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remain vigilant against the emergence of new forms of racism, discrimination and xenophobia.

(j) It is an urgent duty, not only for governments but also for every individual citizen, to be on the alert and react without hesitation to every sign of a revival of these dangers.

We know already that these paragraphs contain the Queen's message from abroad to the Dutch people, transmitted via journalistic intermediaries. Since she has assigned herself the task of intervening in discursive practices in respect of the Dutch self-image, we may expect some shifts of perspectivisation. The following kinds of perspectives appear:

(a)Offers a general then-perspective without the orator's involvement, and an anticipation of the result of the historical development.

(b)A now-perspective and a here-perspective with the orator's involvement are used in order to explicitly state that shared knowledge about the Jews' horrible fate during the Nazi-occupation of the Netherlands exists and needs no further mentioning.

(c)By formulating 'most of our Dutch Jews', Queen Beatrix adopts a specific personal Dutch and non-Jewish perspective, subsequently followed by a general then-perspective, as in (a).

(d)A Dutch then-perspective is applied, firstly from the audience's point of view ('We know that'), secondly from the orator's Dutch point of view ('our fellow-countrymen'), thirdly from the fellow-countrymen's point of view ('their threatened fellow men'). This functions as a signal to keep one's distance.

(e)A personal then-close-to-today-perspective is chosen which embodies some personal experiences with respect to the symbolic memory of Yad Vashem.

(f)ADutch and Israelinow-perspective appears (audience's and orator's involvement) making explicit the low degree of Dutch anti-Nazi and pro-Jewish resistance.

(g)In this central performative speech act of the commemoration passage, a general nowperspective with audience's and orator's involvement is adopted, by referring to a thenperspective ('how this could have happened').

(h)The orator's and one special addressee's involvement, by achieving a recent thenperspective, make this sentence particularly relevant.

(i)A general now-perspective is chosen (audience's and orator's involvement) in order to direct the public to anti-destructive and anti-aggressive ideological points of view.

(j)The passage ends with a general now-and-tomorrow-perspective, without yet a clear involvement of addresser and addressees, by offering an aphoristically designed moral appeal.

What we find here is that there is neither continuation of perspective nor duration of involvement patterns. The constellation of perspectives and points of view varies partly according to the thematic organisation of the passage, partly according to moral statements and ritual phrases, partly according to commemo-

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rative sequences. The passage seems to be exceptionally dynamic. This underlines Queen Beatrix' claim to give a voice to discourses constructing Dutch history and memory. Because it is her voice which opposes untruthful descriptions of the importance of Dutch resistance, she is able to succeed in stressing the 'just' perspective. On the one hand, this calls for acceptance by the audience: by changing and doubling perspectives and merging different points of view, she seems to be successful. On the other hand, her appeal is more forceful when she comes to give advice to the public about the struggle against anti-democratic movements.

The Necessity of Political Rhetoric

Many historians of rhetoric assume that hardly any development took place in the theory and practice of rhetoric between the 18th and 20th centuries. The dormant period of rhetoric (Ottmers, 1996; Göttert, 1994) came to an end in the course of the 20th century. At the end of this century rhetoric is very much alive. Categories which hardly played any role in public debate of the 19th century such as persuasion, docere et delectare,orientation towards the audience, and otherswere rediscovered in the first decades of the 20th century. The dark side of rhetoric prevailed in that time, in the context of World War I and afterwards: imperialistic manipulation, propaganda, smear campaigns, mass psychological indoctrination.

No doubt, the change of evaluation, viz. the alternating overestimation and underestimation of rhetoric, is related to societal and political developments. It may be hypothesised that the nature, development, and massiveness of decision-making processes are the cause of the renewed interest in rhetoric. Rhetorical processes are related to decision-making and the attempt to get approval for the decisions. We find a good reason here to look for rhetorical processes which were successful, while other processes failed, in getting approval. We should focus on the role of language use here.

However, it is not easy to determine whether an address or a series of addresses should be consideredfrom a rhetorical point of viewa success or a failure. The reason for this indeterminate character is the increasing complexity of the communicative and societal context within which the orator acts. There is also increasing complexity among the factors which influence the addresses and their reception. One of these factors is the recent 20th-century history of rhetoric itself, i.e. the fact that prior to the delivery of a speech there may have been successes which the orator would like to emulate, as well as failures from which the orator would like to learn.

A present-day orator has to be aware of the simultaneity of rhetoric's renaissance with the formation of nations and national identities. The formation of nations was in part an internal process, but more often than not an external process, in which the nation-in-birth had to fight competing nations or exterior forces such as foreign occupation. An orator cannot simply use the tools of rhetoric which proved successful at that time: their use would certainly characterise him as 'nationalist'. 15 Furthermore, the orator has to be aware of the fact that for more than a century some extremist political movements or ideologies have marked public speaking,

particularly, communism (with a

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revolutionary and international rhetoric) and fascism (with a nationalist and racist rhetoric). An orator should try to avoid becoming associated with those movements. Finally, the political situation at home influences the orator. Since the goal of public speaking - in conformance with the basic rhetorical situation described in classical antiquity - is to persuade and influence decision-making, the speaker should be aware of internal political relationships. In these relationships, both authoritarian and democratic processes may play a role. An auctor has to decide whether he wishes to influence his audience toward authoritarian or toward democratic social relationships.

Hence, present-day research on rhetorical phenomena has to take these complexities and their developments into account. The form and the function of speeches depend upon them. Apart from the fact that any individual speech has a specific structure and rhetorical form, we should consider the influence of that speech on rhetoric itself. In general, we might term this 'the antithetical context of rhetorical devices'. In sum, I consider the commemorative address as a particular, complex arrangement of rhetorical forms and functions which is influenced by the aforementioned factors.

The example of Queen Beatrix' address pertains to a rather small country in Europe trying to chase away the ghosts of World War II and the occupation. The state visit offered an occasion to make an attempt at that. Maybe this example is too insignificant for far-reaching conclusions. Nevertheless, it is important to dwell on it further. The main subject, then, is to take the societal experiences designed as discursive practices - of a country seriously. When an orator tries to do so, then it is necessary to have a closer look at the kinds of occasion when these experiences are generated.

In her Knesset address - and in previous and subsequent addresses - Queen Beatrix gave voice to reflections and experiences about the place of the Netherlands among other countries and nations, with respect to the painful past (World War II, occupation, annihilation of most of the Dutch Jews). The topics she addressed were determined by chance, up to a certain point. The fact that it happened to be exactly 50 years ago since World War II came to an end, is accidental. But the Queen took this opportunity to fulfil her representative task in a rather specific way.

There are no precise rules stating what a Queen has to say whenever she is making a state visit. Of course she should consider the points of view of her government. In this respect, she has a position similar to that of a President who is not at the same time the head of a government, but who holds a representative function. This does not mean, however, that her words are prescribed by the government. She has some scope of her own. Queen Beatrix used this scope to the full extent. She succeeded in drawing public attention to herself as the voice of the Netherlands. She succeeded also in offering the Dutch citizens a series of 'expressions' in order to be able to refer to events of the occupation period expressions which are more consistent with the historical facts. In the Knesset, this occurred for the very first time. Up to then, a more

covert language was used, even by the Queen.

Rhetoric, thus, is necessary in order to realise such shifts.Rhetoric is also necessary in order to shed light on the role of the orator in such processes of

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change. Critical discourse analysis and critical rhetorical analysis should cooperate in order to reconstruct those moments in which discursive practices are modified and take on new forms.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Titus Ensink (Groningen) and Wim Staat (Tilburg) for their support with the translation and formulation of this paper.

Notes

1.'Rhetoric [. . .] is essentially antithetical, for the orator speaks in the face of at least implied adversaries' (Ong, 1982: 111).

2.Another perspective has been presented by the increasingly popular genre of 'applied rhetoric'. Techniques for persuasion are being marked as ethically ambivalent (cf. Klein, 1995: 63). Hence, the ever recurring emphasis on reasonableness and fairness, or, lately, on political correctness.

3.There are exceptions, of course. A newcomer to politics, e.g. a new member of parliament, may go on an intensive training course in public speaking or corporate (political) communication. In such cases, repetition and imitation skills could be applied, making use of exemplary pre-texts, such as well-known former addresses. Intertextuality, then, may contain the way of relating the trainee's own textual passages to accredited passages.

4.If we wish to analyse media coverage of a political speech more precisely, we also have to take into account the role of transcriptions handed out to the press in advance. This transcription is, in fact, as Jakobs (1996) points out, mostly the reason, and not the result, of the original performance. Press handouts become more important than the speech itself, and get coverage in their own right. For instance, when Churchill first spoke of the Iron Curtainin a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946most reporters who were present omitted the now famous expression simply because it had not been included in the transcription (cf. Jakobs, 1996).

5.Note that the concept of representation here stems from rhetoric; it definitely does not correspond to the rather broad notion of cognitive or psychological representation.

6.See, for instance, Lausberg (1960: 653) who lists the following features under the heading auditor:gentleness, willingness, hostility, attention, docility, erudition, fatigue, personal experiences, etc.

7.In his account of more than 500 years of theoretical and practical reflection of rhetoric, the (unknown) writer Ad Herennium (c. 85 BC) presents the following definitions: 'The task of the public speaker is to discuss capably those matters which law and custom have fixed for the uses of citizenship, and to secure as far as possible the agreement of his hearers. There are three kinds of causes which the speaker must treat: Epideictic, Deliberative, and Judicial. The

epideictic kind is devoted to the praise or censure of some particular person. The deliberative consists in the discussion of policy and embraces persuasion and dissuasion. The judicial is based on legal controversy, and comprises criminal prosecution or civil suit, or defence' (Ad Herennium,1994: I.I.2). In fact, this definition functions as a summary of Greek and early Italian investigations into rhetorical matters, immediately before the time of Cicero (at the end of the Forum Romanum as a rhetorical institution) and Quintilian (the first holder of a chair of rhetoric, at the beginning of the Imperium Romanum).

8.Apart from that, notice that van Dijk, in fact, is referring to devices of 'perspectivisation' (Sandig, 1996) or 'point of view' (Simpson, 1993).

9.For convenience of reference, the paragraphs of Queen Beatrix' address are numbered. Notice that the written version differs from the oral one here.

10.The syntactic construction 'could not prevent', which is in fact a double negation, is a clear example of the indeterminateness which characterises a representative address in general (see pp. 9-10).

11.Note, for example, that this very paper is part of the post-history.

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12.In such a way, the processuality (see pp. 5-6) of modern political addresses is established, here by means of a concatenation of communicative events.

13.For instance, one specific passage directed to the members of the Israeli parliament, one to the Netherlands, one to Jewish Dutchmen, etc., according to the sequential addressing of a heterogeneous audience (see pp. 11-12).

14.In classical rhetoric, exactly this is meant by captatio benevolentiae (which means something like 'fishing for compliments').

15.Of course, some orators aim at precisely this effect, e.g. Le Pen in France, but most orators try to avoid this pitfall.

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