ABSTRACT Thesis : The Power of Persuasion: A Critical Discourse Analvatls of Mirlatt Defenar Santiago's Political Speeches Author : Shaira M. David Adviser : Dr. Alawi C. Canlas The study sought to investigate the language used by the late Senater Mirine DefensorSantiago. It sought to identify the persuasive techniques, language devices, and ideologies embedded in the Senator's political speech. For the corpus of the study, the researcher has randomly chosen three political speeches as the basis for the analysis Using critical discourse analysis, the researcher has identified persuasion strategies, language tools, and ideologies. The findings showed that Senator used a persuasive strategy to express her views on budget abuse or overspending, concerns about illegal Jueteng, and the problems facing the country. She also used rhetorical devices, including hyperbole, metaphor, use of anecdote, and hypophora to force and persuade the audience to accept her beliefs. She boldly presented evidence to support her claim as a lawyer, which helped make her speech more powerful and compelling. Overall, the findings show that speeches of political privilege are a way of communicating beliefs and ideas with the ability to influence and change the opinions of the audience. the study of the chosen data demonstrated that language is a powerful weapon for transmitting ideologies since it can be abused to further certain goals of its users and to mold and modify the attitudes of its audience.