THE IMPLICITNESS OF RACE IN AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE: A STUDY OF BARACK OBAMA'S RHETORIC

The paper examines Barack Obama's public discourse on race with special emphasis on the characteristics of racial references in his speeches. The study presented in the paper is based on the claim that Obama's racial discourse is characterized by his tendency to denote race implicitly (Li, 2012). The analytical model used for the analysis combines elements from the theory of evaluative language by Martin & White (2005) and the concept of rhetorical frames (Kupyers, 2009; Entman, 2004). The study examines the type, frequency and analysis of racial references in relation to their evaluative frames and compares the findings with the discourse of the movement Black Lives Matter. The findings of the study confirm the claim about Obama's tendency to use implicit racial discourse.