Clausal Postmodification of Noun Phrases in Political Discourse

Abstract

This bachelor thesis aims to analyse the use of clausal postmodification of noun phrases in political discourse. The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part of the thesis defines a noun phrase and focuses on its structure and prototypical syntactic roles. Additionally, the theoretical part concentrates on clausal postmodification of noun phrases and its forms, functions and meaning (finite and non-finite, appositive and relative, restrictive and non-restrictive). The last chapter of the theoretical part defines political discourse and its key functions and it also examines political speeches from a linguistic point of view. The thesis's practical part consists of analysing clausal postmodifiers in the selected political speeches. The analysis aims to determine the prevailing forms of relative and appositive clauses while also focusing on other key characteristics of the two clausal postmodifiers in the selected speeches. All the prevailing tendencies are summarised and explained through their connection to the selected discourse.