Abstract
Discourse analysis is one of the methods of identifying ideologies reflected in text as well as the communication strategies used to convey those ideologies effectively to the addressed audience. Political business speeches defined as ‘a relatively autonomous discourse produced orally by a politician in front of an audience with the main purpose of persuading the audience into accepting a business proposition’ can be a good source to understand (a) the dominant business ideologies in a country, and (b) the reasons of success or failure of a political leader in conveying his/her business ideologies and/or justifying his/her business proposition. Hence, this article was aimed to identify Dr. Mahathir’s ideologies on Asia-Europe business relationships as well as the communication strategies he used to convey his ideologies to the audience. Analyzing one of Dr. Mahathir’s speeches delivered at an international business summit in the year 2000 revealed some of his ideologies with regard to Euro-Asia business relationships as well as the communication strategies he used to convey these ideologies to the audience. In this speech, Dr. Mahathir strongly believes in ‘equal power in Euro-Asia relationships’ as well as ‘unity and solidarity among Asian countries’ as the two main ideologies in this speech; and he tries to convey these ideologies by ‘referring to the bitter history of Euro-Asia relationships’ as well as ‘using pronouns’ as the two salient strategies used in this speech.
Recommended Citation
Imani, Aliakbar and Habil, Hadina
(2015)
"Discourse Analysis of Dr. Mahathir’s Business Speech,"
Global Advances in Business and Communications Conference & Journal:
Vol. 4:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://commons.emich.edu/gabc/vol4/iss1/4