1schaffner_christina_editor_analysing_political_speeches

In the latter situation, all statements will be heard as being part of the political party programme. An average, representative speech,

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therefore, contains some sort of reiteration, a paraphrase of an existing (more or less normative) textnotably different from journalists' reformulations (see pp. 8-9)or, where value-systems are concerned, a range of phrases which can be understood as allusions to societal norms and values.

An orator is under certain pressure; the higher the rank within the national political hierarchy the less prominence can be given to the detail of everyday political issues. Such a speaker keeps to the overview. Moreover, for someone presumed to rise above political parties, to speak for all citizens, it is imperative to avoid even the slightest misunderstanding. This special kind of representation necessarily implies some indeterminateness with respect to the formulations used. In the Dutch case, we observe that the Dutch are accustomed to their Queen stating what is rather obvious (that she's happy to be somewhere; that it is a special honour for her and for the Netherlands; that society should be concerned about the weak and the poor; that we should take an interest in the fate of refugees, etc.). Or she says something about the special, historical moment (a commemoration, an official reception, an official state visit, the presentation of an award, the acceptance of an award, the opening of an international conference, etc.). In any case, the Dutch are willing to accept a relatively large number of indeterminate phrases and a formal, non-personally involved text structure.

Given this order of expectation, the (national) audience will measure all public speeches by Queen Beatrix in the context of consensus which is in keeping with the tradition upheld by Queen Beatrix' predecessor, her mother, now Princess Juliana. Consensus, however, is not an altogether unproblematic notion. It prohibits, of course, that the Queen's speeches be offensive in any way. She cannot directly criticise government policy, nor controversially address 'national' issues or issues that touch national identity. Yet, even though she is to rise above politics, she can still show her personal involvement by choosing certain themes. In general, however, the Queen's avowed distance from everyday life and everyday politics and the indeterminateness of her words will be perceived as contributions to the preferred consensus. As long as scandals can be avoidedthe Dutch do not have a Prince of Wales . . . yetthis consensus-expectation will prevail. The Queen who is not elected to her position, which means that compromises have not been necessary does not face any problems of acceptance, which have become so common within the framework of political communication in general.

She will not be reproached for 'masking' the important issues, nor for 'unclear linguistic usage', which has evolved into a recurrent theme for journalists, nor, most particularly, for 'manipulation'. It actually seems, although I have no explicit sources to confirm my impression, that the Dutch are looking forward to a formal speech by the Queen in which she does not follow tradition and tries something new. There are, for instance, highly 'ritualised' speeches, mostly unrelated to national affairs, that may grant her a few personal liberties, e.g. the Queen's Christmas radio addresses. They show that the necessity of representation can be broken every once in a while. This is not unlike the kind of representation appropriate for presidents which also occasionally allows the media to approach the president as a private person.

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Homogeneous audience vs. multiple addressees

According to the system of classical rhetoric, the orator had to take into account only two groups within his audiencepro and contra. As he belonged to one of them, he could address actual (i.e. already formulated by another orator), or putative problems (i.e. brought about by his own preparations). This description allowed practitioners of rhetoric to fall back on the idea of a homogeneous public. One could concentrate on the central purpose of the speech and relate all phrases, structural devices, and stylistic means to the aspired efficacy of persuasion. In this description, there is not much room for a non-homogeneous audience. Practitioners of classical rhetoric try to make distinctions based on a description of audience characteristics. 6 However, they do not discuss how an orator should deal with the contemporaneous presence of various groups of hearers, and modern politicians are relentlessly confronted with the latter.

Multiple addressees and multiple addressing are essential constituents of a political speech situation nowadays (cf. Kühn, 1995). Orators are therefore required to calculate risks and chances. As Fairclough (1995a: 128) puts it: 'Anticipation of the potential polyvalence of the texts that such complex contributions imply is a major factor in their design'. There are two major ways of addressing a heterogeneous audience:

·simultaneous addressing;

·sequential addressing.

In the first case, textual means are chosen such that a speech can have a certain meaning for all audience groups (e.g. supporters, allies, opponents, participants, and overhearers or casual readers); however, this meaning can sometimes be quite opaque. As shown in the previous section, indeterminateness is a common feature of these texts. In the second case, all addressees are dealt with in a paragraph by paragraph way; the orator addresses one particular group, sometimes explicitly, and then the next, and the next, etc. The disadvantage of this approach is that the unity of text cannot be guaranteed; this problem comes to the fore in a heterogeneity,a kind of stylistic vagueness (cf. Sauer, forthcoming (b)).

In the Netherlands, both types of address are frequent. Simultaneous addressing often features indeterminate keywords,e.g. 'social innovation', 'government reorganisation' or 'focus on environment' which are terms used in government declarations at the beginning of a term of office. Commemorative speeches too show the recurrence of certain keywords, such as 'freedom', 'peace', 'good neighbourhood' or 'reconciliation'. Through analysis we become aware of a continuously rearranged pattern of recurring terms. Normally, this kind of rearrangement takes place according to certain shifts which, among other things, may produce ideological effects (cf. Sauer, 1988).

The other type of multiple addressing, the sequential organisation of the text, is preferred in those speeches in which the orator on behalf of some institution, reflects on a recent period. The various groups involved are successively accorded appropriate attention. The 'list' character

of many of these speeches might not appeal to all audiences. It is, nonetheless, a widely tested means of suggesting exhaustiveness or comprehensiveness.Therefore, these texts too, will

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have an ideological effect. Because they seem to address 'everything', the hearer or reader is hard pressed to find deliberate or accidental omissions. In these texts a 'magic' technique is used, well known for instance from litanies, which gives the recipients the impression of completeness and entirety. A kind of trustworthiness with respect to the orator and the content of his speech might be produced, which invokes feelings of solidarity rather than feelings of distance or even criticism.

In most cases, however, merely observing the fact of multiple addressing and reconstructing will not be sufficient; adequate analysis requires more. We will have to consider the structural order within which these data are presented, in order to connect them to other perspectives (Sauer, 1989).

Direct contact vs. mass media

The current necessity of taking into account the orator's attention to media coverage (see pp. 8- 9) requires us to find an alternative approach to public speeches, fundamentally different from the face-to-face situation which has been the point of departure in classical rhetoric. The issue is not the stimulation of journalists' reformulations of some crucial passages, which is describable and analysable as the post-history of the speech; instead, the issue is a change in the public character of the speech situation itself. What has changed is that although the actual presentation of the speech is still public,the reception of it takes place in a private setting (in front of the television, or behind the newspaper). Moreover, the time of the speech presentation differs from the time of its reception. These apparently external changes, however, imply a radical change in the notion of authority.In the classical situation, the authority of an orator was constructed by the audience, which had to sit still, listen, occasionally applaud, be excited etc., but only in direct relation to the speaker, who, in turn, could immediately evaluate the impression he made on the audience by the feedback presented to him. He had authority because the audience had made a concrete effort to come to the town square or city hall to listen to his speech, because the audience had made itself dependent on his words and gestures, because it had directed its attention to the orator.

To be sure, these characterisations of the audience's efforts have not become obsolete yet. Still, today's average citizen is relatively uninvolved. He is informed of political speeches and of politics in general in his own private sphere, in which he creates his own association with the media. He controls the reception of his information completely: he can choose to stop reading, to surf channels, or to switch off altogether. He is the recipient whose authority is enhanced by being independent from the orator.

These radical changes have immense consequences. It is impossible to give a comprehensive evaluation, but we can discuss two particular examples: pseudointimacy and apportioning political broadcasts.

Pseudo-intimacy means the tendency of public figures to appear not only in television news

programmes but also in entertainment shows: game shows, talk shows, etc. This suggests a kind of intimacy which, however, has nothing to do with real interrelationships. The suggestion is that viewers are related to politicians as if they were real partners in conversation, the role that reporters

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and talk-show hosts play. Moreover, debates are no longer shown; instead, confrontations are staged by the interventions of an interviewer, which can be characterised as 'confrontainment rituals' (Klein, 1995: 89). Arguments are not important, cleverness and wit are. Persuasion in a political decision is not important; image-building and amiability are. Even the royal family is involved, when background stories on certain family members are reported. Apportioning political broadcasts refers to the time constraints of television news reports. Only in very special circumstances will parliamentary debates be covered live, at least in the Netherlands. Normally, just a few text fragments (one or two sentences) will be shown. As a result, relevance structures within public speeches will change: only those who are able to summarise their concerns in one statement will get coverage. What is relevant, therefore, is short and most likely to get covered. In the last ten years, when commercialisation of television has been very influential, the following elementary features for speeches getting media coverage, all related to time constraints, have come to the fore:

·brevity;

·opicality;

·increasing frequency.

Political statements will be communicated only if they are brief.The 'statement nature' of many speeches in parliament can definitely be explained by this fact. A developed argument hardly ever gets attention, only assertions do. The orator becomes a statement machine.Something or someone that gets attention, moreover, only as long as it or s/he is the topic of the hour.Topicality and oblivion work hand in hand. Usually there is too little time to go into the background of the news (other programmes will do that). Facts can no longer be processed fully because they are pushed aside by new, more topical facts. Non-processing enhances the tendency to 'emotionalise' the news, for emotions, contrary to argumentation, can be evoked and, most importantly, shown quickly. Speeches displaying emotions, therefore, have a greater chance of coverage. The increased number of broadcasting corporations also increases the frequency with which topical events are shown. On every channel the same events are shown, with the same actors delivering the same short statements, or, in the case of expressed emotions, the same sweet tears. That a decision has been taken will be broadcast on all channels; the reasons for that decision, will, however, be given hardly any attention. These developments have left the conditions of classical rhetoric far behind. They present modern politics as a tangle of quarrelling image builders, dominated by populism.

Representative speeches by the Queen and perhaps others can help to counterbalance this culture of sound-bites. The part these speeches actually play and how they play it, and also the way in which these speeches do remain unaffected by the media developments sketched aboveall these features of present-day public speech need further inquiry. At any rate, representative speeches seem to profit from the 'lack of patience' which media coverage inevitably produces, they can offer the public at least an alternative by symbolising the

directness of 'old-fashioned' rhetoric.

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Genus deliberativum vs. typological diversity (focusing on epideictic speech)

The above reflections show how classical rhetoric paradigmatically valued the genus deliberativum,in which all rhetorical principles would be duly respected. The modern era has seen how many types of text have been added to the classical list, by the special role of parliament, by the advent of mass media, or by political institutional developments. I will limit myself here to a special type of text, which has, almost against all odds, not lost its classical rhetoric roots, and which has even made an unexpected come-back to the stage of public speech: genus demonstrativum (epideictic address). Numerous researchers have shown that speeches of the genre of genus demonstrativum,which belong to societies organised in a premodern way, continue to prove their vitality, not least in contemporary circumstances (cf. Kopperschmidt, 1989, 1990; Ensink, 1992; Ensink & Sauer, 1995; Klein, 1995; Sauer, forthcoming (a)).

But what characterises an epideictic address? To answer this, it would be helpful both to go back to the classical sources of rhetoric (cf. Lausberg, 1960), and also to consult recent pragma(linguis)tic and sociolinguistic research. Three genera were distinguished by Aristotle and his many successors: 7

·genus iudiciale;

·genus deliberativum;

·genus demonstrativum.

The genus iudiciale corresponds to the model of indictment and defence in criminal courts, the genus deliberativum corresponds to the model of contributions to parliamentary debate at the end of which immediate decision follows, and the genus demonstrativum corresponds to the model of eulogies in the wider context of celebrations. The genera iudiciale and deliberativum have pragmatic objectives: a change of situation is envisaged. They both aim for straightforward results and immediate success. But apart from this main aim, we can distinguish a whole range of other purposes which support this. We can thus begin to identify a certain structure which characterises these speeches. Incidentally, it is to these genres that rhetoric owes its image of being a manipulative technique, an image invoked implicitly by many critical evaluations of public speeches.

The main purpose of the genus demonstrativum is not a change of situation but rather the confirmation and reconfirmation of a situation already existing (see Ottmers, 1996: 20-24, 2830). The very fact of praise (or blame) indirectly implies a certain change of situation, too. Because evaluations are actually enunciated,and not just deliberated in the mind, norms and values are bound to be discussed, which may 'rigidify' the situation. The role of the orator entails that he is an exponent of the group for which and on behalf of which he speaks. Substitution and representation coincide. The orator gives the group a voice. This is to the group's benefit, for every once in a while it is necessary that a group hears a clear appeal on its behalf to the ties