1schaffner_christina_editor_analysing_political_speeches

have to be identified. So it proves to be 'critical' towards socio-political phenomena (Fairclough, 1989; Sauer, 1988).

The place of rhetoric in this framework of critical discourse analysis is not yet clear. Rhetoric is considered for instance a 'strategic' use of an alien discourse

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(Fairclough, 1995a: 153), which underestimates the incorporative capacity of institutional logics and procedures. What a writer feels when 'playing the game', i.e. making use of common rhetorical means in order to achieve his goals, becomes part of his professional routine. As a professional, he is not aware of the fact that his (institutional) functioning entails a certain identityfor instance as a writerwhich is a product of processes of assimilation and accommodation. Playing the game of rhetoric, then, means the acceptance of other connected games. These strategies, including acts of (un)conscious dissimulation, make him part of the institutional tradition of 'self-promotion'. According to Fairclough's argument, self-promotion is becoming a routine, naturalised strand of various institutional activities and identities.

What is said by Fairclough about the 'game of rhetoric', is equally valid for a great many other games. Thus, self-deception may occur in the case of the archaic character of narratives, as when I try to enliven my texts with anecdotes (playing a literary game). For example, in a fundraising letter I might use a structure which I found to be effective in other circumstances (imitation of powerful devices as a 'commercial game'). This leads me to the conclusion that Fairclough does not attribute a systematic place to rhetoric within his approach. Furthermore, he considers rhetoric as a set of tools instead of as a fundamental communicative category.

A different approach to rhetoric is offered by van Dijk (e.g. 1995). Van Dijk considers rhetoric part of 'superstructures' or 'schematic structures'. Because he is interested in ideological control in the first place, he expects to reach insight in this by focusing on the manipulation of links between semantic macrostructures and schematic superstructures: e.g. the 'downgrading' of a main topic to a lower level of the schema, or the 'upgrading' of a subordinate topic by assigning more prominence to it. 8 As far as classical rhetoric is concerned, van Dijk highlights only semantic 'figures', such as metaphors, or semantic 'operations', such as hyperbole, understatement, irony, and the like. Hence, his approach is restricted to local categories. As a result, superstructures are attributed a systematic position in the analysis, but the very concept of rhetoric itself remains rather vague. It is not quite clear whether van Dijk's approach allows us to analyse more complex rhetorical aims or rhetorically determined communicative practices, such as reformulations or other phenomena of intertextuality.

From the point of view of (critical) discourse analysis, there is indeed some room for rhetoric. Certainly, rhetorical analysis is involved in the description stage (i.e. particularly, text analysis) and considered, then, part of the texture of the text. One is interested in all elements of the texts, on all levels, and one is looking for clues which enable the step to the next stage of the analytical framework. It is less clear which position is granted to rhetoric in the other two stages, viz. interpretation (i.e. processing analysis, linking discourse practices and texts) and explanation (i.e. social analysis, targeting at sociocultural practices). According to Fairclough (1995a: 93), these two stagestogether with the first stage of descriptionrepresent the three dimensions of Critical Discourse Analysis.

When rhetoric is predominantly seen as 'figures', then the result of its application is

disappointing. However, when rhetoric is related to more global

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phenomena, then a more detailed rhetorical analysis is called for. In sum, if one seems to be in need of rhetorical structures, one may attempt such an analysis, embedding it in the general structure of discourse analysis. How much room is needed for this, depends on what one wants to know, and on the text to be analysed. (Rhetorical analysis is in this respect comparable to other rather complex approaches, such as stylistics, textlinguistics, or semiotics).

From the point of view of rhetorical analysis, matters look a little bit different. I have already argued that rhetorical structures come into existence whenever an orator or the group he represents capitalises on the complexity of the audience, on conflicting social interests, and on the interaction between political and institutional facts. In order to describe the different aspects of these political processes, one needs to pay attention to the language use found in the texts originating from these contexts. For such a description, discourse analysis is called upon. One hopes to learn from discourse analysis something about discourse genres and text types in order to be able to link rhetorical patterns to textual means. In this process of investigation, various textual relationships are involved, such as emphasis, foregrounding, underlying semantic models, metaphorical shifts, etc. The approach of discourse analysis serves as a means of controlling one's own perceptions, for example, by making comparisons, or by establishing contradictory relations between rhetorical matters and textual devices. As to the other dimensions of socio-political rhetorical communication, a discourse analytical approach is not considered necessary. Anyway, it is not applied. One is satisfied with the insights into the functioning of politics as an institution on its own. On the other hand, the attempt by discourse analysts at linking discursive practices to wider sociocultural structures in fact denies the relative independence of politics. Furthermore, because discourse analysts publish and give lectures, they themselves become part of the political elite. It does not become clear, however, how the insights gained from their analyses are incorporated at this meta level. Theorists of rhetoric on the other hand feel challenged to compose addresses themselves. To them, politics is an experimental field.

Most discourse analysts do not adopt such a point of view. They may be competent in many fields, nevertheless they prefer to hide their competence. Furthermore, they display a rather dubious and non-systematic interest in ideological questions which pertain to their societies. Their interest israther partiallyfocused on capitalism, racism, sexism, inequality, right wing extremism, anti-terrorism-terrorism, etc. We find, however, less attention paid to the former Eastern bloc, to communism, socialism, pacifism and to liberation ideologies. Even less attention is paid to discrimination in decolonised countries, to black, red or yellow racism. On the other hand, rather more attention is paid to the way in which enemies are pictured in the West. Islamic fundamentalism, in particular, is focused on, often related to analyses of Allied propaganda in the Gulf War of 1991.

It is my contention that paying more attention to rhetorical dimensions will contribute to discourse analysis. In adopting a rhetorical perspective on texts i.e. by adopting the orator's point of view as a public voiceone has to confront

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the question of what determines failure or success. This is true even in those cases in which, ideologically speaking, no problems occur.

The basis of both rhetoric and discourse analysis is functional-pragmatic. Discourse and discursive elements, such as text passages, text structures, form-and-meaning units, and the like, are regarded as manifestations of actions to perform specific functions. This functional basis proves its value especially in cases

·of strategic or tactical use of speech functions;

·of discrepancy between the audience's expectations and the concrete realisation of speech functions;

·of creative and novel language use;

·in which the orator makes 'ugly' choices in order to solve the complexity of his task.

In these cases, it is not easy to link the texture of the text to the social context. Incorporating rhetoric within the methodological set of tools of discourse analysis will thus contribute to a clearer interpretation and explanation of complications regarding the orator's constraints, functions and dilemmas.

Queen Beatrix as Orator: Problem-solving, the Scope, and Ideological Impact of Her Address to the Knesset

Creating echoes

The state visit of Queen Beatrix (and Prince Claus) to Israel on March 27 and 28, 1995, was summarised in a report on Dutch television. In this reportwhich was enriched with some documentary materialsa few minutes were given to the Queen's address to the Knesset. The Dutch television audience could only see and hear her in a short fragment, in which she uttered the following passage (Paragraph 6 in the speech; here rendered in the spoken version): 9

Most of our Dutch Jews were carried off to concentration camps where they would eventually meet their death. We know that many of our fellow-countrymen put up courageousand sometimes successfulresistance, and often stood by their threatened fellow men, exposing themselves to mortal danger. During our visit to Yad Vashem yesterday we saw their names too among those remembered forever under the trees planted there. But we also know that they were the exceptional ones and that the people of the Netherlands could not prevent the destruction of their Jewish fellow-citizens.

This passageor its closing sentencewas quoted, one day later, in most Dutch newspapers. The quotation dominated most reports on the Queen's state visit. In view of the media coverage, one might say that this passage is important and even essential. Other investigations, based on media coverage, confirm this interpretation (Verhey, 1995; van Es, 1996).

Several observations may explain the apparent relevance of this passage. Firstly, the passage is an odd element in an address to the Israeli parliament, since it concerns a topic that is relevant to the Netherlands, and that in principle does not concern the Israeli-Dutch relationship (although it becomes apparent that this is not completely true, see below). The oddness of the

passage in this situation is

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an indication of the communicative conflict between at least two perspectives (see below).

Secondly, the passage is carefully introduced by contrasting the Jewish name of Amsterdam, Mokumwhich means 'safe place' (Paragraph 5) with the unsafe and really dangerous situation that followed, especially for the Dutch Jews (see Paragraph 6). Another introductory element is the allusion to the shared knowledge about the destruction of the Jews, by making use of the rhetorically formulated pseudo-negation: 'It is not necessary to call to mind here, in this place, the horrors that the Nazi-occupation of 1940-45 brought our country's Jewish population', which occurs immediately before the quoted passage. This double introduction functions as a signal to the audience to pay attention to the following phrases. The same holds true for the Dutch television report in which the preceding day's visit to Yad Vashem is shown. The commentator in the report elaborates on the theme of the Dutch occupation and the persecution of the Jews. Thus, the quoted passage achieves prominence.

Thirdly, the way in which this theme is constructed as a topic-to-talk-about,is important here. Queen Beatrix makes a topic publicly discussable which in the Netherlands had been taboo for quite some time, being publicly and representatively not addressed, or only in a very covert way. In the construction of her address, Beatrix had to take this context into account. For that reason she starts to mention the facts: the annihilation of the greater part of the Dutch Jews, without, however, mentioning the perpetrators. She goes on to refer to the positive side of the occupied Netherlands, its resistance, hence the adversaries of the perpetrators. Only then does she mention the 'other' Dutchmen who did not belong to the resistance force, who were not Jews, and who acted as allies to the perpetrators. This, however, is not explicitly said. Rather, she categorises those who offered resistance as the 'exceptional ones'. Only at the end of this passage does it appear that the majority of the Dutch 'could not prevent the destruction of their Jewish fellow-citizens'. We have here a mitigating formulation which offers the opportunity to think that the Dutch had wanted to protect the Jews, but were not able to do so. 10

Whereas before in commemorations in the Netherlands, the Dutch support of the Jews was emphasised, following this address, the reality about the limited nature of this help was publicly recognised. For that reason, the Queen's speech is partly to be considered as epideictic (at least as far as Pararagraphs 6 and 7 are concerned). Even the central commemorative speech function has been realised, with the performative formula (see pp. 14-15): '. . . at the same time asking ourselves in bewilderment and dismay how this could have happened'.

Finally, this passage is the Queen's reaction to the request by the Jewish community in the Netherlands and the Dutch community in Israel to correct the positive image of the Netherlands as a country which offered strong resistancewhich in fact it did notand to reduce that image to its true proportions. The passage may be heard as complying with that request (about the background to the passage and about the advisors to the Queen, see Verhey, 1995; about Beatrix' own motives, see van Es, 1996).

These four observations, taken together, make it clear that the passage fulfils the rhetorical

function of stimulating (and controlling) journalistic reformulations.

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The passage is constructed to be easily picked up by the media. This 'reformulation-effect' is part of intertextuality (pp. 6-9). This concept forces us to analyse not merely the speech event itself, but also what went before and what followed it. News reports which incorporated the passage, and the television report which showed Queen Beatrix speaking in the Knesset, pertain to the speech event's post-history.By its very nature, this post-history is open-ended. The development of the post-history cannot be predicted, since new (speech) events, such as other addresses, or media messages, may have links to this address. 11

The address itself is heavily influenced by its own pre-history.In this case, the pre-history too, has an intertextual nature. Queen Beatrix has made a number of speeches before the one in the Knesset, and she has participated in several commemorative events relating to the end of World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz. In her address, she makes reference to these events (in particular, in Paragraph 7). The passage about the Dutch failure to help the Jews is prepared, so to speak, by previous addresses of the Queen herself and by public assessments of the Queen's concern about occupation, war, and the genocide of the Jews.12 The Dutch media's preview of her visit brought expectations to fever pitch. What was the Queen going to say in Israel? For that reason it is safe to say that the Knesset-addresswhatever its other functions may bewas meant to give the proper textual environment for the delivery of this passage which was essentially directed to the Netherlands.

This calls for a specific organisation of the textual environment. The embedding of the target passage must be carefully done. A sequential solution13 to the organisation of the text is not possible, since such a solution would be incompatible with the state visit and its necessity of representation (Ensink, this volume). Equally impossible would be the positioning of the passage at the very end of the address. The final position is, from a rhetorical point of view, preferable, especially when one wants to stimulate media reformulations (as in the case of Roman Herzog's Warsaw address, see Ensink & Sauer, 1995). In this case, however, the final position is not possible since the ritual character of a visitor addressing the parliament demands a different closing passage. Putting the paragraph in the opening section of the address is equally impossible. The address must offer its audience an introduction of time, place, and theme, in order to prepare them. Because of the topic's sensitive nature, some tact and care are called for in the way it is introduced.

As Ensink (in this volume) shows in his analysis of the thematic development, the address consists of three parts:

·firstly, the discussion of the historical development of the relationship between the Dutch and the Jewish peoples, in which the commemoration of the fate of the Jewish Dutchmen is contained:

·secondly, some thoughts about the difficult road towards peace in the Middle East;

·and, finally, a closing section appropriate to a ritual address.