John Kerry and George Bushs Rhetorical Speeches - Essay Example

?Introduction John Kerry and George Bush’s rhetorical speeches are very different with regards to cohesion and coherence. McCarthy (1994) explains that cohesion focuses upon pronouns and articles, and what they refer to, and how substitution and ellipsis carry information which is understood from shared knowledge and previous utterances. Moreover, according to McCarthy (1994), cohesion focuses on conjunctions, and how conjunctions link text segments, and how “lexical items relate to one another across textual boundaries” (McCarthy, 1994, p. 90). Hoey (1991) states that coherence is related to cohesion, but that cohesion is objective and coherence is subjective –coherence focuses upon the judgements that the listener or reader might make regarding the text, and this varies from one person to another. This paper will explain the concept of cohesion in greater detail, and will apply the concepts introduced to two different speeches, one from John Kerry and one from George W. Bush. Discussion According to Cutting (2008), cohesion may take either the form of grammatical cohesion or lexical cohesion. In grammatical cohesion, a referring expression links with another referring expression which is cohesive with “the previous mention of the referent in the text” (Cutting, 2008). In other words, certain words, known and endophora, refer back to certain other words – the word “them” will refer back to an earlier noun, and the word “this” will refer back to an earlier sentence. Further, endophora may be associative, which means that the context in which a word is used tells the listener or reader the meaning of that word. Anaphora means a word which refers to the previous text, and cataphora refers to following text (Cutting, 2008). Moreover, Kerry uses anaphora much more than Bush does, with 7 different anaphoric sentences, compared to 3 different anaphoric sentences in Bush’s speech. In illustrating associative endophora, which is another concept, Cutting (2008) uses the example of YouTube video clips. The user knows what YouTube is, so they know that the term “video sharing” does not mean passing DVDs around and that video clips does not mean paper clips, and that the term users is not exploitative people, but, rather, people who use the YouTube site. Basically, grammatical cohesion is a type of short-hand, where short words are used to refer back to other words, and ambiguous words are defined by their context. Further, endophora may be contrasted with exophora, which refers to outside context and not what occurred in the text – the listener knows the meaning of the word through its context (Cutting, 2008). Exophora reference is a cohesion concept that both George W. Bush and John Kerry use extensively. Both men used exophora 8 different times in the speeches. However, while much of John Kerry’s use of exophoric terms are some variation of “you,” “we,” “our” and “us,” with Bush, he doesn’t use these same terms. He uses the word “we’ve” in three different sentences – 16 to 18 – but, other than this, the terms that Bush uses which are exophoric are “lofty” sentences such as “freedom” in sentence 12, “liberty” in sentence 13, and “great land” in sentence 23, as well as the term “our alliances” in sentence 10. Hoey (1991) states that cohesion can further be broken up into five classes – conjunction, reference, substitution, ellipsis (all part of grammatical cohesion) and lexical cohesion. Conjunctions are words which mark a semantic relationship to a previous sentence. These words might include “however,” which signifies that the coming sentence is an exception to the rule of the previous sentence, or “alternatively,” which means that the coming sentence presents an alternative from the previous sentence. Reference is a semantic relation and the identity of the word can be ascertained by the previous text – pronouns such as “them” and “this” in the examples above would be an example of a reference. Substitution refers a words that substitutes for an earlier word. Ellipsis is an elimination of a word – “Does Agatha sing in the bath? Yes, she does” is an example of ellipsis, as the word “sing” after the “Yes she does” is eliminated. Kerry uses ellipsis, which Bush does not – in sentence 10, the word “Iraq” is used to mean “Iraq conflict,” with the words “conflict” omitted, and, in sentence 11, “winning” is used, when the sentence means “winning the Iraq conflict.” Lexical cohesion is another type of cohesion. As with grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion refers to repetition. Both grammatical and lexical cohesion also hold texts together (Cutting, 2008). Coulthard & Montgomery (1981) explain that lexical cohesion is the repetition of content words, as opposed to grammatical words. Cutting (2008) states that one type of lexical cohesion is repetition. This is the repeating of words throughout the text, and the word is repeated for stylistic effect. With regards to the concept of repetition, both John Kerry and George Bush use repetition, although Kerry’s use of it is much more subtle than Bush’s. Bush’s use of repetition is more overt, as he employs repetition at the beginning of sentences, in that he would begin five sentences virtually in a row which have the same sentence in them, as he did in sentences 4-9, where every sentence began with the sentence “we will.” Another example of this are sentences 12 through 14, which all began with the sentence “I believe.” Sentence 15 also has the sentence “I believe,” although it is preceded by the word “and,” so, while it is repetition, it is a bit more subtle. Sentences 16-18 begin with the term “we’ve.” Kerry also uses some repetition, but, as noted, his is much more subtle than Bush’s. In this case, Kerry does not start out sentences with the same sentences, right in a row, but, rather, his repetition is staggered – he starts out sentences with “I believe,” but the sentences he starts with this sentence are sentences 7, 9 and 14. Other than this, his repetition is using the same word in a sentence – “home” is repeated in sentence 4 and “world” is repeated in sentence 5. Synonyms are another kind of lexical cohesion. This is where a word which means almost the same thing as another word is employed in a sentence to avoid repetition. Kerry differs from Bush, in that he uses synonyms, and Bush does not. Specifically, in sentence three, he uses the words “country” and “home” interchangeably, and, in sentence 17 he uses the term “home” and “this nation” interchangeably. Superordinates are closely related to synonym, and this is where one word is a general word and one word is a specific word, but they are used interchangeably (Cutting, 2008). Also in this category are hyponyms, and Hoey (1991) states that hyponyms are the opposite of superordinates – superordinates are the broad category of synonyms (military is the superordinate of army) and hyponyms are the narrow version of synonyms (army is the hyponym of military). Bush employs the use of superordinates and hyponyms, and Kerry does not use this – Bush uses it in sentence 6, in which he uses the sentences “military” and “army.” Sentence 14 also has this, with the terms “Middle East” being used interchangeably with “Iraq” and “Afghanistan.”Hoey (1991) states that the preceding terms – superordinates, synonyms, hyponyms and repetition – broadly fall under the rubric of reiteration. Collocation is another broad rubric which falls under the category of lexical cohesion. Collocation refers to words which appear with “greater than random probability in its textual context” (Hoey, 1991, p. 7). Pragmatics also falls under the rubric of lexical cohesion. Wilson and Carston (2007) explain that pragmatics occurs when words are adjusted semantically and contextually fine-tuned, so that their expression is different from their encoding. Examples that Wilson and Carston use to illustrate this concept are lexically narrowing, when, for example, the word “drinking” is short-hand for alcoholic drinking (ie “No, your honor, I was not drinking that night”); approximation, the example being “flat” meaning “relatively flat” (ie “The road was flat” when, actually, the road did have a few hills);and metaphorical extension, which is where a metaphor is used, such as calling a forceful person a “bulldozer” (Wilson & Carston, 2007). In the John Kerry speech, there are examples of lexical narrowing, such as when John Kerry uses the term “Iraq” to mean “conflict in Iraq,” and when he talks about “winning” and “losing,” both of which means winning and losing Iraq conflict. George Bush uses metaphorical extension, using the words “mountain” and “valley,” which is persuasive imagery, as both of these words conjure up the visions of calm, peace and tranquility. Clause relations is another term which should be explained. Hoey (1991) states that clauses are related to one another by either being sequenced or matched, or both. Sequenced clauses are temporally or logically related, and may not contain much repetition devices. Matching relations focuses upon how the sentences differ or what they have in common, so there must be a basis for comparison for the sentences (Hoey, 1991). Hoey (1991) states that examples of such sentences and relations are general-particular, hypothetical-real and contrast and compatibility. Hoey (1991) also talks about proper nouns, and these are nouns which refer to a specific person, place or thing. Both men use proper nouns extensively, mainly to refer to countries, both this country and other countries. Kerry uses the proper nouns when he talks about Iraq, America, the United States and God. Bush uses the proper nouns when he talks about Afghanistan, America, God, Iraq and the Middle East. Neither man uses the proper noun to refer to one another, in that neither man mentions the other man’s name in their speeches, although Kerry does make reference to “this president.” Coherence is another concept which will be briefly examined. Witte & Faigley (1981) explain that coherence differs from cohesion in that cohesion focuses on the elements of lexical and grammatical speech, whereas coherence focuses on more of general means of examining the tex, and how readily understood the speech is. As Witt & Faigley (1981) state, texts may have cohesion, but still be incoherent, if the text does not have a clear purpose, or cannot “construct a real-world scene for it” (Witt & Faigley, 1981, p. 201). An example of a sentence which is cohesive, but not coherent, would be “The quarterback threw the ball toward the tight end. Most balls are spheres, but a football is ellipsoid. The tight end leaped to catch the ball” (Witt & Faigley, 1981, p. 201). In the afore-mentioned sentence, incoherence is established by the fact that the sentence does not have a clear purpose – is the purpose to explain how footballs are shaped, or is it to describe a clear action? The sentence is confusing, so it is thereby incoherent. In reading the speeches by John Kerry and George Bush, both speeches are perfectly coherent – both men talked about the war in Iraq, and all of their sentences support this underlying theme. There was not a sentence which was out of place, and would make the listener confused about the message. Therefore, both speeches were very coherent. Conclusion The main difference between both men’s speeches is that Bush uses repetition in a very obvious way. Many of his sentences are strung together by using the exact same word or sentence, or a very similar word - “we’ll” verses “we will.” Bush also speaks in more visual terms, using “mountain” and “valley” to give visualization to his speech. Bush also uses terms like “liberty” and “freedom” which are somewhat vague, but meaningful to each individual, who might define each term differently. On the other hand, Kerry uses anaphoria much more than Bush, which is arguably a less effective method of persuasion, as this simply refers back to an earlier sentence. In the end, Bush’s speech is subjectively more effective because it hammers home points, while giving visuals. Moreover, both men’s speeches were very coherent, because both speeches focused on the Iraq conflict and did not stray from this underlying theme. Bibliography Coulthard, M. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis London: Longman, 1977. Coulthard, M. and Montgomery, M. (eds) Studies in Discourse Analysis London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Cutting, J. Pragmatics and Discourse: a resource book for students London: Routledge, 2002. Hoey, M. Patterns of Lexis in Text Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. Language as Discourse: Perspectives for Language Teaching Harlow: Longman, 1994. Wilson, D. & Carston, R. “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad Hoc Concepts,” 2007. Web. 17 June 2012. Read More