the Arabic original speech because Assad realized the gravity of his inauguration speech and that it was very influential to his diplomatic strategy and political agenda
Alan, 2003: 121. Having 7.194 words in it, the transcript encompasses certain linguistic
features. One of them is euphemism. Euphemism in this transcript can be seen in some expressions, mostly in the form of noun. Thus, this study puts under
examination these euphemistic expressions, be it words or phrases.
B. Approach of the study
This study employed a lexical semantics study as its basis of analysis. Lexical semantics deals with the meaning of words, and the meaning relationship among
words. Since the purpose of this study is to reveal the ideology beyond Assad’s euphemistic expressions, then the approach has to deal with meaning. That is why
semantic approach best fits the study. In order to prove that Bashar al-Assad’s July 16
th
2014 inauguration English speech transcript carries particular political agenda shown by the ideologies, a CDA
was applied. CDA functioned as an approach to scrutiny the result of the componential analysis of the euphemistic expressions. The analysis was centered on
why the results show certain things and how it contributes to the ideology construction in language use.
C. Method of the study
To conduct this study, there were several steps taken. The first step is collecting the data. The second step is analyzing the data which have been obtained.
These steps are outlined as the following:
1. Data collection
The data from the English speech transcript were collected by employing a population study. There are twenty euphemistic expressions in the transcript. All of
the euphemistic expressions fall into three different parts of speech: noun, adjective, and verb.
The system of data collection was arranged as follows. First, the English speech transcript was read for repeated times. In order to obtain the data, then, the
reading was focused specifically to the sentences or clauses which describe Assad’s oppositions and the situation that the Syrian people are undergoing. In the sentences
and clauses where Assad describes his oppositions and his country’s situation, the words and phrases were highlighted individually to see whether or not the exact word
or phrases used in that sentence or clause might mean something else. This method is done by crosschecking what Assad said with the real situation happening in Syria. If
the words and phrases were obtained, they were classified and categorized based on their part of speech in order to see the distribution of the euphemistic expression
within the speech transcript.
