Studies of Power Stuctures in Egypt and the US
Comparison of Investiture Speeches by Morsi (2012) and Obama (2008)
Group 1: We have been looking at the differences between the old democracy in the USA and the newly founded Egyptian democracy. One of the things we found most interesting in this case study, was that we are dealing with the oldest and the newest democracy in the world. Through our different analysis’ (discourse and rhetorical analysis’) of the two investiture speeches by Barack Obama and Mohamed Morsi, we found that Morsi had a more traditional leader role as speaker, he uses a very formal language and thereby establishes himself as a more traditional leader. Whereas Obama tries to be more on eyelevel with his audience. Both speeches are very pathos influenced which makes sense, since both speeches are investiture speeches. Therefore they want to gain the people’s support.
Group 2: During our project we worked on comparison between the American President Obama and Egyptian President Morsi’s inauguration speeches. We concluded that Obama’s speech is subjected to heavy support from the media by extension of the way the recording of his speech is filmed and cut. On the other hand, we concluded that Morsi’s speech is portrayed much more objectively due to the almost total lack of medium manipulation. On the subject of rhetorical matters, both candidates make extensive use of a sense of national pride. However, their purposes for invoking said pride differ. We interpreted that Morsi was attempting to reunite a country that has been divided by a revolution. Obama, on the other hand was trying to convey a claim of change having come to America on the grounds of his success being dependent on common Americans – wealthy as poor – banding together. |
Morsi in the Media
When comparing Egypt and American medias, one will quickly realize, that their use of media theories, rhetorical devices and interpretation of the Egypt Election 2012 differ. Based on two articles, one from The New York Times and one from dailynewsegypt.com, we have tried to interpret how the two nations’ media institutions portray the Egyptian Election and furthermore the power, which the new Egyptian democracy has given the president Mohamed Morsi.
Whilst the American media has a tendency to be more critical, when covering the inauguration speech of Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian media base their stands in a more objective way. The historical background of the two nations could have caused this tendency. Furthermore the tendency could be caused by the nations different interpretations of the term power, which again stands as a result of the historical backgrounds. All though the two articles gives us an idea about the different use of devices in the nations media institutions and why, we would have to include more articles in our study, to get a bigger perspective and thereby be able to give a more accurate conclusion. - Kirkpatrick, David D. (24. juni 2012)”Named Egypt’s Winner, Islamist Makes History”; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/middleeast/mohamed-morsi-of-muslim-brotherhood-declared-as-egypts-president.html?_r=1 - Kortam, Hend (22. august 2012):”More Than Halfway Through The 100 Days, Morsi Has A Long Way To Go”; http://dailynewsegypt.com/2012/08/22/more-than-halfway-through-the-100-days-morsy-has-a-long-way-to-go/ |
Seperation of Power in Denmark and Egypt
Separation of power is a way of separating the most important powers of the state. The power is divided up into three different institutions:
In Denmark the institutions consist of:
We have tried to figure out how the power was divided in Egypt after the revolution, before Morsi. It seems that the judicial power was always represented by the court, almost uninfluenced by the change of political system. After the resignation of Mubarrak the military took over both legislative and executive power in Egypt, since they declared the first Egyptian election invalid. After the entry of Morsi the parliament has been given the legislative power, and Morsy himself the executive. This separation might only be formal, because the military in Egypt still has a great influence. Morsi’s job is now to divide the power democratically. From a western point of view, the biggest concern is the power of the military. |
Two speeches by Nixon and Mubarak
For the past few weeks we have been working with the topic: ”The Power of Media in Egypt and the United States” in a collaboration between the two subjects English and social science. We chose to work with two examples of heads of states amidst their downfalls, namely president Nixon of the United States and president Mubarak. We made rhetorical and disoursive analysises of two speeches in order to decide if the use of language could be charactirized as reflections of the situation and society structure.
We found out that, rhetorically, the two speeches were very similar, whereas the discourses were prominently different from each other. Because of this, we came to the conlusion that the use of rhetorics in the two speeches was a reflection of the presidents’ situations, moreso than a reflection of the society structure of the two countries. In the discoursive analysis Mubarak barely mentioned any state organs that were not under his direct influence, where Nixon almost took pride in demonstrating his will to divide power between as many apparatuses of the state as possible. Nixon's speech: http://watergate.info/1973/04/30/nixons-first-watergate-speech.html Mubarak's speech: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/02/president-hosni-mubarak-egypt-speech |
Analysis of Mohammed Morsi’s investiture speech.Group 1:
Rhetorical Analysis The most dominant form of appeal in the speech is pathos. Morsi’s speech is addressed to the feelings of those who listen to the speech, the Egyptian people. Pathos is generally the most dominant form of appeal in victory speeches. This can be explained by the fact that at the time of the victory speeches the presidents have won and have already got the people’s accept. Morsi says things such as, “…precious blood of our noble martyrs and the noble, wounded citizens”. As well Morsi uses lots of ethos to manifest his power given to him by the people. He uses God, and the fact that he has been chosen by the Egyptian people in a democratic process to strengthen his ethos as the new president. Group 2: Discourse analysis There are some words that Morsi uses more than others. Some of these are: Egypt, people, Allah/god, elections, revolution. These words create two themes, which dominate through the whole speech. The first is nationality, which is manifested through the whole speech, when Morsi talks about his people. The second theme is the coming of the democracy. The discourse of the speech is really important when you are going to establish your power. Mohamed Morsi uses a few discourses, but one of them is more dominating than the others. Some of the less elaborated discourses are how he talks about the police and the military. He presents them as noble, honourable and says that the military is an “esteemed institution”. The clearest discourse is how Morsi talks about the population and the martyrs. He says how they have sacrificed their precious blood and their own flesh and blood as the price of freedom. |
Political TV-ads in Egypt and the US
The main topic of the AT-project was media and power. In Denmark the media has a big influence in the society, because it is called the fourth power of the state.
In our assignment we compared an American TV ad with an Egyptian TV ad. We examined these two ads with a propaganda analysis, and a discourse analysis. The result of the examination was that these TV ads both used fear as an element to convince people to a certain way of thinking. Another result was that these TV ads only worked if the main part of the people lived under certain circumstances for example war, which causes fear. We used English and social science as faculties in the assignment. Reagan Ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpwdcmjBgNA Egyptian Ad: http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/06/10/219777.html |