Pragma-Rhetoric Analysis of Assertive Strategies in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Speeches: A Corpus-Based Approach

Abstract

Language is an innate ability of human being and it is used to communicate a specific function. Language has power and it is exercised by the speaker. Political speeches are delivered by the speakers to convince their audience and criticize opponents. This study is based on political speeches of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto which he delivered in different periods i.e., 1948-1965. He delivered numerous speeches during this period but this study is based on 138 speeches. A corpus has been compiled that comprises of 482,365 word tokens. The process of corpus compilation has been very careful each speech is saved in a separate file. The data is presented in tabular form based on four types of clusters; I-statements, we-statements, you-statements and they-statements. The frequency of these four personal pronouns has been analyzed with different adverbial boosters that are used by the speaker. These assertive strategies are analyzed with the research lens of Searle’s Speech Act theory. This study is beneficial for two aspects; first, a corpus has been compiled specifically for this study and second it leaves research gaps for the future studies; comparison of two different political leaders can be done to generalize the findings, more material of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s interviews and addresses can be added.