Is the age of rhetorical language long gone?
In listening to the presidential candidates, I am struck by the plainness of the language. Trump, with his frequent use of “huge” and “loser”, is a bit more apparent in this, but the others are not much better. There is not even an attempt to say anything in artful or inspiring way, nothing remotely like the language of the Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” speech. Bernie Sanders talks of revolution, but the language he uses is rather mundane.
Are we past the use of rhetorical language? Do we expect to hear the common and familiar talk of the man in the street? Would we be put off by anything else? Maybe, but it saddens me a little that there is no attempt to lift us up through more poetic language.
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23 Answers
Maybe it’s just their style, and there are still people with rhetorical language out there?
It’s not gone. There just isn’t much of it right now. I once read magazine articles should be written in an 8th grade level. Another time I heard we need to assume a 5th grade level when addressing a mass audience. Candidates are talking to the masses, so they use language and references commonly used today.
I read a letter written by my great uncle while he was stationed in Europe during WWII. The language was amazing. I think it’s just how they spoke then. He probably was more educated than average though. I don’t know if he wound up with a college degree before the draft, his sister, my grandmother, had one.
I would have to really think about whether Presidential candidates over the years speak more plainly while running, but then maybe get more artful once elected? The American people seem to want to feel like they can have a beer with a candidate. That I don’t get.
@JLeslie
I guess Bobby never got the memo about dumbing things down to 5th grade level when speaking to the masses :)
Or if he had, he likely would have just ignored it anyhow. And fortunately none of his staffers had the chance to vet this speech from the heart as they likely would have said something along the lines of “You can’t be quoting Greek poets in the middle of the ghetto” And yet people understood him just fine since it was the only major black city without rioting in the streets that night.
I think the passing of him, his brother, and MLK really did mark the end of an era.
Plain talk for plain people, and Trump’s rousing success is a good marker on just how plain the folks in America must be. And that’s probably just fine. When you think about it, a large field of crass and mundane background blather is probably necessary for the occasional jewels of elocution to stand out.
@Buttonstc Bobby Kennedy? The guy who was murdered? Maybe you are reinforcing my point.
They are appealing to the “people” as they see them, the perceived lowest common denominator—which I, for one, find insulting. This is the fashion. I think eventually the “people” will long again for better language, and then that will be the fashion. The change, in this case an expression of dissatisfaction, starts with one person asking a question like this on an obscure social site and grows from there. Change is often slow, but it is constant.
It’s the age of the faux populist.
People born with silver feet in their mouths.
The people from humble beginnings seem to try harder to inspire (Reagan, Clinton), while those that have never wanted for anything (W, Trump) talk down so the average dumb-ass on the street can understand. It’s working.
What’s inspiring about “Make America Great Again”?
The message is, again and again, “You’re losers. Come ride my winner coattails.”
American politics as reality show.
Eat a corn dog for the cameras and get back on your $50,000,000 private jet.
The Emperor Has No Clothes.
You heard it here, folks.
And I personally wouldn’t term the current American political language “plain”. I would call it “course”.
But, thank the gourd, I predate Facebook and Twitter – constantly filling space with inanity, and then focusing on doing so in as short of words as possible.
Has a candidate mentioned a book in this election cycle that wasn’t written by and for ”Him”? Something designed to entertain or broaden the mind rather than narrow it?
Rhetoric is the art of using language convincingly, and that may call for the use of simple language. Intricate, artful language requires not only intelligence on the part of the listener, but attention as well. A complex sentence has twists and turns that have to be followed over time. The average attention span being what it now is, a politician has to be careful not to lose a large segment of their audience at this or that fanciful flourish. If they do, those lost aren’t going to question their listening skills; they’re going to consider the speaker to be an “elitist”.
Now, there remains the question of whether one is using simple language because that’s the only tool in the speaker’s bag, or whether it’s being used because it makes rhetorical sense. In the first case, that’s a serious problem for a candidate to a post that will occasionally require subtle and sophisticated expression.
Voters have grown weary of hot air poetic empty rhetoric and no better example of this than Obama’s speeches over the last 8 years. Voters are hungry for simple honest language and I believe the front runners are on to this as exemplified by the simpler rhetoric they are employing in their discourse on the campaign trail.
I have seen something new under the sun. I have posted this speech by Elizabeth Warren before, but it still blows me away. The speech is delivered at Harvard Law School from Warren’s professorial days. She presents it as a journey of discovery through the data. It appeals to both heart and mind. Her mastery of the presentation of data verges on poetry. She manages to present it in simple terms without talking down to the audience and gradually reveals the big picture meaning of it.
I don’t know if this type of speech will be imitated, but it might be what is needed for a skeptical, jaded, better educated, just give me the facts, audience. Given the the length and nature of the material, it is encouraging that it has have over a million views.
On the Republican side, John Kasich can be very engaging and well spoken.
Potentially eloquent.
Face it. There are very few good public speakers running for national office and the few there are have to go up against the “suck all the air out of the room” (Trump, Cruz) candidates.
The debate where Trump stood down was the only substantive one the Republicans have had.
@ibstubro That might be partly the media’s fault. The hosts.
Yes and on about the debate hosts, IMO, @JLeslie.
Megyn Kelly didn’t give Trump a pass, and, in turn, Trump was unable to finesse an answer.
The hosts have to let the panelists sink-or-swim to an extent. We’re going to expect the winner to go up against Putin, and he can run circles around Trump so fast The Donald thinks Putin is standing still.
Sad that there’s not a candidate on the Republican side that can handle a bully.
I would disagree that it’s gone. Kennedy had it, Reagan had it, and Obama had the potential. Obama let himself get mired in the blame game game and there’s no chance of of inspiration while blaming someone else for all your ills. It’s not big words nor complex issues that make a great speech, it’s simplicity and imagery that invokes what’s best in us.. Hell, I can’t remember my wife’s birthday but I can quote the Gettysburg Address. If Lincoln had ended that speech with ‘and we’ll kill all those lousy southerners’, no one would remember the speech.
@Jaxk is right. It’s not the words so much as the images the words evoke that stir us. Also from Lincoln, from his second inauguration, “the better angels of our nature” is a phrase that should last to the end of time – even among atheists.
I agree that language of the kind used by Churchill, to name one master of the craft, is sorely missing from modern politics. The fact that we can recall it with relish, and rue its absence, means that it’s not dead.
But I have to chuckle at the irony: You’re asking about rhetoric in an age where “rap” is celebrated? Where “bitches and hos” are part of what passes for modern discourse? Where people literally screech about their need for “safe spaces” – in the generally safest environments that the world has ever known – because simple words said without a shred of malice “trigger” their feelings of impotence and inadequacy and rage?
Never mind; they were just rhetorical questions.
I disagree with Jaxk. Obama is a rhetoritician par excellence. And it is important to realize that speeches are crafted in the main by speech writers At the risk of defiling the god like image of Reagan, I will only comment that nothing about the man rendered him Presidential to the extent of his ability to simply read a script.
@stanleybmanly – Not wanting to start another argument but it’s hard to give Obama credit for reading his teleprompter. Under Reagan the economy flourished, international relations improved, and the Berilin Wall came down. Obama’s major success is that he Murdered Bin Laden. It’s hard to call him great with that as his great feat.
Reagan spoke to the good in us, Obama only talks about what’s bad (and a lot of blame to Republicans) Not exactly inspirational.
Reagan spoke about the “good” in the sandinistas while he shut down housing subsidies and flooded the nation’s streets with homeless people. His illegal transfer of arms alone would have GUARANTEED his certain impeachment and removal from office had democrats in his day possessed even a smattering of the vindictive stupidity of today’s Republicans. Back in reagan’s day, the opposing party had the sense to realize the harm that might befall the nation in placing a man with full blown Alzheimer’s on trial in an open courtroom. They let Oliver North take the fall and he still hasn’t forgiven the gipper for it.
Believe me.
I’m starved for plain language from would be Presidents.
It’s like a listing for a house. don’t give me vagaries like “charming” or “cozy.”
Give me facts, real attributes like “floor to ceiling windows”, “matching modern appliances”, “walk in closets.” Etc.
See my last comment, regarding Elizabeth Warren.
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