INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE ON A SPEAKER’S SPEECH STYLE: A JOOSIAN ANALYSIS

Abstract

Speech style is a language variety that gives choices to an interlocutor to shift from one style of language to another. The primary purpose of this research is to discover the audience’s influence on the speaker’s speech style. Drawing upon the Joosian theory (1967), this research uses a qualitative conversational analytical approach to examine the selected sample. Two speeches, by the same speaker, to two different audiences have been used to examine their influence on the speech styles of the speaker. The result reveals that in the speech to the Pakistani audience, the speaker’s dominantly used speech style is the consultative style. This is because the speaker gets a continuous response from the audience. In addition to this, as he is a native of Pakistan, so he feels a strong connection with the Pakistani audience which makes him more casual. On the other hand, the dominantly used speech style in the UN General Assembly speech is formal. The reason is that he does not share a strong connection or bond with the Western audience. Furthermore, the speaker is addressing the Western audience as a Leader of his country, then transforms into the Ambassador of the Muslim World and finally as a Global citizen. So, he has kept his speech formal. Besides this, additional features of coinage, name-calling, tone, repetition, aggression, and allusion were also found. Furthermore, this data can be used to analyze other external factors that influence the speech styles of speakers.