American Presidential Discourse Analysis

The American Presidency has become one of the most potent political institutions in the entire contemporary history. In order to understand its dimensions one would have to observe how it operates by means of the specific American political discourse and its textual realizations, since US presidents " only speak, write and sign"~documents. The work presents its reader with a typology of inaugural addresses (America oriented, strategy oriented and spirit oriented addresses) which were developed between 1945 and 1997. All the inaugural speeches of that period are analyzed and discussed. As a result of the analysis there are presented clear argument models on which the discussed presidents based their inaugurals. The apparent conclusion is that US presidents tend to be relatively simple in their speeches, and are usually careful not to exaggerate with the content of information to be conveyed by their texts.