Persuasive Strategies in Presidential Election Speeches

Politics is a process of making decisions by the distribution of power and resources in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice. For political messages to be delivered to the target community through political discourse, many strategies have been employed to fulfill the purpose of persuading to the audience. The study investigates the persuasive strategies utilized in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?s 2016 presidential election speeches. Adopting the persuasion theory by Aristotle (1984), the study aims to uncover the kinds of persuasive strategies used by the two politicians. The data was analyzed using descriptive qualitative method basing on quantitative information. The findings showed that the process of manipulation of the two politicians was fostered by multiple persuasive strategies; in which they reflected different distribution of persuasive strategies to serve their political stands and ideologies. While Donald Trump spread his persuasion with the priority of pathos arousing the audience?s fear and anger, Hillary Clinton was more inclined to make full use of ethos and logos in her presidential election speeches.