How Does a Political figure’s speech reveal his Engagement with his Audience: Psychology Research Paper, SUSS, Singapore

 Study title (provisional): A discursive analysis in a political context of Barack Obama’s last speech as president.

Research question: How does a political figure’s speech reveal his engagement with his audience

Background literature (briefly describe the topic of the study, key research in the topic area, evaluating findings, use references):

The purpose of this study is to interpret how language is used between participants in video interviews using discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is the name given to a variety of different approaches to the study of texts (Brown, et al., 1983). More specifically, this study focuses on discursive psychology, a form of discourse analysis that focuses on psychological themes in talks, texts, or images.

It investigates how people practically manage psychological themes and concepts such as emotion, intent, or agency within talk and text, and to what ends (Te Molder, 2015). Politics has always been dissected and analyzed by individuals, society, and media. Tileaga, Demasi& Burke (2020) have found that a discursive analysis of political communications has allowed for more positive conversations of politics and their portrayal in the media. Moreover, an application of discursive psychology questions the truth of political speeches, Burke &Demasi (2019) found that facts are reconstructed and misused during speeches to create debate.

The rationale for 1) the chosen topic and 2) the research question using the method (discourse analysis):

In studying how talk performs actions rather than simply mirrors mind and world, discursive psychology radically departs from cognitive psychological approaches in which mental states are taken to be the cause or source of what is being said (Edwards, 1997). The understanding of political speeches is often controversial and scrutinized by society. By doing an analysis on this speech, this study will firstly gain to understand how political speeches engage their audience. Secondly, the discourse analysis method is meticulous that reveals the motivations of the speaker, and allows for a comprehensive analysis of the speech. This type of analysis is also widely used by researchers and has gained credibility in its usage.

Explanation of the approach:

Discourse analysis defined as an approach to analyzing the study of social life, understand through analysis of language in the broadest sense. This includes face-to-face conversation, non-verbal interaction, images, symbols, and documents (Shaw & Bailey, 2009). Discursive psychology starts with psychology as it approaches people living their lives. It scrutinizes how psychology is constructed, understood, and displayed as people interact every day and in more institutional situations (Potter & Wiggins, 2007).

Explain what kind of material you need (justify why); Explain how the data is sourced (for secondary data, how the source was identified); if you are using secondary data, give details and links to the data: 

After research was done regarding discourse analysis, the team took to YouTube to find various videos that were vetted. We took different videos of various speeches by political figures from different countries and analyzed their speeches.