The American Presidential Inaugural Speech As Genre

“The text must clearly declare itself as belonging to a known genre or type.” (J. A. BURROW)

Discuss in relation to any domain of language.

 

The titular quotation is taken from Essays on Medieval Literature, in which Burrow asserts that “in interpreting any text…the text must clearly declare itself as belonging to a known genre or type…  Otherwise, in the absence of external evidence, we are in most cases condemned to conjecture and controversy” (1984:23). Extrapolated, this claim suggests that ordinarily, the context of external factors of production is integral to interpreting a text, unless the text is a clear example of a specific genre. Burrow’s work refers to authorless medieval poetry, which the modern reader must place and interpret in hindsight however, an interesting form of text with the need for both genre and context in its interpretation is that of political speeches. Such speeches are always made under the public eye, and almost always written by someone other than the speaker (or at least, in conjunction with people other than the speaker) – for example, Ryan notes in his thesis that “Roosevelt’s handwriting does not appear on any of the drafts [of his inaugural address]” (1981:158). The American Presidential inaugural address is, paradoxically to Burrow’s statement, simultaneously a clear sub-genre, or type, of political speech, and comprised of content wholly dependent on external context. Analysis of language used in the closing of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1945 (text A) and the opening of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 (text B) inaugural addresses shows the extent to which genre and external factors aid the interpretation of the inaugural address, a specific type of political speech.

              Nash highlights the importance of theme in effective public speaking, noting that if an audience is to be moved, “the theme must be capable of evoking feelings into which the audience can readily enter…themes which stand up either in universal human validity…or in the frame of a culture or epoch” (1992:50-51). War, in text A, is an example of a culture-framed theme taken from external factors of the text’s production, as are the economic issues referred to in text B. Both Roosevelt and Reagan are careful in their reference to these themes, which they verbalise primarily through metaphor. Ryan notes that there were three proposed drafts of Roosevelt’s address by three different authors, and he believes Roosevelt to have chosen the draft by Robert Sherwood “because it was practically devoid of war language” (1981:163). Indeed, instead of death, victory and defeats, Roosevelt speaks metaphorically of “cost”, “profit” and “lessons” in lines 1 and 2 of text A. This lexical choice presents Roosevelt weighing up the effects of the ongoing Second World War on America and appealing to his audience with an overall sense that the nation will be victorious – the simple future tense of “we shall profit” lends a tone of certainty to Roosevelt’s presentation of this outcome, yet avoids a direct promise of victory. Such technique is vital to the sub-genre of the Presidential inaugural address, wherein the new president must be wary of presenting himself as arrogant in his first address to the people (Campbell 1985:402). Use of metaphor places the reality of World War Two “at a safe distance, a little out of reach”, which Carter identifies as the only way in which the genre of political speech uses figurative language (1999:132). However, whilst the collocation “fearful cost” is metaphorical, it is paradoxically strongly associated with military campaign and death, limiting the distancing of reality. The Corpus of Contemporary American English holds only four instances of the collocation, all in written language – one from fiction and three from magazine articles.[1]  Two articles are from the American Heritage and Military History magazines respectively, both denoting “fearful cost” of wars.[2] This collocation in non-fictional writing seems overwhelmingly to be a metaphorical reference to imminent losses which occur as part of a military campaign. In text A, this evokes the effects of the theme of war by semantic association, without explicit reference to the loss of life that it incurs.

              Reagan, too, makes interesting use of metaphor to evoke theme. He speaks of the “economic affliction” of “the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations” in lines 11 and 12 of text B. Unlike Roosevelt’s weighing of “cost” and “profit”, this metaphor of “affliction” is not extended in fact it becomes confused across the next two lines, with Reagan detailing how “it distorts our economic decisions, penalises thrift, and crushes the struggling young” (emphasis my own), not qualities which are usually associated with illness and suffering. These active, transitive verbs give the “affliction” agency, rather than initial suggestion of it as an unfortunate natural occurrence. Yet by assigning agency, Reagan removes responsibility for the “economic affliction” from the nation, presenting it as a destructive, autonomous entity. Therefore whilst the metaphor of an “affliction” is confused, it achieves Reagan’s apparent aim to linguistically alleviate responsibility and present Americans suffering from, rather than causing, the issue. In this way, he presents the theme of an external factor in a manner which is “capable of evoking feelings into which the audience can readily enter” (Nash 1992:50).  Even the seemingly direct reference to the theme “inflation” is in fact a metaphor which has become codified in economic and political discourse. This is shown by the Oxford English Dictionary’s references of the etymological change of the noun “inflation”, originally a Latin noun of action.[3] The earliest referenced use of the word in English writing is from c.1340, meaning “the condition of being inflated with air or gas, or of being distended or swollen as if with air”.[4] The first reference to “inflation” being used in economic terms as an “increase beyond proper limits esp. of prices, the issue of paper money, etc”, is from 1838.[5] This is a clear example of a linguistic feature from the genre of political speeches which is noted by Carter that much of the genre’s language appears formulaic, but in fact stems from prudent origins (Carter 1999:130). This is evidence of text B “clearly [declaring] itself as belonging to a known genre” (Burrow 1984:23). The specific appeal to audience through careful presentation of theme taken from external factors, in texts A and B, also demonstrates the sub-genre of Presidential inaugural address – a feature of which is the need to set aside major crises or wars to allow the President to appeal to the people (Campbell 1985:397).

              In appealing to the audience, rhetoric is a vital aspect of the genre of political speeches. Classic rhetoric enacts three forms of oratory: the judicial (focussed temporally on the past and thematically on justice), the deliberative (connected with the future, thematically related to expediency or harmfulness) and the epideictic (concentrated on the present, exploring themes of honour and disgrace) (Culpeper 2009:587). According to these definitions Presidential inaugural addresses fall under the epideictic category. Within political discourse, this use of rhetoric does not function exclusively as self-promotion of the speaker, but educationally, to convey political views, create consensus and a spirit of unity among the audience (Culpeper 2009:588). We can see epideictic focus on the present and educational conveyance of political views in Roosevelt’s anaphora from lines 1 to 7 of text A. He introduces phrases with the plural past participle “we have learned” on five separate occasions, encouraging contemplation of exactly what it is that has been “learned” and is now part of the collective American consciousness. Reagan also focuses on the present through vocative use of titles in lines 1 and 2 as a mark of respect to listening audience members, validating their participation in the inauguration ceremony by formally identifying their roles within the political system which Reagan himself now leads. Campbell identifies praise of the Presidential institution and governmental system as an aspect of the inaugural address which is part of the educational function of epideictic oratory (1985:396). However, it would appear less to promote education and more to uphold the American system of democracy – as Ericson asserts, “the eternal and universal nature of their nation’s political truths has been well documented in the secondary literature on American political culture” (1997:738). Interestingly, Ericson’s own use of the hyperboles “eternal” and “universal” in his secondary literature perpetuates this upholding of the American political system, failing to acknowledge that these systems are in fact constructs which are possible to be broken down. This is exemplified in Reagan’s use of chiasmus across lines 3 to 6, referring to the inauguration ceremony first as “a solemn and most momentous occasion”, then “a commonplace occurrence” and a “ceremony we accept as normal”, before praising it again as “nothing less than a miracle”. Framing his presentation of the Presidential institution in this way gives an effect of enantiosis to the adjectives “normal” and “commonplace” by contrasting them with the reverent opening and closing descri ptions. This ultimately elevates the American political system, encouraging the audience to respect it even as they engage with it by being present at, or listening to, the inauguration ceremony.

In terms of epideictic discourse creating “consensus and a spirit of unity among the audience” (Culpeper 2009:588), there is a remarkable construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in texts A and B. Normally, such construction in political speeches reduces the complexity of actions and events to two distinct groups, to unite audience with speaker through identification as one of ‘us’ where “‘us’ is deemed to be good, the other – ‘them’ – bad,” termed by Wodak as “binarity” (Culpeper 2009:585). However, inaugural speeches specifically appear to use binarity differently. In text B, Reagan constructs American citizens as ‘us’ – speaking of “our nation”, “how unique we really are”, “our Republic” – whilst the “many in the world” who are not American become ‘they’, the “watching world” whose idolising gaze falls upon America’s “political system which guarantees individual liberty”. This epideictic presentation of the political institution as something honourable elevates it, encouraging the audience’s investment in it – and, by extension, the President – as a utopic organisation. Roosevelt, too, can be seen to use binarity to unite his audience through its conspicuous absence. Text A holds only two references which could be considered to construct an ‘other’ – “other nations far away” and “the human community”. And yet, these ‘others’ are a group of which the constructed ‘us’ (“we Americans” and “our allies”) is ultimately part of. Again, this is largely to do with the wartime context of production Roosevelt recognised a contextual need to emphasise the importance of unity in a globally turbulent environment, which he attempts to do through careful avoidance of constructing of the ‘other’ in the first place.

Texts A and B draw on linguistic features common to the genre of political speeches, often applying them in ways which adhere to the specific type of Presidential inaugural address. In this sense, the texts I have analysed certainly do “declare [themselves] as belonging to a known genre or type” (Burrow 1984:23). However when it comes to interpretation of these texts, clear examples of genre and type are not enough, as Burrow suggests can be the case “under certain circumstances” (1984:23). Knowledge of the external factors of the speeches’ production is vital in aiding interpretation of the linguistic features’ shaping by context. In terms of Burrow’s titular statement, there is an interesting paradox here the external factors of war and financial difficulty in texts A and B respectively give rise to the way in which linguistic features of the genre of political speech are used in the specific type of Presidential inaugural address.  In this instance, rather than “genre as an internal substitute for context”, context itself becomes a constituent, formative part of the genre. Yet genre remains of utmost importance to the Presidential inaugural address, not necessarily for interpretation, but for performing a socio-political function in upholding and perpetuating the American political institution of democratically elected presidents.

 

Word count: 1,996

 

Bibliography

Primary reading

Roosevelt, Franklin D. , 4^th inaugural address, January 20^th, 1945. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: from George Washington to Barack Obama. Bicentennial ed., Senate document (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: Bartleby.com, 2001.) www.bartleby.com/124/ [accessed 23/05/2015].

Reagan, Ronald, inaugural address, January 20^th, 1981. Ronald Reagan: "Inaugural Address," January 20, 1981. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, ‘The American Presidency Project.’ http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43130 [accessed 23/05/2015].

 

Secondary reading

Burrow, John Anthony, Essays on Medieval Literature, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, ‘Inaugurating the Presidency’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2, (1985), http://www.jstor.org/stable/27550215 [accessed 25/05/2015].

Carter, Ronald, and Walter Nash, Seeing Through Language: A Guide to Styles of English Writing (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1999).

Culpeper, Jonathan, et al. (eds.), English Language: Descri ption, Variation and Context (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Davies, Mark, The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present (2008-),  < http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ > [accessed 26/05/2015].

Ericson, David F., “Presidential Inaugural Addresses and American Political Culture”, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4, (1997), < http://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2084/stable/27551797 > [accessed 23/05/2015].

Nash, Walter Rhetoric - The Wit of Persuasion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992).

OED online, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2014) < http://www.oed.com/ > [All entries accessed 24/05/2015 except where stated].

Ryan, Halford Ross, “Roosevelt`s fourth inaugural address: A study of its composition”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol, 67, No. 2, (1981), < http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335638109383562 > [accessed 23/05/2015].

 

 

Appendix

Text A

Extract from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 4^th inaugural address, January 20^th, 1945.

Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: from George Washington to Barack Obama.’ Bicentennial ed., Senate document (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: Bartleby.com, 2001.) www.bartleby.com/124/ [accessed 07/05/2015].

1

 

5

 

 

10

 

 

15

 

Line length: 18 lines

Text B

Extract from Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address, January 20^th, 1981.

Ronald Reagan: "Inaugural Address," January 20, 1981. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, ‘The American Presidency Project.’ http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43130 [accessed 07/05/2015].

1

 

 

5

 

 

10

 

Line length: 14 lines

 

 

 

 

 

Total line length for texts A and B: 32 lines

[1] Davies, Mark, The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present (2008-), <http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ > [accessed 26/05/2015].

[2] Ibid.

[3] Inflation, noun, Latin inflātiōn-em, noun of action < “inflāre”, to inflate, v., OED Online, [accessed 27/05/15].

[4] Inflation, noun, definition 2, OED Online, [accessed 27/05/15].

[5] Inflation, noun, definition 6, OED Online, [accessed 27/05/15].