Trump's Speech about Jerusalem: An Analysis on Persuasive Strategies

INTRODUCTION
Jerusalem is a holy place where several beliefs and faiths live together. Islam,
Christianity and Jews live and do worship in that city (BBC, 2017). Its territory surrounds
Palestine and Israel. Both countries have been being a great rivalry in an old-world war since
1948 (Margolick, 2008). Donald Trump as the president of USA showed his sympathy toward
both a long-world war and it was stated through his political speech. Stobbs (2012) considered
that political speeches are written with a very great plan and purpose. As the president of USA,
Trump is the most influential person in the world. His word will always provoke great responses
from all people over the world. He showed his remark on his speech about Jerusalem on 23rd
May 2017. Through his speech, he expected the three religions in Jerusalem, such as Jews,
Islam and Christianity can build peace together. On 6th December 2017, Trump declared
Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel. It provoked pros and cons from several leaders of nations
over the world. He stated that his claim was to stop the war between Israel and Palestine, and
to achieve peace. Through his speech, Trump intended to show his power and communicate
what he wanted to. Speech is one the ways of having communication (Soedjarwo, 2020). In
having communication, the speaker influences hearer to believe in what he says or doing
something that he wants to. Alfian, Santi, and Sari (2019) stated that a good communication
depends on how speaker can achieve the goal of what he says. Speaker absolutely persuades
hearers to achieve the goals of communication.
In Persuading hearers, speaker can uses persuasive strategies. Speaker uses persuasive
strategies to influence other people through utterance without doing compulsion. Gass and
Seiter (2010) stated that persuasion is an attempt to influence hearers motives and attitudes.

Roberts (2008) stated that Aristotle divided persuasive strategies into three ethos, logos and
pathos. Ethos occurs when the speaker persuades hearer by showing his credibility in doing
something. Griffin (2012) and Lucas (2009) defined ethos as ethical proof which means the
way the speaker stated his ability, intelligence, reputation and etc. through his utterance. In the
book of Griffin (2012), ethos are divided into three characteristics, which means that the
speaker might express ethos indicating perceived intelligence, virtuous character, and goodwill.
Perceived intelligence occurs when speaker persuaded hearers by showing his or her
intelligence or competence in doing something. Verderber, Sellnow, and Verderber (2012)
stated that audiences are more effectively persuaded by the speaker by showing his or her
intelligence or competence through stating his perceived intelligence. Virtuous Character
occurs when speakers intends to persuade hearers by building their trustworthiness. It can be
raised when the speaker shows his experiences, motives, and values. The speaker can state that
his intention in achieving something and the positive side belongs to him to persuade hearers.
In previous research, Widyawardhani (2016) analysing rhetoric on Trump’s presidential
candidacy speech also showed that Trump expressed his virtuous character by showing his good
character to persuade audiences. Goodwill occurs when speaker shows his hope which also
becomes hearers hope. Griffin (2012) stated that goodwill is when the speaker intended to create
a positive judgment from hearers to him. Zakariya, Chojimah, and Nurhayani (2018) analysing
rhetorical strategies on SBY and Jokowi’s speech about the increase of fuel also found that
Jokowi showed his goodwill by telling his hope to actualize people’s dreams by giving some
solutions to increase people’s prosperity.
The second type of persuasive strategies is logos. It is expressed to give a logic reason
in a speech. Griffin (2012) defined logos as a logical proof. It occurs when the speaker presents
a logical aspect of the utterance. The logical aspect is in the form of evidence. By presenting
evidence, the speaker intends to convince hearers that what he says is reasonable to be received.
Ghazani (2016) stated that logos occurs when speaker gives rational evidence. The third level
of persuasive strategies is Pathos. It is expressed when the speaker touches the emotional aspect
of hearers through discourse. Griffin (2012) stated that pathos is an emotional proof, an
interaction between the speaker and hearer through speech involving feeling. Emotional aspect
is a very important way to get an effective result in influencing people. Pathos can be expressed

by the speaker while showing anger, mildness, confidence, admiration, fear, confession, love
or friendship, hatred, pity, and envy.
There are previous research analyzed persuasive strategies used by influential speakers.
Setiawan (2014) analyzed persuasive strategies used by Obama on his victory speech in 2012.
The result showed that Obama mostly used pathos rather than ethos and logos. It indicates that
Obama persuaded hearers by arousing their emotion. Shabrina (2016) analyzed persuasive
strategies used by Hillary Clinton. The result showed that Hillary Clinton used ethos to show
her good image and used pronoun ‘we’ to take hearers as the same position with her. Pathos
was used by Hillary Clinton to affect hearers emotion by driving herself as a part of them and
logos was used to give logical and factual evidences. Nurrosyidah (2016) analyzed persuasive
strategies used by Jokowi in his political speech. The result showed that Jokowi used ethos by
telling his reputation, character and knowledge. Pathos was used to affect hearers emotion by
using figurative language and logos was used by telling factual data, statistic and example. This
research was also conducted to analyze the most influential person over the world, that is
Donald Trump. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyze the type of persuasive strategies
used by Donald Trump on his speech about Jerusalem

RESEARCH METHOD
This research used qualitative approach to get a deeper understanding of a phenomenon.
The analysis of qualitative research is in the form of word. Its approach is the appropriate
method to analyze pragmatic research as to describe and interpret the meaning of a text. Miles
and Huberman (1994) stated that qualitative research deals with the analysis of a social
phenomenon through classifying, interpreting, contrasting and etc.
The data of this research is Trump’s speech about Jerusalem. There are two speech
analyzed in this research. The first one is Trump’s speech about Jerusalem on 23rd March 2017
with the title “Remarks by President Trump at Israel Museum” (2017). The second one is
Trump’s speech about Jerusalem on 6th December 2017 with the title “Statement by President
Trump on Jerusalem” (2017b). The full texts were obtained from www.WhiteHouse.com. This
research used human instrument, that is the writers. Peredaryenko and Krauss (2013) stated that
human instrument is the writer as the instrument in conducting all the process of the analysis of
the research. The other instrument is the types of persuasive strategies.