The Power of Performatives in the Speech of English-Speaking Presidents Baraat Ismael Faqe Abdulla

The origin of performative speech acts dates back to a series of lectures delivered by John Austin at Harvard University in 1955. The lectures had been collected into a book called “How to do things with words?”. This study aims to search for the power behind performative utterances in the speech of English-speaking presidents. The data have been collected from eight selected YouTube videos of English-speaking presidents (Barack Obama, Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, Clinton, and Reagan). The videos are transcribed and read by the researcher to find the performative utterances. After that, qualitative content analysis has been used to analyze the speech of the selected videos. It concludes that presidents use performative utterances because of the kind of power that is associated with performative verbs; the power of persuasion and connection with the audience. Referring to performatives as a tool for persuading people makes this study important because it connects the power of language to Austin’s performatives.