1。2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

Previous studies on political debates mainly focus on the verbal aspect of speeches, including lexicon, syntax, pragmatics to conclude nominees' debate styles and strategies。 However, the non-verbal aspect such as presidential contenders’ voice, facial expressions, gestures are often overshadowed。 In addition, an updated analysis study of 2016 US presidential is yet difficult to be found。 This study will employ multimodal analysis to examine both verbal and non-verbal respect of the debate in order to conclude presidential nominees’ styles and strategies of debate。

This research is based on the first presidential debate of US 2016 general election and aims to analyze the debating features of two candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton。 In this research, multimodal analysis will be the main approach to dissect and synthesize the verbal as well as the nonverbal features of the debaters。 With the assistance of multimodal analysis video software MMAVEDIO, the study is to retrieve quantitative data of the debate。 In addition to empirical analysis, qualitative method will be adopted so as to make the research a complete one。 

1。3 Outline of the Thesis

The study will first review previous researches at home and abroad。 Then a mode and procedure of multimodal analysis will be introduced。 The following is the analysis of the verbal features of the presidential debate such as sentence structure, repetition, figure of speech, attack and defense strategies。 After that, nonverbal features of the presidential debate will be discussed, including super-fragmental features such as timber, pace and pause。 What is also worth studying is the correlative features between verbal and nonverbal languages such as gestures and figure of speeches, gestures and attack and defense strategies。 Finally, a summary of both candidates will lead to the conclusion of the paper。

2。 Literature review

Since ancient Rome, philosophers started to undertake studies on political discourse。 Thomas Aquinas believes that humans are in nature leading a political life and are animals of society。 

Thomas Hobbes, illustrated in his prominent political work Leviathan that the most honorable and beneficial invention in this world is language。 He believes if without languages, countries, societies, contracts and peace will exist no more。 Thus for Hobbes, language is the prerequisite for participation in politics。

In modern world, scholars such as Brian McNair (2003) defines political discourse as the transmission with political agendas which includes 1) all forms of transmission of politicians so as to achieve certain purposes。 2) Transmission between non politicians such as electorates, newspaper column writers or political participants, 3) transmission in news coverage, editorials and other forms of political discussions about political participants and their activities。

The analysis of political discourse has been developed for decades。 In general, there are several leading discourse analysis methods such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor analysis, multimodal analysis。 In the following paragraphs, these methods will be analyzed respectively。论文网

2。1 Conversation analysis

In 1970s US sociologists Sax and Jefferson put forward conversation analysis theories to illustrate political discourse and founded the school of conversation analysis under his theories。 Because of the variety displayed in the content, style and forms by different discourse, linguistics then concentrate on conversation analysis and 

purpose conservationists’ behavioral modes。 This form of analysis refers to the study on social conversation, in which conversation participants are required to talk in a certain sequence and forms。 Two major elements are involved in this mode。 One is turn-taking mechanism, in which each participant takes turns for speaking。 The basic framework for conversation is provided in this way。 The other is certain distribution system for conversation participants。