A Rhetoric Of Persuasion In English Political Speeches

Rhetoric derives from the Greek word "rhētorikē", which is used as a verb meaning "to speak" or as a noun meaning "orator". Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion", that is, "the art of persuasion". Though the modern rhetorical theories have covered a much wider field, the concept of persuasion is still the core of it. Rhetoric originates in public speeches and in turn guides public speeches; public speeches embody the essential nature of rhetoric—persuasion. English political speeches, as an important kind of public speech, are much more persuasive with its three general purposes: to convince people to take action as speakers expect, to change radically their attitudes or beliefs or to weaken their current attitudes or beliefs. Therefore, in the light of the western rhetorical theories of Isocrates, Plato and Aristotle, by analyzing political speeches as a kind of rhetoric activity, this thesis chooses to concentrate on the rhetoric of persuasion and takes the practical instances of political speeches to study the rhetoric of persuasion with particular attention to the tactics of persuasion commonly designed or employed in English political speeches.The thesis gives a brief description of the western classical rhetorical theories, from which it tries to find out and generalize the tactics of persuasion commonly designed or employed in English political speeches. With cases analyses, a conclusion is drawn that effective tactics of persuasion rely heavily on one hand on such rhetorical figures as parallelism, repetition, simile, metaphor, alliteration, antithesis, chiasmus, rhetorical questions, climax and hyperbole; and on the other hand on rhetorical proofs, that is, logos, pathos, and ethos, which can prove the truth of the statements made, arouse the emotions of audience to form an atmosphere overcoming the boundless apathy, and give audience the right impression of the speakers' character. Rhetorical figures and rhetorical proofs offer English political speeches indispensable powerful tools for the persuasive function by making the language more impressive, lively and rhythmical and thus strengthen the persuasive force of political speeches.The thesis also conducts a quantitative analysis on the basis of ten American inaugural addresses from 1949 to 2001 and five campaign speeches in 2008 with the aim to find out how these tactics of persuasion are applied in political speeches. By analyzing the frequency of these tactics occurred in these samples, the thesis finds on one hand that parallelism, repetition and alliteration are the most used rhetorical tactics of persuasion, occurring at least ten times and twenty times respectively in every inaugural address and campaign speech, while hyperbole occurs least with the frequency of less than once; and on the other hand that the application of rhetorical tactics is determined mainly by the purpose of a political speech. If a speech's purpose is to persuade people and to turn them into the speaker's favor, then the speaker would tend to or be compelled to apply more persuasive tactics to give the speech more power. But if a speech does not concern political struggle for certain interest, the speaker will tend to adopt a relatively modest use of persuasive tactics and focus more on the establishment of a favorable and easy relationship with the audience.