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that bind the group together. In modern phraseology, a system of values and norms, expected by the group to be honoured by the group members, needs a voice to be reconfirmed.

The immanently festive character of the epideictic address accommodates many aesthetic and stylistic considerations. The genre might work as a transition

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point to a more literary rhetoric: narratives may occur, to aspire to sublimity is accepted, maxims can be discussed (often in aphorisms), quotations are likely, etc.; a certain intertextuality will result (see pp. 6-8). The genre has been broadened and will still be open to innovations, for genre diversification is an ongoing process, still continuing under altering conditions of mass media development.

Let me leave this general framework and concentrate on one special kind of epideictic address: the commemorative speech. In recent Dutch and European political culture, commemorations have mostly had just one common subject: World War II. In the last ten years between the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of the end of the Warseveral 'great' and sometimes controversial commemorative speeches were delivered in the countries involved (Germany, Holland, France, the Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, etc.). In addition to some 'controversial' speeches (as in the case of Jenninger 1988, who had to resign as chairman of the German Bundestag (Ensink, 1992; Sauer, forthcoming (a)), there were many judged as 'successful' and 'impressive' by the media (e.g. Queen Beatrix' Christmas 1994 radio address and her address to the Israeli Parliament in March 1995). Kopperschmidt (1989, 1990) has pointed to the remarkable interest in and appreciation of commemorative speechesin marked contrast with the interest in commemorative speeches of 20 or more years ago.

Kopperschmidt's explanation is that representative speeches, delivered mostly on commemorative days, cannot be replaced by other political, cultural, or media types of commemoration. They are clearly irreplaceable because without a representative speech, a commemoration event cannot come to pass. These speeches are given full coverage by the media. Remarkably, though, these speeches do not have any special pragmatic purpose, for nothing will be said and donethat has not been saidand donemany times before. Apart from the performative formula: 'Today we commemorate XYZ' and its multiple linguistic variations, nothing is really predetermined. So one may say that the genus demonstrativum offers many possibilities. The commemoration itself is highly ritualised, a reiteration of rituals performed earlier. Moreover, there is also the fact that orators are mostly persons with representative duties but without political authority: a queen or a president, or the president of a commemoration committee. The media success of recently delivered commemorative speeches, therefore, can be related neither to the purpose of the speech nor to the person of the speaker. It should be related to something else.

According to Kopperschmidt, it may be helpful to consider such a commemorative speech as an offering to the public concerning general norms and values. The explicit references to such values serve as a means of reaffirming them, thus providing society with a sense of societal coherence and consensus. This is not self-evident, because other sources for the (re)formulation of consensus have been exhausted; this holds true especially for some religions, for traditional world views, eternal progress myths, old-fashioned ideologies, while simultaneously general despair and resignation prevail. The orator's ritually actualised recollection of the past, even the darkest moments of a national history, which is inevitable as far as remembering World War II is

concerned, provides the audience (and the media recipients) with resources for political and moral

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orientation.The means of such provision are phrases, formulations, assertions; their purpose is to give social collective recollection and experience a public language.

Every phrase addressing 'the terrible past' in public should be carefully deliberated, and the barely warranted phrase determines the margins for the orator. In some cases, he will go too far, which means a provocation (Jenninger, 1988, cf. Ensink, 1982), in other cases the public language used will be adopted immediately (von Weizsäcker, 1984, who offered the formula 'Day of Liberation' to the Germans, cf. Sauer, forthcoming (a)) or there may be space for questioning assumptions (the behaviour of Dutch citizens towards their Jewish countrymen during World War II, Queen Beatrix 1995). These public speeches can be summarised as incorporating a 'new moral meaning, an expression of public religiosity' (van Es, 1996: 2).

Persuasion vs. political (campaign) success

Present day politicians have to operate in many different fields. Hence, they have to take care not to move too far away from their party's goals. When elections approach, this determines the positions politicians may take. When politicians speak publicly, the content of what they say will depend on the strategy of their party's campaign, internal party agreements or deals, and the profile the politician desires. Considerations as to which coalitions are possible or desirable will exert some influence especially at the end of the pre-election period. No doubt, rhetorical meansin the sense of classical rhetoricwill be used on many levels, and on many occasions. Persuasion is just one means to success. One tries to calculate the possibility of success by employing, among other means, rhetorical devices. Tactical moves, building up one's image, employing 'easy' symbols rather than complicated textual content, power politics, and political careerism do not replace persuasion. But these factors may cause a politician to be unable or unwilling to be persuasive now, in favour of the calculated success at a later moment in time.

It is clear that commemorative speeches can hardly be aimed at achieving (party-related) political success. This is in part due to the fact that speakers on those occasions do not operate in a party-related political context, in part because they recur to older rhetoric forms, and in part because they embody the rhetorical difference regarding the usual party-related political communication. Nonetheless, they aim at success. But here, success pertains to the persuasion of the audience to the specific purport of the commemoration. For that reason, epideictic speeches combine the goal of reaching persuasion with the offering of verbal means that have to establish consensus regarding norms and values. Persuasion here means: to convince the audience that the act of commemorating is an important social goal. The orientation towards being successful has a specifically '(socio)linguistic' design: to attempt to have the audience use the offered public language in order to express their own experiences and thoughts by means of those formulations.

This mixing of persuasive and discoursal success is characteristic of Queen Beatrix. According to Dutch public opinion, it became clear that Beatrix aimed at being successful in both fields, in the field of persuasionevery time she

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delivered a commemorative addressas well as in the field of public discourse as suchby monopolising certain expressions (cf. Verhey, 1995; van Es, 1996). This may be a partial explanation for the fact that heads of state use commemorative events in order to give more profile to their function.

The 'empty kingship'as it is established in constitutional monarchies and as it is described here, is a 'stimulating' condition for such forms of public behaviour. It amounts to a function, the sole content of which is to be representative.Whatever is represented may vary according to the occasion. Within this situation, a preference for the moral highground arises almost automatically, since, in the course of a commemorative event, the purpose of persuasion is enlarged by the social purpose of proposing linguistic means of expressing grief, condemnation or disapprovalor gladness, confirmation or approvalof earlier acts or events.

The commemorative address as a hybrid text

If my argument is correct, then I should be able to propose new ways of determining the specific rhetoric character of epideictic speeches. These addresses are characterised by a mixture of paradigms (cf. Klein, 1995; Ottmers, 1996). In my explanation of this mixture I will use the distinction between classical antiquity and modern political communication. I have made clear already that, nowadays, old and new rhetoric forms and possibilities interact. This interaction may even add to the impact of some addresses or texts.

A mixture of paradigms means that with regard to any specific dimension sometimes one paradigm, sometimes another dominates. The interaction between paradigms cannot be described mechanically. Instead, the description is based on the rhetoric of classical antiquity with respect to some dimensions, whereas other dimensions are related to modern political communication (see Table 1). I am restricting myself here to commemorative addresses as the most specific instance of such epideictic speeches. The genre of the commemorative address, however, cannot be characterised solely on the basis of the interaction of paradigms. Rather, it should be characterised as a hybridisation,in view of the fact that modern and classical realisations of the dimensions may occur simultaneously. For example, it is often the case that the impact of a commemorative address is strongly influenced by the person of the orator (the person's charisma), whereas the orator acts in a representative role. This way, the dimension 'orator' is realised with respect to both the ancient and the modern interpretation. Or, to put it differently, the orator profits from the old rhetoric, while acting according to the new.

In order to be able to capture these and similar aspects in the analysis, it is necessary to rearrange the categorisation of the dimensions to include the possibility of hybridisation. To highlight this, in Table 2 (a modification of Table 1), a grey cell signals that these dimensions are relevant to an epideictic speech. Two neighbouring grey cells mean that both paradigms are relevant for that dimension.

On this basis, it is possible to present a more sophisticated survey of rhetoric criteria and

phenomena in political speeches. I have already mentioned discourse analysis with regard to political speeches. In the next section, I will show how I

discipline' which covers many domains which coexist and partly intersect. The different approaches have in common that language use is the point of departure. In the analysis, language use is correlated to social and socio-political structures. Different intermediary levels are distinguished: overall societal

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structures, institutional structures, group structures, structures of social cognition and personal cognition, and finally the (various) structures of text and talk (cf. van Dijk, 1995). The analytical problem is how to shift from one level to another, because there is no one-to-one relationship between levels. Thus, it is counter-productive to expect that a societal structure is directly reflected in a text. For that reason, discourse analysts mostly focus on partial entities, probably on the assumption that sufficient partial investigations may encompass 'the whole entity'. Although discourse analysts do not tend to see the whole of society as the background to every single speech act, their analyses are often focused on discovering a 'power instance' or a 'power relationship'. The aim is to uncover 'hidden meanings', 'covert purposes' or 'disguised ideological effects'. This is presented as ideological unmasking.Thus, the analyst chooses a place for himself, outside the participants and their specific discoursal context. Sometimes, this may be considered a necessary stage of the analysis, but when there is nothing more, one gets caught in a 'conspiracy hypothesis'.

Compare now the approach of rhetorical analysis as proposed by classical rhetoric theory. If I succeed in analysing a certain exemplary address fully in its rhetorical elements, what would be gained by that? I might conclude that the author used a great many rhetorical means and that the text now has become 'transparent' instead of 'opaque'. A possible conclusion might be that the author kept harping on something, or that he tried to manipulate the audience. In such a description, I would construct a 'power relationship', and I would have shown that the address is a 'powerful device'. Extending such a line of reasoning, I might add that the address stabilises social inequality. The appropriateness of such an interpretation depends, however, on my personal insights into the hierarchy of the observed community. But these insights relate my own point of view to my skill to undertake such an analysis. Thus, the argumentation seems circular.

To take the hypothesis one step furtherhad this address been delivered by a woman in order to make other women revolt against male war propagandists, what value should I attribute to these 'powerful rhetorical means'?

There are two developments in which the aforementioned problems regarding the 'unmasking' approach give rise to further investigation. The first development concerns a practical test. The analysis and interpretation may be considered successful only if one is able to develop alternative practices, or at least contribute to their design (e.g. approaches to 'critical language awareness', Fairclough, 1995a; or the deconstruction of monolithic accounts of the Nazi-period, Sauer, 1989).

The second development concerns the character of the analysis itself. It becomes 'critical', in a double sense, as far as 'critique' is directed to other analytical work which restricts itself to explanatory limits, e.g. the concept of (individually distributed) 'background knowledge' or the (technologically shaped) communication model of 'speaker-message-hearer'; and as far as social, political, institutional, ideological and situational determinants and effects of discourse