Revealing Persuasive Strategies of Joe Biden in the 2020 USA's First Presidential Election Debate A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Persuasion is a powerful tool that involves the skillful use of communication. Its purpose is to influence and guide its listener towards a particular belief or perspective. This research alludes persuasion applied in the presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2020. This aims to analyze the persuasive strategies used by the elected President of the US, Joe Biden, in the 2020 USA’s presidential election debate. This research applies qualitative research method, since the data used are not numerical. The data of this research are selected statements containing persuasive strategy. To analyze these data, Aristotle’s persuasive appeal: Ethos, Pathos and Logos are employed. Furthermore, Sukarno’s persuasive technique is implemented to classify the selected data into the three primary strategies of Persuasive appeal by Aristotle. To help assist these data analyses, the context is involved using Halliday and Hasan’s Context of Situation. The research’s finding is all three strategies are applied in the data with logos being the most dominant strategy used in the selected statements. This implies that Biden emphasizes logical reasoning as his primary strength, relying on factual information and rationality.