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Language of Meliorism in the Speeches of Presidents Bush & Obama: A Pragmatic Expose

Chibueze Prince Orie, PhD, Quinette Ngozichinyere Madumelu

Abstract

We live in trying times. Across Africa, people are disillusioned, especially where successive governments have shown palpable trait of indifference to the plight and agitations of these people. The masses have become listless. So, they hunger for leadership and words of hope. It is a time like this that true leaders are needed to speak courage, inspiration and hope into the people. George Bush and Barack Obama are quintessential leaders that spoke courage, inspiration and hope into the Americans and the world at different dark moments in American history. This study sees their speeches as ones anchored on the language of meliorism, which is a theory of language of struggle promising hope of survival. Leadership that comes with words of hope and possible survival is predicted as what Africans and the world need today.

Keywords

leadershipstrugglehopelanguagemeliorism.

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