Inaugural speeches
The first inaugural speech was given by George Washington in 1865; the most recent one was by Trump in 2017.
Did presidents make promises in these inaugural speeches out of obligation or volition? Is there a generally more preferred category of expressions to make promises in inaugural speeches? Are there any changes of the presidents’ preferences over time?
Background knowledge
Modality system
So, as mentioned in the ABOUT page, lexical items such as promise, vow, assure, commitment, and modals such as must, should, have to, need to, will are relevant to promises in interaction. In addition, these linguistic devices are categorized into four groups: lexical verbs and nouns; modals of willingness; modals of obligation; modals of ability and possibility.
The first two groups both express the speakers’ strong commitment to the future action and tend to be emanated from the speakers’ inner concerns. In contrast, modals of obligation indicate that the speaker promise the future actions because of external sources. Modals of ability and possibility tend to refer to speakers’ concerns of circumstances.
My interest in this project is to find out: Do politicians make promise out of obligation or volition? Is there a generally more preferred category of expressions used by the politicians? Are there any changes of their preferences over time?
Promise due to obligation or volition?
The grid column graph shows that among the four categories, U.S. presidents tend to use modals expressing volition/willingness and obligations more than modals of ability/possibility and promise verbs.
Comparing the green area (obligation) and the yellow area (volition) in the stacked area chart, we can find that modals of obligation (green area) are used slightly more frequently than modals of volition. This observation aligns with my study in Chinese government officials’ accountability conversations: there might be a tendency that politicians express commitment due to their obligations, instead of volition that involves more agency.
Among the modals of obligations, must is most frequently used; followed by should, and shall. will and can are the most frequently used modals of volition and ability/possibility, respectively.
Historical changes?
The use of modals and verbs expressing promises might also corelate with important historical events. The most provident case is President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech in 1945. In this short speech (556 words), the normalized frequency of modals and verbs expressing commitment is as high as 40 per thousand. These expressions enables President Roosevelt to deliver his determination and encouragement to not only American citizens but also citizens of all nations during the Second World War. In contrast, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech in 1941, however, is among the speeches containing least modals and verbs of commitment. In that speech, the president talked mostly about American spirits, such as independence and freedom.
Franklin D. Roosevelt 1/20/1945
“In the days and the years that are to come, we shall work for a just and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for total victory in war. We can and we will achieve such a peace. We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately-but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes—but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of ‘heart or abandonment of moral principle. “
Have politicians followed the general trend of Modern English?
Changes of frequency in the use of Modal verbs in Modern English
An interesting note worth mentioning is that previous studies have identified some historical changes of modal preferences in Modern English. Among them, Leech’s (2003) “democratization tendency” hypothesis is the most famous: “…the declining use of must (=obligation) and the rising use of should (=weak obligation) are possibly to be associated with a tendency to suppress or avoid overt claims to power and authority by the speaker or writer. A similar shift from must (and have to and be to?) need to may also be taking place.” (Leech, 2003: 237)Leech (2003) found that the frequency in the use of modal auxiliaries shows a clear decline between 1961 and 1991-2. Miller’s (2009) study using TIME magazine (1923-2006) corpus, however, shows an overall increase of the frequencies of auxiliaries. Moreover, the changes of individual modal verbs appear more complicated than previously claimed (Miller 2009, 199): shall, ought and must have a considerable decline in frequency, but can, could and may have a large increase. The stacked bar graph shows that in the first half of 19th century, U.S. presidents used less promise verbs and commitment-expressing modals. However, there is no clear tendency that U.S. presidents have used more or less modals after 1849.Due to time limit, I have not yet annotated the semantic categories of each modals (most of them can be used to express multiple modalities, e.g. must in obligation sense or epistemic/possibility sense) and the current result should not be taken as a whole picture. A more accurate version of analysis and visualization will be updated after I finish a thorough annotation work.