The C hange s in Hilary Clinton’s S peeches from the First Lady to Stateswoman: A Discourse Analysis

Name 李嘉琪

Student Number 3140104281

Abstract

Language is one of the most important tissues that link each other nowadays.

Considerable previous studies have revealed that one’s use of language is tightly

related to his role in society. As Hilary Clinton, a typical figure who has experienced a

remarkable role transition (from the previous First Lady to today’s Stateswoman), the

current study selected 5 pairs of same-topic speeches addressed by Hilary as different

roles, with the aim of investigating 1) the change of linguistic features in her speeches

as her role changing from the First Lady to Stateswoman 2) implications behind the

changes of the speech features with the role change. Adopting Systematic Functional

Grammar and Linguistic Analysis as analysing method, the study revealed changes in

the aspects of word choice, sentence structures and patterns, and speaking strategies,

indicating that Hilary Clinton had a more assertive and stronger attitude in her

speeches with the role changing from the First Lady to Stateswoman. Based on the

findings that language can be fairly different with the role change, implications are

discussed in terms of the relationship between language and identity.

Keyword: language; identity; speech; Hilary Clinton

语言在人们生活中扮演着重要的角色，是人与人之间交流最重要的媒介之一。众

多研究表明，一个人的语言使用与其社会身份有极为紧密的联系。由前第一夫人

到政治家，希拉里•克林顿的身份经历了一个显著的转变。本文选取五对希拉里

的演讲，每对包含希拉里作为第一夫人和政治家的演讲各一篇（主题相同），

运用系统功能语法和语言研究方法进行语言比较，探究随着身份变化，语言使

用的不同。研究发现，希拉里的演讲在词汇使用、句式和表达技巧等方面都发生

了显著的变化，表明随着身份的变化，希拉里演讲中的自我身份意识加强，对

问题的态度也更为强硬。根据结论，本文在最后对研究的启示意义进行了探讨。

关键词：语言；身份；演讲；希拉里•克林顿1. Introduction

One’s use of language, such as tone, choice of words and structure of the discourse etc., is tightly related to his role in society. A worker possesses different language from a teacher; a writer possesses different language from a doctor. Despite of one’s own education level and personality, his self-awareness and position influence the way he uses his language and the self-revealing in the speech. In this case, with the change of one’s role, his language can also be changed greatly. Hilary Clinton, for example, is a multi-role entity to some extent, being the wife of the former American president Bill Clinton, the Secretary of the State from year 2008 to 2013, and also the president nominee in 2016. As she has experienced the role transition from the First Lady to Stateswoman, it could be inferred that the features of her public speeches have been changed remarkably. The current study is an exploration study to linguistically investigate the changes in Hilary Clinton’s speeches from First Lady to Stateswoman in order to have a better understanding of the relationship between identity and language.

It is widely acknowledged that identity is at the heart of a person and a group, and it is also a connection that links each other. When analyzing the culture reflected in a discourse, it is not only important to analyze the speech but also the speakers’ identity which reveal particular cultural symbols through the language use (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004).

Evidence from studies of speaking strategy in individual speeches reflects the relationship between language and identity variation (Johnson & Azara, 2000). The correlation between language and identity reveals a dynamic and complex disciplines, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and sociolinguistics (Brown, 2005). Two major types of identity have been found by Brown (2005). One is personal identity, such as gender and race, which remain fixed. In gender studies, it is commonly held that people tend to “perform gender”, that personal identity as male or female is to a certain extent the result of fixed performance in conveying personal identity (Johnson & Azara, 2000). For example, speech spoken by women shows a greater fixed willingness to support others, though the praise is rather tactful, while men tend to give a more direct praise once they decide to give one (Jaspal, 2010). The other one,

social identity, on the contrary changes frequently, therefore enables one to adopt an identity regardless of physiological, genetic, or historical factors. Title, or role, which changes frequently, influences people’s perceptions of the identity of themselves and others. For example, influenced by the personal classification of the social status and the followed subjective sense of oneself, the seriousness, formality and the intent of an interaction in one’s language can be changed greatly (Jaspal, 2010).

For the social identity, self-awareness mentioned above is a major part which can be regarded as a dynamic and collective aspect of intellect including idea, emotion and memory which play a crucial role in one’s language delivering (Villarrea, 2009). It is of importance to pay close attention to speakers’ own interpretations of their identities, as revealed through the linguistic analysis of their discourse. As one puts themselves into a group, most of the time they are not driven not by some recognizable similarities of others but by their own awareness of power and status (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). “Makedness”, a term which is borrowed by Bucholtz & Hall (2004), is widely used in humanities and social sciences to describe the contrasts of the identities varied in a group, to investigate the hierarchical structuring of difference among people the field of linguistics. Besides, one’s identity can also be reinforced through interpersonal activities of various kinds, including public rituals that reinforce certain self-conceptions among those who participate in them (Agha, 2007).

Although there has been increasing awareness and concern over this area (identity and language), and much work has been down to observe discourse features of speeches, there has been little study in the linguistic aspect of the changes in one’s speeches accompanied by the change of one’s role, and moreover, few work has been focused on the implication behind the change of the speech with the change of the role. Therefore, it is of great importance to do further study over the discourse changes with one’s role change, giving more linguistic implications and helping people to adapt to a new environment as a new role.

The purpose of this paper is to make a contrast study into the changes in Hillary Clinton’s speeches from First lady to Stateswoman to reveal the relationship between the role and the use of language, using analysing approaches like systematic functional grammar and linguistic analysis as instruments. The study is guided by the following the research questions:

RQ1 What are the changes in Hilary Clinton’s speeches from First Lady to Statesman?

RQ2 What are the implications behind the changes of the speech features with the change of the role?

2. Method

2.1 Data

The current study is an exploratory study to linguistically investigate the changes in Hilary Clinton’s speeches from First Lady to Stateswoman to have a better understanding of the relationship between role and language.

The choice of Hilary Clinton’s speeches as research object is due to several reasons. Firstly, Hilary Clinton is a famous figure around the world, especially with US Presidential Election going on recently. Secondly, Hilary Clinton is a typical example for the study of the change of the speech with the role change as she experienced a remarkable transition from the First Lady to Stateswoman. Thirdly, as a public figure, she began to give typical public speeches on important occasions like conference in United Nations when she was First Lady, so the resources of the speeches are relatively easy to be obtained.

The study adopted a qualitative analysing method. Five pairs of Hilary Clinton’s speeches over the same topic (the total number is 10) with her identity being First Lady and Stateswoman were randomly selected to make a contrast analysis on the linguistic devices and linguistic features employed in the speeches. The five topics are typical issues: woman right, human right, health, national security and education. Every topic has two speeches to analyse, one was addressed in the duration of Hilary Clinton’s being First Lady (from 1992-2000), and the other one was addressed in the duration from the end of the First Lady and her being a Stateswoman until now, as Hilary Clinton stepped onto the political stage in 2000 when she was elected to be a federal senator in 2000. The transcripts of the 10 speeches were obtained from two official websites: one is the website of White House (https://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/2000/20000617.html) and the other one is the official website of Hilary Clinton Speeches (https://hillaryspeeches.com/).

2.2 Analytical framework

To analyse the changes of linguistic features in the 5 pairs of speeches, the method in

the current research is adapted from Abdel-Moety (2014), which includes systematic functional grammar and linguistic analysis.

The systematic functional grammar is an approach to connect the language with its social context. Three types of grammatical analysis are conducted in the analysis, including transitivity analysis, modality analysis, and textual analysis. According to Halliday (1985), there is a systematic correlation between context and language. It is revealed that three aspects of context are respectively connected to three sorts of meaning expressed in language. The field of discourse which refers to what is being talked about and what is going on is related to experimental meanings of choice; the tenor of discourse which shows the relationship between the participants is related to interpersonal meaning choice; and mode of discourse which indicates the channel and medium of the speech is related to textual meanings choice. The meanings of the three aspects of the text function simultaneously in the speeches through grammatical and lexical choices.

Linguistic analysis is focused on the choice of words, speaking strategies and sentence structures and patterns in the speeches (Abdel-Moety, 2014). In general, speeches are analysed from three aspects as follows: 1) word choice, including personal pronouns (vocative words), abstract words, modal verbs, absolute expressions etc.; 2) the sentence structures and patterns, including the length of sentences, statements, questions, etc.; 3) speaking strategies, including humour, parallel construction and other rhetorical features. From these aspects, differences of linguistic features in each pair of the five pair of speeches are analysed carefully, thereby to have a better view of the implications reflected in the change of the speech with the change of the role in Hilary Clinton’s speeches.

3. Analyse

3.1 Systematic Functional Grammar Analysis

Case 1

Woman right is the topic of the first pair of speeches. In 1995, as First Lady, Hilary Clinton addressed the speech named “Woman Rights are also Human Rights” on the Women Plenary Session of the United Nations Fourth World Conference to strive for the woman rights. And in 2010, she came back to that session of United Nations as the Secretary of State to give another speech on woman rights. The audience of the both speeches were mainly social elites from different social fields and representatives from different countries. The aim of the two speeches Hillary Clinton gave was to persuade the audience to agree with her point, and more importantly to put more emphasis on the situation and call for further attention and support.

Case 2

In the second pair of speeches, the topic is human rights. In 1999, the First Lady Hilary Clinton addressed the speech on the OSCE’s “Combating Human Trafficking” Signing Ceremony with her audience mainly being delegates and members of the NGO community and her aim was to call people for fighting against human trafficking to NGOs, Governments and Communities, while in 2011, Hilary Clinton as the Secretary of State made a speech in front of the representatives of other countries on the Human Rights Day Anniversary in Switzerland.

Case 3

The third case is a pair of speeches over the topic of health and food and water resources. In 1999, Hilary Clinton as First Lady addressed the speech on the World Health Organization Forum on Women and Health Security in Beijing. In 2012, as the Secretary of States, she attended the World Food Conference in Washington and delivered the speech to give the World Food Prize to the professor from Israel. As a consequence, the audience mostly come from Israel with two former presidents included.

Case 4

The fourth pair of speeches is on the issue of national security. In 1999, as the First Lady, Hillary attended the Rabin Annual Lecture in Israel and gave a video speech named “Building a Secure Peace” in front of Israeli citizens. The second speech was in Dec. 2015, after her announcing participation in the 2016 president election campaign in April, she addressed a speech at the University of Minnesota, lying out the plan (“360-degree strategy to keep America safe”) to protect America from terrorist threats. The audience present were mainly university students.

Case 5

In the last pair of speech, Hilary Clinton took education as her topic. In 1999, she made a speech when she was awarded the Friend of Education Award in the National Education Association. Many of the audience were voters of the Award, so this was a speech to express her gratitude and also to address her argument of education. In the 2016, the speech was delivered to celebrate the 4th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that has allowed many people to complete their education and enter the workforce. Also, it can be referred that with the President Election Campaign going on, she regarded the audience as citizens who are going to vote therefore it can be inferred that the speech was election-oriented.

3.2 Linguistic Analyses

3.2.1 Word choice

Firstly, in terms of the use of personal pronoun, in Case 1, it can be found that the 2010 speech shows more symbols of identity and power than the 1995 speech does. In the 1995 speech “Woman Rights are also Human Rights”, Hilary began the main part of the speech shortly after briefly expressing her appreciation to the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting her to the conference. By contrast, in the 2010 speech, it can be clearly seen from the transcripts that Hilary Clinton made an introduction almost 3 times as long as that in the 1995 speech. She introduced each important guest by referring him/her as her friend and naturally mentioned her position as the Secretary of State, taking herself as the very center of the conference, for example, “I’m very pleased that my friend and someone who once represented the United States here before becoming Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, could join us…”, and “many of my friends, elected officials from New York, including Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney…” And this self-oriented kind of introduction can also be found in Case 3 (“I also want to add my word of welcome to former Congressman Jim Leach, and my friend and colleague Congressman Leonard Boswell”) and Case 4 (“I want to thank my longtime friend, Vice President Mondale, for his kind words”).

In addition, since the lengths of two speeches in Case 1 and Case 4 are relatively the same, after calculating the number of “I” and “We”, it can be found that Hilary used much more “I” and less “We” as the First Lady than those used as Stateswoman (See Table 1 and Table 2).

Table 1The number of “I”, “We” and “You” in Case 1

I We YouFirst Lady 51 33 1Stateswoman 24 52 3

Table 2The number of “I”, “We” and “You” in Case 4

I We YouFirst Lady 69 42 15Stateswoman 47 74 18

As shown in the two tables, the difference of the use of personal pronouns between the two speeches is obvious and significant. To some extent, the unequal number of the “I” and “We” indicates that, in 1995, Hilary needed to stress her power of speaking and state her own points by repeatedly using “I”, while in 2010, her remarks had already carried a lot of weight undoubtedly, and she only needed to use “We” to mobilize the audience to join her positon and take actions with her

Secondly, the absolute words and modal words are also of help to reveal her change of identity. In Case 1, in 1995, Hilary used absolute words such as 4 “must”, 1 “cannot”, 2 “too” to indicate her firm attitude, while in the 2010 speech, she used 9 “must”, 3”cannot” and 5 “too”, showing a stronger point. Similarly, in Case 2, she used 1 “must”, 0 “cannot” and 1 “too” in 1999, while 4 “must”, 5 “cannot” and 2 “too” in 2011. More significantly, in Case 4, she used 2 “should” in 1999, while 16 “should” in 2016. From this perspective, it can be inferred that unlike the First Lady who traditionally represented more as a mediating feminine role rather than an “iron lady”, in 2010, 2011 and 2016, as Stateswoman, Hilary talked more like a man (Jones, 2015), having a stronger point and a more unyielding attitude.

Thirdly, her stronger attitude can also be seen from the specialized abstract words which indicate intention and attitude. In case 1, in the 2010 speech, Hilary tended to use political words like 29 “rights”, 4 “justice”, 5 “laws”, 3 “resolution”, 2 “policy” and 5 “action”, while in the 1995 speech, apart from the use of 17 “rights” involved in the title of the speech, she didn’t speak of other political words mentioned above, using more spiritual words like “morality”, “aspirations”, “patience”, “freedom” instead. The same tendency can be also found in Case 2 whose topic is “human right”. It is considered that the choice of words has a relationship with the purpose of the two pairs of speeches: as the First Lady, she focused more on the situation of woman/human rights violence and significance of solving the problem, while as stateswoman she turned her attention to how to resolve the problem. This contrast indicated that as the Secretary (Case 1) or president nominee (Case 4), she had a real say to the problem which exactly needed the force of laws, policy and justice, so she could boldly use those stronger words and take the responsibility afterwards to keep her words, rather than just inform the audience of the situation and significance of solving it.

3.2.2 Sentence structures and patterns

Firstly, contrasting the 5 pairs of speeches, it can be found that no matter as the First Lady or Stateswoman, Hilary’s speeches are generally characterised by using long and complex sentences, which is consistent to the findings of former researches (e.g., 李桂芝 , 2013; 桑言保 , 芮艳芳 , & 路媛 , 2015; Jones, 2015). The long sentences can add more formality and seriousness which are needed when addressing the serious topics. In current study, this feature is not found to be changed much from the speeches delivered by the First Lady to those by Stateswomen.

Secondly, according to the 10 speeches studied, it is no surprising that the majority of the sentences in the speeches are statements which serve to deliver the message and emotions. However, it’s interesting to found that questions were greatly widely used by Hilary Clinton when she was the First Lady, but were seldom used when she became a Stateswoman. In Case 4 and Case 5, as the First Lady, Hilary raised many questions constantly in the speeches including three types: questions for an answer, rhetorical questions and questions with a followed answer. In Case 4, she raised questions such as “How many fathers, mothers and children in the Middle East have dreamed of and sacrificed for that kind of reconciliation?”, “How does one make sense of a future so stained with blood?”, and “And there’s a question, a question they should be asked: Why don’t the Republican candidates want to do that?... (answer)”. And in Case 5, questions are raised like “How many of you have ever had to reach into your own pocket to buy classroom supplies?”, “Now we’ve been experimenting with vouchers in some jurisdictions, haven’t we?”, and “Now how do we do that?... (answer)”. From those examples, it can be inferred that questioning sentences can function as tools to naturally lead to the following content, arouse audience’s reflection and participation in the speech, deepen the expression of emotion and moreover, sometimes help the speaker bring up some problems that she herself cannot solve at present. Although questioning sentences are very useful in public speaking, the formality and seriousness of a serious speech unavoidably come to a decrease and also, there’s no denying that some of those questions can be omitted or transformed into more precise statements. Therefore, when Hilary had a higher and more serious position as the Secretary of State, questions were less and rarely used in her speeches.

3.2.3 Speaking strategies

Firstly, using parallel sentences is a good way to list the problems and its impact, thereby to put emphasis on the problem, arouse the audience’s attention and achieve the effect of the speech. Parallel structures are divided into 4 types: word parallelism, clause parallelism, sentence parallelism and paragraph parallelism. All the 4 types of parallel structures are commonly used in Hilary’s speeches. To be noteworthy, the long sentences parallelism and paragraph parallelism are more commonly used in Hilary’s earlier First Lady speeches. For example, in the 1995 speech in Case 1, Hilary Clinton used 6 parallel long sentences to condemn the violation of human rights:

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small…”

In this way, the situations of the violation of human rights were described in detail and anger and condemnation of the speaker can be strongly felt. Likewise, in the 1999 speech in Case 2, Hilary used 4 parallel paragraphs started with “I hope” to show her expectations of the future of human rights. By contrast, in later speeches, as Stateswoman, although the strategy of parallelism was still frequently used, it seemed that in some cases the parallel sentences didn’t take up that much of space as before. The parallel sentences tended to be shorter, sharper and more precise, such as in the following parallel structure in Case 1: “We are consulting with women as we design and implement our policies. We are taking into greater account how those policies will impact women and girls. And we are working to identify women leaders and potential leaders around the world to make them our partners and to help support their work…”

Secondly, humour is another speaking strategy in Hilary’s speeches, though not very commonly used. Obviously, humour is connected to the theme as well as the purpose of the speech. In the 2012 speech in Case 3, Hilary made the speech concerning water security in a quite funny and relaxing way with small jokes in her speech, for example,

“It takes roughly a litre of water to produce just one calorie of food – another reason for us all to watch our calories, I guess (Laughter). There’s also – you wonder why you’re standing. The latest research shows you burn more calories when you stand. So – (laughter) – we’re doing our part (Laughter).”

However, humour does not be found in other 9 speeches. Further study is needed to discover whether humour, as a speaking strategy, is more used or not by contrasting the speeches of the two time periods.

4. Discussion

Analysing the 5 pairs of speeches as cases, the aim of the current study is to investigate the change of linguistic features in Hilary Clinton’s speeches as her role changing from the First Lady to the Stateswoman and identity implications behind the changes of the speech features, in order to have a better understanding of the relationship between role and language.

Firstly, in terms of the choice of words, the study showed that as Stateswoman, Hilary Clinton tended to use self-oriented expressions to introduce others, indicating she put herself as the centre of all people present, but on the contrary to the hypothesis of the use personal pronouns, more “We” and less “I” instead of the opposite were used in the later speeches, showing that she’d rather put more strength on the appealing effect since there was no need to stress how weighty her words were. And the absolute words, modal words and abstract words which indicate a high hand were seemingly to be more used when she became a Stateswoman, reflecting a stronger attitude in the face of the problems in the speech. The finding is consistent with that of the former studies (e.g., Jones, 2015).

Secondly, from the sentence pattern perspective, it can be found that Hilary was used to using long and complex statements in her speeches all the time. And it is interesting to find that unlike the speeches addressed as the First Lady, the questioning sentences were less appeared in the later speeches. This change might implicates that as a stateswoman, Hilary tended to put the precision and formality first in her speeches, except the cases in which relaxing atmosphere is purposely created by jokes and humour.

Thirdly, as for the speaking strategy, an obvious feature in Hilary’s speeches is the parallel structures which were largely used. Unlike the parallel structures which were made in several long paragraphs in a row, as a Stateswoman, the parallelism were made shorter, sharper and more precise, indicating Hilary put more emphasis on the purpose and efficiency of her speaking. Besides, as mentioned above, humour is another speaking strategy in Hilary’s speeches. However, because of the limited number of the material, no conclusion can yet be reached on whether this feature is connected to the change of role.

Conclusion and implications

As a result, it can be concluded that with the role changing from the First Lady to Stateswoman, Hilary Clinton is seemed to have a more assertive and stronger attitude in her speeches. With the finding that language can be quite different with the change of the role, this study is of importance in the linguistics on the topic of language and identity. Besides, the current study might be significance for people to have a better understanding of the use of the language and also have practical implications in the

field of socialising, helping people better adjust themselves when entering into a new role.

Limitations and suggestions

Due to the limited time and strength, one limitation of the study is the number of the speeches analysed is rather small, which might lead to an inaccurate result of the changes of the speech features and also some features might be neglected. Thus, in order to increase the reliability and accuracy of the findings, a replication research is strongly suggested to enlarge the scale of the sample.

In addition, as the speeches Hilary addressed from the role of the First Lady to the Stateswoman is the only vehicle of the discourse to make a contrast of the changes of features of speaking with the change of the role, the language used by Hilary Clinton might be confined in the specified area of public speaking. Thus, to further investigate the relationship between the identity and role, other medias of discourse are recommended for future studies.

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海外英语:上(20).