AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION OF BARACK HUSEIN OBAMA’S INAUGURAL SPEECH

Abstract

A language in use, in spoken or written form, has a semantic property that makes it become unified and meaningful text. In getting coherence, one element and other elements in a text should be organized and related in a logical way. An important contribution to coherence comes from cohesion. Cohesion refers to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. In this thesis, the discussion is only concerned to the grammatical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion is presented in reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction. The analysis of grammatical cohesive devices is focused on the Inaugural Speech by Barack Husein Obama‟s. His speech constantly uses strong political language. This language characteristic is very different from language of other types of informal speech. In addition, Barack Husein Obama often focuses exclusively on the word choices to make his speech has a strong intonation. It is hoped that this speech will be read easily and the message of this speech will be delivered coherently by using descriptive method. The analysis shows that Barack Husein Obama‟s Inaugural Speech is a coherent text. It is proved by the continuity that is established by the grammatical cohesive devices. In the text of Barack Husein Obama‟s inaugural speech there are personal references we, us, and our which dominantly occur. Those personal references refer to the one thing. They refer to the American people. The consequence of the analysis shows how grammatical cohesive devices grasp the main idea of each paragraph. Finally, by finding the main idea in each paragraph, it proves that grammatical cohesive devices contribute in forming and visualizing coherence in a text.