The use of persuasive technique by Barack Obama in his p olitical speeches in the 2008 USA presidential primaries

Persuasion is an important aspect of communication in our daily lives. We are urged to buy products, to maintain social relationship, to support reforms and to vote political candidates. The main purpose of persuasion is to convince other people to change their belief, attitude and behaviour. Here, the researcher wanted to find out the techniques of persuasion used by Barack Obama in his political speeches in the 2008 USA presidential primaries.

This research was designed by using descriptive qualitative method because the data of this research were in the form of utterances and words, which were not statistically analyzed. In this case, the researcher also used discourse analysis because the researcher tried to study and understand the functional use of language, that was, persuasion which was used by people in their conversation to influence other's attitude, belief and behavior. The data were Barack Obama’s utterances containing persuasion which were observed from his speeches within USA Presidential Primaries of Democrat party that delivered from 5th 2008 up to 24th February 2008. The data had represented all data of Barack Obama' speeches.
The data were analyzed inductively through the observation done by the researcher himself. In addition, the approach for analyzing the technique of persuasion was based on the Gorys Keraf’s theory of persuasion.

It was found that Barack Obama used several techniques of persuasion to get support from the audience or public and invest his idea in delivering his speeches. These techniques are: rationalization techniques, identification techniques, suggestion (hypnotic) techniques, conformities techniques, compensation techniques, displacement techniques and projection techniques. Furthermore, in the use of persuasion technique, Barack Obama used several ways to persuade the audience. Such as giving the reasons for his statements, putting the foundations and ideas in the heart of audience, obscuring the conflict situation and identifying his behavior, making agreements and influencing the audience without applying the reasonable basic faithful, adapting himself with the audience and bringing positive influence to advancement, looking for substitute for unacceptable situation when it became frustration, accusing certain person of cause the problem, shifting an intention or something trouble with another purpose which replaces emotion, and making the subject become the object as well as disfigured another person in order that audiences recognize him as the best figure.

This study can lead further researchers to conduct research on persuasion in other fields, theories, and not limited on the political speech. It was also hoped that the study on persuasion involving other languages, not just in English, therefore it can broaden the knowledge in applying linguistic aspects in various languages.