Cover not available

Article published In: Language and Dialogue
Vol. 6:2 (2016) ► pp.275–305

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

The interpersonal strand of political speech

Recruiting the audience in PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches

 | Bar Ilan University
 | Tel Aviv University (Israel)
Published online: 18 August 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.6.2.04liv
The present study offers an underlying theoretical framework for examining political speeches from a rhetorical perspective. This framework is based on systemic functional linguistics developed by Halliday (most recently updated by Halliday and Matthiessen 2014), and includes discourse structures suggested by later authors. We suggest that the interpersonal stratum of meaning, through which we manage social relations, represents a powerful resource for creating a dialogue with the audience in order to recruit it to a politician’s call for action. To address this issue, we analyzed ten speeches delivered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to five different international audiences. We examined strategies that foster dialogic interaction with the audience, by directly addressing them, or otherwise acknowledging their presence. The interpersonal strategies we identified combine into larger domains which we term forming social bonds, building a consensus and revealing ideology. These strategies may be salient because they tap into various aspects of the audience’s experience and identity: the social, affective, and ideological spheres.
References (51)
AIPAC. [URL] (Retrieved Jan. 4, 2016).
Alavi-Nia, Maryam and Alireza Jalilifar. 2013. “We Believe the Iranian Nation Can: The Manifestation of Power in Iranian Televised Presidential Debates.” Language & Communication 33 (1): 8–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aristotle. 1982. Rhetoric. Trans. John. H. Freese. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bard, Mitchell. “United Nations: The U.N’s Relations with Israel” [URL] (Retrieved Dec. 21, 2015).
Bateson, Gregory. 1953. “The Position of Humour in Human Communication.” In Cybernetics, ninth conference, ed. by Geinz von Foerster, 1–47. New York: Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bull, Peter and Ofer Feldman. 2011. “Invitations to Affiliative Audience Responses in Japanese Political Speeches.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 301: 158–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bussman, Hadumod. 1998. “Phatic Communication.” In Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Hadumod Bussman, Transl. by Gregory Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi, 358. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul. 1990. “Politeness, Politics, and Diplomacy.” Discourse & Society 1(2), 201–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chilton, Paul and Christina Schäffner. 1997. “Discourse and Politics.” In Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Vol. 2: Discourse as Social Interaction, ed. by T. van Dijk, 206–230. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage Publication.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. and Thomas B. Carlson. 1982. “Hearers and Speech Acts.” Language 58 (2): 332–373. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cutler, Richard H. 1995. “Distributed Presence and Community in Cyberspace.” Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century 3 (2), 12).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Cillia, Rudolf, Martin Reisigl, and Ruth Wodak. 1999. “The Discursive Construction of National Identities.” Discourse & Society 10 (2): 149–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dik, Simon, C. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar: Complex and Derived Constructions. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Emrich, Cynthia G., Holly H. Brower, Jack Feldman and Howard Garland. 2001. “Images in Words: Presidential Rhetoric, Charisma, and Greatness.” Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (3): 527–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ensink, Titus. 1996.”The Footing of a Royal Address: An Analysis of Representativeness in Political Speech, Exemplified in Queen Beatrix’ Address to the Knesset on March 28, 1995.” Current Issues in Language and Society 3 (3): 205–233.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
European Friends of Israel. [URL] (Retrieved Dec. 21, 2015)
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faris, Ali A., Shamala Paramasivam, Tan B. Hoon, and Abdul M. Zamri. 2016. “Persuasive Strategies in Mandela’s No Easy Walk to Freedom.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature 5 (1): 192–208.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Feng, Hao and Yuhui, Liu. 2010. “Analysis of Interpersonal Meaning in Public Speeches: A Case Study of Obama’s Speech.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1 (6): 825–829. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A.K. 1970. “Language Structure and Language Function.” In New Horizons in Linguistics, ed. by John Lyons, 140–165. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A.K. and Christian M.I.M Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. 4th ed., New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet. 1984. “Modifying Illocutionary Force.” Journal of Pragmatics 81: 345–365. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 1993. “Professional Conflict: The Management of Disagreement in Academic Discourse.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. by Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini Bonelli, 115–134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2002. “What Do They Mean? Questions in Academic Writing.” Text 22 (4): 529–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic Discourse.” Discourse Studies 7 (2): 173–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Genre, Discipline and Identity.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 191: 32–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaffee, Alexandra. “58 Members of Congress Skipped Netanyahu’s Speech.” [URL] (Retrieved April 19, 2015)
Johnstone, Barbara. 2008. Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kazemian, Bahram and Somayyeh Hashemi. 2014. “Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama’s 2012 Speeches: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics and Rhetoric.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4 (6): 1178–1187. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kondowe, Wellman. 2014. “Interpersonal Metafunctions in Bingu wa Mutharika’s Second-Term Political Discourse: A Systemic Functional Grammatical Approach.” International Journal of Linguistics, 6 (3): 70–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewin, Beverly A. and Hadara Perpignan. 2012. “Recruiting the Reader in Literary Criticism.” Text & Talk 32 (6): 751–772. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Livnat, Zohar. 2012. Dialogue, Science and Academic Writing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, Jim R. and Peter R.R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morreall, John. 1990. Prepared versus Spontaneous Humour. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers-Roy, Alice. 1981. “The Function of Irony in Discourse.” Text 1 (4): 407–423. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neuman, Yair and Iris Tabak. 2003. “Inconsistency as an Interactional Problem: A Lesson from Political Rhetoric.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 32 (3): 251–267. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. 1994. “Involvement and Joking in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 221: 409–430. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reisigl, Martin. 2010. “Rhetoric of Political Speeches.” In Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Veronika Koller, 243–269. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reyes, Antonio. 2011. “Palin vs Biden: The Right for Credibility in Political Discourse.” Issues in Political Discourse Analysis 3 (1): 75–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rourke, Liam, Terry Anderson, Randy Garrison and Walter Archer. 1999. “Assessing Social Presence in Asynchronous Text-Based Computer Conferencing.” International Journal of E-Learning and Distance Education 14 (2): 50–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Short, John, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie. 1976. The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. Toronto, ON: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1989. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 2000. Introducing Functional Grammar. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2009. “The Argumentative Power of Words or How to Move People’s Minds with Words.” In Language as Dialogue, ed. by Sebastian Feller. 357–378. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willner, Ann R. 1984. The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, John. 1990. Politically Speaking. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ye, Ruijuan. 2010. “The Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis of Barack Obama’s Victory Speech.” English Language Teaching 3 (2): 146–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Kohn, Ayelet
2023. Props as visual arguments in the political speeches of Binyamin Netanyahu. Social Semiotics 33:2 ► pp. 373 ff. DOI logo
Silber-Varod, Vered & Anat Lerner
2023. Introducing the Volume of Extremity (VoX) method to integrate prosodic data into discourse analysis. Language & Communication 89 ► pp. 42 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda & Ayelet Kohn
2022. Resemblance in comments/posts interaction. Pragmatics and Society 13:5 ► pp. 861 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda & Zohar Livnat
2022. Dialogic meaning-making in political settings. Pragmatics and Society 13:5 ► pp. 731 ff. DOI logo
Niebuhr, Oliver & Vered Silber-Varod
2021. How versatility performance influences perception of charismatic speech. Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 22:3 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo
Karas, Hilla
2019. False equality in election advertisements. Journal of Language and Politics 18:1 ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Livnat, Zohar
2019. “You bring the steaks, I’ll bring the salad”. In The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 307], ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Kayam, Orly
2017. A rhetorical change that changed reality. Language and Dialogue 7:2 ► pp. 163 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue