Rampage shootings in the United States: a visual and discourse analysis of Obama and Biden’s speeches concerning two of the deadliest elementary school shootings in the USA.

Abstract

School shootings have become a national and social problem in the United States since the 1990s and every time they occur, they spark new political discussions concerning the cause of these violent incidents and the possible necessity of additional firearms restrictions. The present study aims to assess the effectiveness and the communicative strategies employed by Joe Biden and Barack Obama in their recorded speeches in response to two elementary school shootings and concerning gun violence in the USA. A visual analysis was first conducted, using Baldry and Thibault’s model (2006), in order to identify the different semiotic resources used in the videos, their function and the effects they had on the viewer. The visual analysis was followed by a discourse analysis using Gee’s toolkit (2011) performed with the purpose of determining the communicative strategies employed by the speakers to persuade and engage the audience. Preliminary observations suggest that the most effective meaning-making resources employed by the Presidents are a combination of gaze, gestures, and soundtrack, which seem to convey a successful message to the viewer and engage them in the President's speech. In addition, the speakers also attempt to involve and influence the audience through the use of various discursive strategies, such as 1st person pronouns, parallelisms and a specific choice of vocabulary with both negative and positive connotations.