A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL BUNDLES IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURAL SPEECHES

This study examined the use of lexical bundles in the inaugural speeches delivered by the Democratic and Republican presidents of the U.S. Following Biber et al. (2004), the use of lexical bundles in the presidents’ inaugurals was analysed and compared using the software AntConc version 3.5.9 (Anthony, 2020). The findings revealed that the predominant structural pattern in the inaugural speeches is the noun phrase (NP) fragment. The Democratic presidents tended to use the NP+ of phrase fragments in their inaugurals. In contrast, the Republican presidents predominantly utilized the PP+ of phrase fragments. In terms of the functional taxonomy, the U.S. presidents demonstrated a significant preference for utilizing referential expressions, particularly pronouns, in their inaugural addresses. These findings suggested a potential difference in the linguistic styles of Democratic and Republican presidents in their inaugural speeches. Therefore, the findings strongly indicate a direct correlation between linguistic patterns and political party affiliation in presidential speeches. Further exploration of the implications for teaching and analysing political discourse is recommended to gain deeper insights into how language influences political communication and persuasion strategies.