Power Relations in President Bush’s State of the Union Speech

Manipulation as an illegitimate exercise of power is created by means of language. Manipulative use
of language enables the speaker to control other people against their best interests, the control being
aimed at the recipients’ verbal contribution to the interaction and cognitive processes of comprehension and interpretation. The article studies power relations in the President’s State of the Union
Speech, focusing on semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels of manipulation and the effect it has on
the recipients’ mental models.