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Political communication in U. S. Senate campaign victory and concession speeches

A qualitative study of how winners and losers manage presentation of self

 | Bentley University
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Abstract
This qualitative study investigates how candidates for the U.S. Senate make persuasive use of interactional techniques and strategies in victory and concession speeches to manage impressions and create positive presentations of self as candidates, politicians, and persons. The analysis shows how concessions and victory claims are constructed, how concession phone calls to the winning candidate are described, and how candidates manage audience responses to references to these issues in the concession or victory speeches. Given political polarization and division in current U. S. politics, better understanding of political communication in victory and concession speeches may be useful for analytical and practical purposes, and may also provide a foundation for future studies of shifting norms for this genre of political communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature on victory and concession speeches
  • 3.Methods, data and analytical perspective
  • 4.Interactional techniques for claiming victory and conceding defeat
    • 4.1Claiming a win in election night speeches
    • 4.2Conceding defeat without conceding ‘face’
    • 4.3Communicating about the call from the opponent
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Endnote
  • References
References (39)
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