The Call to Arms Flashcards
What is “style”?
It is a complex interaction between personal choice and social meaning and between the spoken mode and other means of communication.
Style covers a range of modes of communication (body language, physical appearance, dress, artefacts or symbolic action).
What is “delivery”?
Delivery is restricted only to the voice.
What are rethorical effects?
They are a combination of features that make an orator sounds unique with others that imply a shared set of values.
What was style in classical rhetoric?
It was interest in finding the right balance between clarity and elevation. Simpler words meant comprehension and complex words meant admiration and wonder.
How can the simple style be called?
Attic style
How can the elevated style be called?
Asianic style
What is timing?
It is an opportunity, a critical moment.
Why are timing and style important?
A good combination of style and timing is key to the success of a speech
What is the call to arms?
It is an enduring means by which leaders in crisis have draen on the power dynamics of their social contexts to exhort the masses to kill and to die
What kind of text is the call to arms?
It is a genre: generic in that they are comprised of a common structure of funcional units repeated from text to text
What are the aims of studying the call to arms genre?
It is to show how emancipation, as well as domination, is achieved through discourse. These discourses are designed to make peace, not war, that successfully redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it.
What are the generic features of the calls to arms? (4)
1- An appeal to a legitimate power source that is external to the orator and which is presented as inherently good;
2- An appeal to the historical importance of the culture in which the discourse is situated;
3- The construction of an evil other;
4- An appeal for the unification behind the legitimating external power source
What is an appeal to an external power source? Make an example.
Appeal to an unerringly abstract entity like God or the Country. Legitimate political power is invested in a source external to the actual locus of power.
What is an appeal to history? Make an example.
For an audience to understand what the orator is persuading them to do, it must be linked to popular perceptions of what has previously occurred within their social system. For example to undersand Hitler’s speeches we need to understand Germanic/Teutonic mythology.
What can we say about the Evil Other? (2)
Make an example.
- must be eliminate;
- is closely tied to the external power source
The others for Elizabeth I were the enemies of God, the kingdom and her people.
