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4 Rhetorical structure of political speeches
Political speeches are an instance of prepared monologic discourse delivered
“orally by a politician in front of an audience, the purpose of which is persuasion
rather than information and entertainment” (Dedaić 2006: 700). Since
political
speeches vary according to the occasion on which they are delivered (e.g.
inaugural/resignation, electoral campaign, electoral victory/defeat, bill proposal,
state of the union address, ceremonial address), the speaker (e.g. local or national
political leader, leader of an international organization, parliamentarian, political
candidate) and the intended audience (e.g. local, national, international, media),
it is appropriate to approach them as a genre-colony, i.e. a grouping of closely
related genres which share the same communicative purpose (Bhatia 2004: 58).
The macro-communicative purpose shared by all types of political speeches
is to persuade the audience to accept the speaker’s understanding of reality
and to support the ideologically biased views and policy he/she suggests. The
rhetorical structure of political speeches comprises a sequence of moves which
are associated with different
persuasion strategies aiming at the reinforcing of
the identities of the participants and their relationships, the establishing of the
suggested ideological framework, and persuading the audience to take action
or dissuading it from doing so. Obviously, there is variation in the rhetorical
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structure of different types of
political speeches; however, since this study
focuses on coherence in relation to persuation, rather than at a genre analysis,
these differences will not be taken into consideration.
The rhetorical moves within a political speech are typically organized within
three main sections: (1) the opening, often called ‘salutation’, (2) the body, which
subsumes a sequence of moves constituting the argumentative part of the rhetoric,
and (3) the ending, typically termed ‘closure’. In the opening section the speaker
strives to establish contact with the listeners by addressing them directly and by
asserting his/her personal involvement with the audience, the occasion and the
issue at hand. While using various persuasive strategies, such as direct appeal,
self-disclosure, joke, narrative of belonging and establishing common ground
(cf. Donahue and Prosser 1997), the speaker endeavours to create a coherent
discourse by categorizing political actors from his/her ideological perspective
and anchoring them with respect to action frames, spatio-temporal settings and
events. By aligning him/herself with a particular ideological position, the speaker
also contributes to the construal of his/her identity and existential coherence by
representing his/her behaviour and attitude to people, values, facts and ideas as
consistent and continuous.
The sequence of moves comprised in the body of a political speech allows for
considerable variation according to the type of rhetoric, occasion and intended
audience. Drawing on the Aristotelian mapping of the domain of rhetoric, political
speeches may pertain either to deliberative or to epideictic rhetoric, depending
on whether their intention is to urge the audience to undertake or restrain from
undertaking a certain future action, or to praise or censure people, acts and events
taking place in the present or in the past (Kovalyova 2005: 41). The full-fledged
structure of the body of political speeches encompassing seven basic moves
– asserting the centrality of the issue, introducing the situation, evaluating the
situation, describing prospects and indicating problems, suggesting solutions to
problems, outlining a course of action, evaluation of expected outcomes – is
typically present in deliberative speeches, such as bill proposals and electoral
campaign and state of the union addresses, which aim at persuading the audience
to vote for or act in accordance with a suggested action plan. Epideictic speeches,
e.g. inaugural and ceremonial addresses, have a symbolic function related to the
evaluation of people, acts and events from the ideological perspective of the
speaker and thus usually do not include the problem–solution sequence of moves.
The persuasion strategies occurring in the body of speeches, such as a narrative of
achievements, casting the present as a natural extension of the past, unification of
in-group as opposed to out-group perceived as victim or threat/enemy, appeal to
authority, appeal to logic, reference to statistics, appeal to emotions and humour
(cf. Donahue and Prosser 1997, Halmari 2005), are intended to anticipate and
respond to the favourable or hostile reactions of the audience while allowing
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the orator to build a coherent discourse world which might be shared by all
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