos, the context and the historical background. Each discourse is analyzed according to these components. At last, the current study finds out that Trump as a speaker uses more topos of danger and that Assisi uses more reference strategy a conclusion which unveils the hidden ideologies of the speakers that Trump is more confident, more powerful and impetuous than Assisi who seems less confident, less powerful and careful in choosing his words.