A Study On Hillary Clinton’s Speeches From The Perspective Of Perelman’s Audience Theory

The upcoming American presidential election in 2016 has made a changeable in American political stage. All the candidates have taken part in the election campaign to propagandize their political idea in order to gain the approval of American people. Among them, there is a person who is quite remarkable. She is Hillary Clinton, the former State of Unites. As a prominent female politician, Hillary Clinton always attracts the world’s attention. The ever-changing status, from the First Lady to the Secretary of States, has provided Hillary rich and varied life experience. In 2008, Hillary had run for the presidential election and showed her powerful and mighty in politic during the campaign, while she had to suspend her campaign. Courageous and confident as she was, Hillary made her famous farewell address, in which audiences were moved by her magnanimity, courage and determination. Up to now, Hillary still maintains a high public approval rating when she announced to run for the presidential election in 2016.Speech plays a significant role in American politician stage, by which politicians advertise their political idea. During the speech, they communicate, convince and persuade the public so that reach the aim of gaining support. As a prominent politician, Hillary’s speeches have been studied by scholars from many perspectives such as semantics, discourse analysis, critical linguistics, etc. However, from the perspective of western rhetoric especially audience theory is totally new. Thus, from the point of view, the paper applied Perelman’s audience theory to analyze Hillary’s 8 speeches.At the beginning of the paper, the author will give a brief introduction to the development of "audience" in western rhetoric history and the relationship between rhetoric and politics. Then, the author will make a further study on Hillary’s speeches under the theory framework of Perelman’s audience theory, especially to explore what kind of rhetoric techniques and methods Hillary applied in her speeches to achieve her aims. Meanwhile, the author will combine Perelman’s "presence" and "commune" theory to analyze the speeches from multiple angles. According to Perelman, audiences can tell the "good" speeches from the "bad" ones and determine whether a speech is successful or not. In consideration of the key role in speeches, speakers have to adapt the speeches to meet audience’s appeal. Fully understanding the important role of the audience in speech can help the speaker to better organize lectures and achieve the ultimate goal.It is found the Hillary not only relies on her personality but also the rhetoric skills to achieve her aim of speech. Hillary always views audience as her primary concern and flexibly applies rhetoric skills to transcend division and induce cooperation. Based on Perelman’s audience theory, the author makes a qualitative research on Hillary’s speeches which provides a new perspective to understand Hillary’s speeches, as well as herself.