Analysis of Power in Language (David Cameron Scottish Independence Speech Text)

The first obvious point about the speech and the speaker is an underlying theme of political power. This is obvious due to the fact that the Prime Minister, David Cameron is the speaker and therefore obviously carries a large amount of political power (due to him being a ‘powerful participant’). However, David Camerons’ speech about a matter that he clearly feels strongly about (Scotlands’ Independence) is not political propaganda using his powerful status to influence the Scottish vote but more of a ‘heartfelt’ speech about why he personally doesn’t think Scotland should vote for a divorce in the long standing United Kingdom.

Cameron shows a lot of influential power in this speech down to the fact that he doesn’t try to use his political power to enforce authority and tell Scotland that they shouldn’t break up the UK because ‘he says so’ etc. but instead he talks about the benefits of the UK staying together and the heritage & history of the UK in a speech in which he is trying to influence the Scottish vote towards, what he believes, is the right decision.

Due to this text being a persuasive speech there is many a persuasive & power assertive technique being used and one of the most immediately obvious ones is the repeated use of personal pronouns such as “we” and “us”. This language technique implicates a lot of power in this speech in particular because of the subject of the speech. This speech is about the potential that Scotland now have to break free from the United Kingdom and by using personal pronouns like David Cameron does in this speech he is creating a sense of togetherness. This asserts a lot of power in the speech because Cameron uses his political power to try and bring together two countries that are on the verge of divorce and only a man with power could do such a thing via one speech and this technique combined with David Camerons’ reasons for the UK staying intact asserts a lot of power.

In my opinion David Cameron does a very good job of asserting power in a laid back and open way via this speech instead of just working on his political power to demand a change in mind of the Scottish citizens.


http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/02/david-camerons-speech-on-scottish-independence-full-text-and-audio/