ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a short sample of what could be considered political discourse (PD) Analysis: following a comprehensive, and linguistic, methodology for the study of PD. Making an analogy with C. Hart's description of Critical Discourse Analysis, two main approaches to the study of PD can be found throughout history: PD Studies and PD Analysis. Linguistic choices reflect not only how a text is constructed, but they are also related to all the major social functions of language, transmitting the three metafunctions. Their analysis is essential not only for the study of textual construction but also for understanding how a text may disseminate ideological beliefs and the social effect this may have. A corpus-based analysis allows measuring both recontextualisations of certain linguistic phenomena in Barack Obama discourse in general and interaction with the original speech by text receivers. The widespread use of the first-person plural is reconfirmed, providing empirical data for Obama's personal discourse style.
