Abstract

Gestures, as a non-verbal component of communication and coupled with verbal communication, are one of the most vital parts of communication that politicians use and potentially exploit in their political speeches to warn, remind, or persuade the public. State of the Nation Addresses (SONAs), on the one hand, are important political speeches in which Philippine presidents report on their milestones and future directions. Former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) has been a famous political figure known not only for his candid communication but also for his use of expletives and other salient gestures. In this article, the researchers analyzed PRRD’s use of gestures in two of his SONAs. In this analysis, lexical, symbolic, deictic, motor, and the Butterworths gestures from Polančec’s (2020) study were utilized. The analysis revealed that all gestures except for Butterworths gestures were found and that lexical gestures were found to be the most dominant hand gestures. Furthermore, deictic gestures were observed to be the ones carrying acts of persuasion. This study implies the importance of gesture analysis in the study of political discourses to unpack speech influence, power relations, and ideologies.