Lexical Choice used by David Cameron’s Speech at Conservative Party 2012

ABSTRACT

People use appropriate ways to deliver their message in their communication. When speaker or writer speaks or writes, they often use effective language. It is also part of technique or strategy to fulfil their goal. The study of the art of communication is known in linguistics as rhetoric. Rhetoric is ultimately the art of the right words in the right places. A word has meaning not only in the context of other words, but also in the context of who is using it to whom. Studying on lexical choice makes the writer interested in taking this subject to be analysed.

This study is intended to understand and describe the lexical choice used by David Cameron’s Speech at Conservative Party and it used descriptive qualitative as research design. The writer collected the data by searching and downloading the transcript of speech from the site. Then, she gathered all the relative data about subject of the study. The next step was reading and understanding the utterance. The last step was identifying the utterances that contain lexical choice from the transcript based on Jordan’s theory of qualities of words.

There were several steps to study lexical choice used by David Cameron’s Speech at Conservative Party 2012. To begin with, the speech was classified based on diction type in the data tabulation. Second, lexical choices of every datum were analyzed. The final step was discussing the findings, and drawing conclusion of the study. The data were analyzed by classifying the lexical choice from the speech based on diction theory by Jordan. Then the writer described the lexical choice used by the speaker. The writer analyzed the lexical choices by interpret the texts. Finally, the writer drew the conclusion of this study.

The finding shows that in the David Cameron’s speech the most type used are solid words and Figurative Language. Solid words are highly found in the data. It shows that the speaker used solid words to make the words interesting and avoid ambiguity. Besides, figurative Allusion is also mostly found in the data. The speaker speaks bluntly when he refers to the name of another person.

It is suggested to the next writers to study lexical choice as rhetorical technique using another theory to get more complete difference. Besides, the next writers are suggested to use another subject study such as talk show, debate, and newspaper.