1schaffner_christina_editor_analysing_political_speeches

Theo van Leeuwen: It is philo-Semitism that really hits the nail on the head, it is

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an essential component, and not just since after the War. There has long been a significant strand of neo-orthodox Protestantism in Dutch churches which attempts to re-judaicise the theology, and this is a very influential cultural strand. But let me raise another point. The speech has been characterised as a discourse which recalibrates consensus. But one could still ask in which way it is representative. Is it representative in the sense that it is merely clinching a process of discussion and negotiation which is taking place in society, and the Queen as a representative voices the consensus. Or, on the other hand, does the speech itself readjust political opinions? In the latter case, it actually has power, i.e. the discourse is not only representing something but it is a powerful discourse. Or is it something in between, i.e. it is representative but at the same time it has power? This is something we can see in other genres too, in Media Discourse for example, where the journalists have to constantly reinforce their representativeness. For example in political interviews, the questions a journalist puts to a politician have to be voiced as questions that are representative of the public. We need to ask what this representativeness really is and what forms it takes.

Titus Ensink: In dictatorships, for example, the dictator can make his words representative, just on the basis of his power. But here we are talking about situations where power is not that strong. Let's consider the Jenninger case againhis political position as Bundestag President made him representative. He failed with his speech, and within one day he had to resign because he had failed in his representative action. Queen Beatrix is in a position in which she has some moral power, and she has also some political influence, but she does not hold formal power within Dutch society. So when you are asking about the relationship between power and representativeness, I think that representativeness is first of all found in the official position or function. It depends on the quality of the incumbent of that function, i.e. how he or she fulfils it, whether this function also gets some moral authority. Queen Beatrix has succeeded in becoming an undisputed monarch, she has succeeded in delivering a lot of speeches that were fully accepted by the Dutch people, she has succeeded in obtaining an authority which backs up her representative function. The Queen has a position in which she has to prove her representative authority time and again.

Theo van Leeuwen: You have stressed the moral authority which in turn is built up through her being representative. But how can we account for the fact that she does not necessarily have the right to act solely on her moral authority? She has an accountability just like a journalist might have.

Titus Ensink: Officially she has no room for manoeuvre, but in reality she does have room, as long as her ministers do not prevent her from using it.

Theo van Leeuwen: But she has advisers, hasn't she? I find it difficult to accept that she can act quite as autonomously as you have depicted it. Are there no promptings, no meetings to discuss her speeches, what she is going to say?

Titus Ensink: Your comment points to the problem pertaining to the position of a monarch in a

democracy. Interestingly there has been a debate on this issue in the Netherlands because Queen Beatrix had consulted several advisers, also on the occasion of the visit to Israel. Some of them had been quoted in the press.

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There was a debate on that, and some people, one of whom was the Dutch Prime Minister, took the position that advisers should not reveal in public what they say to the Queen. Others argued that the Queen should be open to public scrutiny and control, otherwise there would be the possibility of an anonymous group of advisers having considerable influence on public affairs.

David Pritchard: However much influence advisers may have on the content of a speech, I imagine that these speeches are put together firstly with a view to what journalists are likely to say, and then secondly to what public opinion might think. And also when journalists are writing about a speech, they have to consider what other people might think of what they have written. So no-one really is ever in contact with public opinion as such, I think it's more journalists' opinions presented in a specific form. And I think this must be the primary consideration for people who give advice as to what to say in a speech and how.

Theo van Leeuwen: Public opinion is often expressed by the use of 'we', formally indicating that a speaker is not speaking for himor herself, but rather for 'us', i.e. citizens, or Dutch people, etc.

Sue Wright: But thinking of representativeness: 'we, the nation' or 'we, public opinion', these are two different things. 'We, the nation' is a fabrication, something which the power elites are constructing, and this is an ongoing process. People are socialised into 'we, the nation', especially through education and the media.

Christoph Sauer: When we speak about representativeness and power, we have to make a distinction between political power, economic power, and other concepts of power. When Queen Beatrix succeeds in establishing herself as an important political voice for the Netherlands, then she gives a certain power to the institution of the monarchy. For example, once every four years, after the elections, the Queen, or King, is responsible for starting the negotiations for the formation of a new government, and this is a direct way of exercising political power. I think the fact that she uses English in the Knesset may be a certain allusion to economic power. Using English as a lingua franca may be part of a globalisation process to which she contributes, in this case linguistically.

Norman Fairclough: Titus, I noticed that in your table there are often question marks next to a 'we', and I was glad to see them. But you seem to focus on the different referents of 'we' and the oscillation between them. However, we should also focus on the notion that the scope of 'we' is often extremely vague and ambivalent.

Titus Ensink: You have a point there. I have forced myself to do this analysis in the way I did it, and inevitably sometimes classifications are unnatural. However, it is better to do this than not to classify at all and just rely on impressions.

Norman Fairclough: Sure, and in some cases the scope or referent is clear. But we must also realise that there are cases where the referents are vague, and I think one should say that the

referent is vague instead of trying to pin it down. There is a danger in pretending that something is clear when in fact it isn't.

Christina Schäffner: In some cases the referent is vague in that we have multiple interpretations. We have looked at speeches by John Major at the annual party

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conferences, and there is a kind of merging of the referents, 'we, the Party', 'we, the government', and 'we, the nation' are blended and overlap so that you can't really identify one clear referent. I think this is a rhetorical move and also something typical of this genre.

Titus Ensink: Christoph and I have analysed a speech by the German President Herzog in the same way. Herzog was addressing the Poles as a representative of the German nation who, during the Second World War committed crimes against the Poles. He starts with 'you and I' and 'I'm here in order to reach out my hand to you', and at the end of the speech he says 'I bow my head and ask forgiveness for what we have done' i.e. 'we, the Germans'. In the middle part of the speech, however, Herzog uses 'we' in a more general sense, he is actually merging the referents, for example 'we regret the war', this is 'we and you', and not only 'we the Germans' and 'you the Poles' but also 'all we people'. You are right, it is vague, but it is also rhetorically more effective, since it invites all people to identify with what is being said and feel represented by it. I think that such a classification of personal pronouns is an important indicator of the position the speaker is actually taking.

Julian Edge: Titus, I would like to ask you about your analysis, particularly where the Foreign Office position comes into the address. If one looks at that voice, that message, perhaps there is more coherence in the whole speech than one sees if one focuses only on that part of the message which is addressed to the Dutch people. Paragraph 1 starts with the mythological, and then it continues into the historical, more or less up to and including Paragraph 9. Paragraph 5 says, 'We are the same people', and Paragraph 9 repeats the notion of being the same people. Then we get a temporal marker 'now' at the end of Paragraph 9: 'now that Israel . . .'. This 'now'-situation is linked to the discourse marker 'Mr Speaker', and this signals a shift of focus onto the problem we are faced with in the current situation. In Paragraph 11, 'we' is used to denote the European Union which wants to make suggestions, and the question that is repeatedlyalbeit implicitly posed is now, 'Are we Israel and the EU the same from these perspectives?' The three issues in Paragraphs 11, 12 and 13the need for reconciliation, the need to put behind one the hindrances listed here, i.e. the problems with neighbouring countries, and the need to adhere to democracy are singled out as issues which the countries of the European Union once faced, and which Israel faces now. Will Israel respond in the same way? For me this is the dialogic aspect of the speech, and ties back to the problematic Paragraph 7, which steps out of the historical review. It is here that the speaker first of all raises the issue of remaining vigilant against new forms of discrimination, xenophobia, and racism in Israel itself. These three points are raised again in the last paragraphs, but in the context of the need of reconciliation and the commitment to democratic solutions. What I found bizarre in the first reading is to which lengths the Queen went to play up those elements of sameness in the opening paragraphs. It was only when I got to the end of the speech when I realised that it was rhetorically necessary if one intended to use that sameness later as the basis for a kind of a challenge.

Titus Ensink: But let's say that a head of state addresses the Dutch Parliament

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and says that the only solutions for the Netherlands would be democratic solutions. I think that would cause a scandal. Here that did not happen.

Eve-Marie Aldridge: Why would it cause a scandal?

Titus Ensink: Because of the implication that non-democratic solutions are relevant, are being considered.

Eve-Marie Aldridge: But this is not what she says.

Christoph Sauer: But this is the implication. Speaking in this way does not make any sense.

Eve-Marie Aldridge: It does make sense if you look at the way the international community looks at Israel. Israel is often and strongly criticised for its actions.

Christina Schäffner: But are you allowed to do this as an outsider? Is it not interference in internal affairs?

Eve-Marie Aldridge: She is very complimentary to the Knesset because she has a hard message to pass on. It could be called interference in Israel's internal affairs, but remember that Israel has been making representations to become a member of the European Union. It is already an official member of the 'Espace francophone', although French is not an official language in Israel. Queen Beatrix may well disguise a sort of message related to the price to pay for entry into the EU.

Anita Fetzer: What is very important in the framework of analysing political discourse it to explicitly take into consideration the heterogeneity of the audience. The 'you' referring to the audience really ought to be differentiated with regard to the political views of the audience. It could have an inclusive and an exclusive reading. And in the Knesset, some of the audience are in favour of the policy of 'peace for land'. For them, it would actually be a very positive comment.

Titus Ensink: My own interpretation is the following: If you look at my Figure 1, and if you interpret this sentence in the horizontal box, then it can be seen as insulting, but not really if you put it in the vertical boxthe Knesset representing the State of Israel at present. We know that there are right-wing extremists and Palestinian extremists, and both are threatening democratic processes. Therefore Israel as a State has to follow the path of democracy and these extremist forces must not come to the foreground. If that is the message it may be acceptable. But after my initial reading of the speech I was a bit confused, and I was just wondering how you might see it. The first time I read this, it struck me as very peculiar and potentially insulting to say within a Parliament 'the only solutions for your country are democratic solutions'.

Eve-Marie Aldridge: What she is saying as well is that anti-Jewish sentiment always arose when there were non-democratic powers in the countries concerned. If the same is allowed to happen in Israel, then this would be the end for that country.

David Pritchard: Is this not quite a common device? For instance, when Clinton visits Yeltsin he may well say that the only way forward for Russia is through democratic reform, even though he knows that half the people in the room may be thinking otherwise.

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Contextualisation

Theo van Leeuwen: I would like to add the aspect of contextualisation. Your analysis is mainly an analysis of the discourse, the genre. But I wonder if it is possible to link up this analysis of genre with an analysis of how a particular issue is constructed in discourse, for example by asking which ideas are connected with which discursive techniques.

Titus Ensink: I have no ready-made answer to this. If you look at just one case, you have of course a simple and isolated case which leaves too many questions open concerning which approach you should take and what is specific for the operation of the genre.

Theo van Leeuwen: In discourse analysis, we can make two kinds of choices. As analysts of texts that are important in society, we can start by looking at speech acts in studying a political speech and naturally veer towards the issues you want to highlight in the discourse, in your case, for example, the issue of the Second World War or of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, we can also take the whole issue of, let's say philo-Semitism or anti-Semitism to see how it is treated in other texts or genres from the same period. These two approaches would highlight different things, they would provide us with different kinds of knowledge, but, of course, both are important.

Titus Ensink: It depends on what you want to find out, and in this sense it is a matter of choice. Speaking for myself, I came into this particular field by chance, namely via the Jenninger speech. I decided to analyse it more systematically because I was amazed at what I intuitively felt to be there. A few years later, having looked at more instances of this genre and linking the analysis to my original background as a linguist, I have made the choice to focus on language behaviouri.e. to find out why these speeches are constructed the way they are, and how we might explain the effects they apparently have. However, I fully agree with you when you say that you can look at a speech from different perspectives. And by combining them all, we will get a fuller picture of what is at stake.

You mentioned that most of the speeches we analysed are concerned with war or anti-Semitism or colonialism. This is true, and there are patterns that relate to particular human groups, or to nations who waged war against other nations, as well as to theirsometimes problematicrelationships today. Such general themes are related to the discoursal situations which we have decided to focus on, i.e. epideictic addresses. Other analysts may not be interested just in a few speeches, but rather in the management of international relationships. But then again, you may see that discoursal actions have a great impact upon international relations. Let me just illustrate this by referring to President Walesa's commemorative speech on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. Although in 1944, the Germans were the factual perpetrators, the Russians were 'passive' perpetratorsthey refused to help. In his speech, Walesa refers to just one event in the post-war period, namely the former German Chancellor Brandt, on the occasion of his visit to Warsaw in order to sign the Oder-Neisse treaty in 1970, falling to his knees in front of a monument. Walesa said to the representative of