President Obama: Analysis of his Inaugural Addresses

Abstract

Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009, he was re-elected in 2012 and he sworn in for the second time on January 21, 2013. He was the first African-American President of the United States of America and he took office amid one of the worst recessions in decades. He represented hope and change as well as a new age of politics. The Inaugural addresses are the speeches given by presidents expressing their intentions the day they are sworn in. The research question in this paper focuses on the similarities or differences between the two Barack Obama’s Inaugural Addresses by analysing the lexical density, the use of the we pronoun, the references to moral values and to authority, the representation of the United States and finally the employment of the Journey metaphor.