State of the Union - How Could the Text Be Read and Interpreted by Two Different Readers?

English Essay

How could the text be read and interpreted by two different readers?

The ‘State of the Union’ address is a traditional speech that the American president gives each year and it is held in House Chamber at the United States capitol. In 2003, George W. Bush was president and, as his father said, he ‘faced the greatest challenge of any president since Abraham Lincoln,’ 1 referring to the war against terrorism. The speech was televised so all Americans could listen to the ideas presented. However, there was a physical audience conformed by the government members and distinguished US citizens. Bush was well supported by the majority of the Senate and the House of Representatives because they belonged to his party. While the Republican congressmen had a positive reaction towards the four major propaganda techniques that Bush used in the ‘State of the Union’ address, the Democrats had a completely opposite response.

First, he made an assertion about the ‘state of the union’ showed in line 12, where he declares that ‘the union is strong.’ Even though there is not a way of measuring the ‘strength’ of a country, no American should question this statement for two reasons: first, Bush is a trustworthy speaker because he is a well-respected politician who was the president at that time and second, questioning that the country is strong will show anti-patriotism. After the speech, the Republicans might have been cheerful because their leader was telling them that their country was powerful and that there were not internal conflicts that triggered its stability. Even so, Democrats did not agree with this affirmation. Actually, some of them described the state of the union as 'anxious,' pointing out the society’s nervousness over the economy and the idea of war. The assertion supposedly should have had a positive response from both parties but Democrats achieved to oppose to it without being anti-patriotic. 2

Political speeches normally create a fictitious problem to force the audience to chose a side. There is a false dilemma presented in this speech in lines 13-15. Essentially, the conflict is simple because it only has two options: Americans can fight together against terrorism or they can deny the problem and pass it to future generations. Since the second option is unethical because nobody would give a burden to their children, the citizens are pressured to support the war at that moment. The president increased the emotional response of the audience towards the false dilemma by constantly pinpointing the enemy. For example, in line 19, he said that the war was against a network of killers. By using this words, he wants to clarify that America is fighting against a worldwide organization of murders, not amateur rebels. Definitely, the federalist party thought that war was imminent